Francesco d'Ubertini Verdi, called Il Bachiacca

Bio

The Renaissance painter best known by the enigmatic nickname ‘il Bachiacca’ was born Francesco d’Ubertino di Bartolomeo di Tommaso il Verde in Florence on 1 March, 1494. Despite the work of Gaetano Milanesi and others, many modern scholars consistently misidentify him as Francesco Ubertini. In fact, later in his life, Francesco Bachiacca adopted his great-grandfather’s nickname ‘il Verde’ and modernized it into a proper Italian last name, the then uncommon Verdi. Starting in the 1540s, documents consistently refer to the artist as Francesco d’Ubertino Verdi, including his death records for 5 October, 1557. Francesco signed only one known work, with his Christian name and nickname: FRANC. BACHI. FACI. (Franciscus Bachiacca Faciebat).

Bachiacca was one of the leading painters in Florence for most of the first half of the sixteenth century. In spite of this, Giorgio Vasari reduced Bachiacca’s fifty-year career to eleven sentences in his Lives that labels him a painter of small figures, plants, animals and grotesques. Vasari’s deprecating comments and limited treatment lie behind the modern mischaracterization of Bachiacca as a minor painter of secondary works. But Vasari’s remarks have been taken out of context and many modern writers ignore both physical and historical evidence. First, Vasari’s report is tainted by personal biases. Bachiacca’s best friend was a painter named Jacone, one of the leaders of a group of artists that included the goldsmith Piloto and Bachiacca’s relative, the woodworker and Medici court architect Battista del Tasso. Vasari despised Jacone and his circle, calling them drinkers, gamblers and slanderers. His ire was fuelled by the fact that some of these men blocked Vasari’s ambitions at the Medici ducal court in the 1540s and early 1550s, precisely the period in which the Lives were written. Second, although Bachiacca was undeniably an expert painter of small figures and little pictures, he did not limit himself to these, as Vasari would have us believe. Vasari omitted Bachiacca’s important large altarpieces, such as The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie) and the Saints Sebastian, Macarius and Vincent Ferrer in Borgo San Lorenzo, as well as portraits and many other works large and small from his account of the artist’s work.

Bachiacca had an enviable artistic pedigree. He began his career in Pietro Perugino’s Florentine studio. At the time, Perugino was at the height of his popularity and, in the words of the Sienese banker Agostino Chigi, was widely considered ‘… il meglio mastro d’Italia’. The young Francesco d’Ubertino would have been of apprentice age about 1505, the year Perugino obtained the prestigious commission to complete the massive polyptych for the high altar of the church of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence.

After the apprenticeship with Perugino, Bachiacca joined Andrea del Sarto’s circle of painters, which included another artist of the same age, Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo. Bachiacca and Pontormo were involved in some of Andrea’s most significant commissions. Bachiacca’s first major collaborative enterprise with the group was a nuptial chamber decorated with painted scenes from the life of Joseph for the Florentine banker Pierfrancesco Borgherini’s marriage to Margherita Acciauoli in 1515. Bachiacca painted a total of six panels that surrounded the wedding bed, which was the focus of the room, while Pontormo, Francesco Granacci, and Andrea del Sarto furnished the cassoni and spalliere panels. Andrea del Sarto must have valued Bachiacca’s contribution, since he recalled the painter to help decorate the antechamber of another Florentine banker, Giovanmaria Benintendi, with stories of David, Solomon, Saint John the Baptist, and the Magi; a project completed in 1523. Bachiacca painted two large panels for this commission—nearly one-half of the ensemble—while Pontormo, Franciabigio and Andrea del Sarto contributed one panel each.

Bachiacca reached the summit of his career as an artist at the court of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici (reg. 1537-1574) and Duchess Eleonora da Toledo after their marriage in 1539. In this capacity, he was the colleague of the most important Florentine artists of the age, including Pontormo, Bronzino, Francesco Salviati, Tribolo and Baccio Bandinelli. The duke and duchess certainly appreciated Bachiacca’s work—they kept him busy with commissions for nearly seventeen years and also hired his younger brother Antonio. One of Bachiacca’s first major tasks was to decorate the walls and ceiling of the duke’s private study with plants, animals and a landscape in 1542. Furthermore, Bachiacca was engaged in many of the projects to redecorate the ducal palace. He prepared cartoons for a series of ten finely-woven tapestries depicting grotesques with plants and animals (c. 1545-1549), another series of four large tapestries illustrating the labours of the months (c. 1550), and richly embroidered bed-hangings for a royal bed that were left unfinished at his death in 1557. He also painted the ceilings of the duchess’ terrace on the palace roof (1552-1553) and the duchess’ grotto in the newly acquired Boboli gardens (1555).

Bachiacca’s style and methods were perfectly suited to the artistic tasks assigned to him at court. His expansive, verdant landscapes, saturated colours and meticulous detail imitated the same qualities that Italian viewers prized in Netherlandish paintings from Van Eyck and Memling to Patinir. This skill made Bachiacca the premier court painter of the proto-scientific illustrations of flora and fauna that nourished the young duke’s interests in botany and the natural sciences. Bachiacca included Netherlandish-style landscapes in nearly every picture he painted, including the tapestry cartoons representing the labours of the months. Bachiacca was also a master at combining figures, exotic costumes and other motifs acquired from Italian artists and German and Netherlandish prints into entirely new compositions. This technique is at the heart of Renaissance conceptions of fantasia, varietà, capricci, and grotteschi.

Bachiacca’s artistic method is rooted in the ancient tale of the Greek painter Zeuxis and the Maidens of Croton that was dear to Renaissance painters. According to both Cicero and Pliny the Elder, in order to paint a picture of Helen of Troy, Zeuxis gathered five of the city of Croton’s loveliest women and combined the most beautiful portions of each into his painting of Helen—thereby creating a perfect, composite beauty. In the same way, Bachiacca often fused elements from Italian, German and Netherlandish paintings, prints, drawings and nature into works that strive to represent the best of Renaissance painting.