L'Arcadia marchigiana di Gherardo Cibo

There is very little biographical information to be found regarding Gherardo Cibo. In order to get to know his personality and training it is necessary to reconstruct the environment in which he grew up, his studies and habits, on the basis of mostly unspecific clues and documents. This essay reconstructs the environment between Rome, Camerino, Pesaro, Bologna and Rocca Contrada that Gherardo must have frequented, concerned with the themes of ancient architecture linked to the humanistic revival of the garden and suburban villa, inspired by Pietro Bembo and by the school of Raphael and Giulio Romano. His heterodox surroundings must certainly have had an influence upon Cibo, and his proximity to the spirituality of the Reformation which surrounded his aunt Caterina Cibo, duchess of Camerino, Vittoria Colonna, Juan de Valdés , Bernardino Ochino, General of the Cappuccines (order protected by Caterina Cibo) then become Protestant, other heretics like Pietro Carnesecchi, Marcantonio Flaminio and the Cardinal Reginald Pole, supporter of religious tolerance. Among the relationships that follow his Bolognese period (around 1538-40), during which Gherardo must have frequented the lessons of Luca Ghini at the university, his meeting Ortensio Lando seems significant. Lando was also a student of medicine under Ghini, and stayed for some time during 1542 with the Bishop of Senigallia, Marco Vigerio Della Rovere, Cibo’s uncle. Four works by Lando are recorded among the books of the Passionei collection of the Angelica Library in Rome, where part of Cibo’s library ended up, one of which was annotated. Ortensio Lando’s radical attitude towards the official culture and tradition was not entirely shared by Gherardo but he was certainly drawn to Lando’s evangelism and the simplicitas preached by the “evangelicals” (like the intellectuals who frequented Caterina Cibo and Vittoria Colonna), which greatly influenced the artist’s artistic and scientific work. Behind the painted plants of his herbarium, Cibo in fact represented an Arcadian world made up of hermitages, peasants, shepherds, fishermen and hermits which recall the egloghe piscatorie of Iacopo Sannazzaro (whose Arcadia Cibo owned) and the landscapes of Brueghel the Elder that the artist must have known in Rome, together with other painters such as the Flemish Michiel De Gast and the Croat Giulio Clovio. Cibo may also have been representing the method of research and study of plants which had begun to be defined by Leonhart Fuchs in Germany and by Luca Ghini and his school in Italy in the first half of the 16th century, founded on the circulation of specimens of the various plants, the critical analysis of the plants described by the ancient botanists, open air trips, the continuous comparison between the empirical data and the documentation already noted. This effort of continued confrontation between innovation and tradition explains Gherardo Cibo’s capacity to represent the plants’ characteristics with philological and botanical rigour; their colours, smells, habitat and their landscape context, which at times assumes an ideal and Arcadian character, which was also cultivated in those years in the Pesaro and Della Rovere courts which he frequented. This reconciliation between real and ideal was also made possible by the new function that botanical illustrations began to have in 16th century science, acquiring the capacity and the legitimation to represent the structure of plants (their morphological character, the shape of their evolution and flowers, etc) way beyond their simple realistic appearance, incorporating a sort of code that went beyond ingenuous realism. During the same years, this was a theme that occupied the Bolognese “Hermathena” Academy of Achille Bocchi, in which Cibo’s master, Ghini also took part, and several intellectuals such as Pierio Valeriano, who had been in Rome when Cibo was training.

Nel 1540 Gherardo Cibo (1512-1600), nobile cavaliere pronipote di papa Innocenzo VIII e nipote di Caterina Cibo, duchessa di Camerino, parente dei Della Rovere, decide di ritirarsi a Rocca Contrada, nel Ducato di Urbino (oggi Arcevia), per dedicarsi completamente allo studio delle piante, alla pittura di paesaggio ed alla sperimentazione di tecniche innovative nella conservazione e riproduzione delle specie botaniche, cimentandosi nella miniatura, nel disegno di paesaggio, nell’arte di fare i colori, nella stampa a matrice naturale delle piante, nella preparazione di erbari secchi e dipinti. Artista e scienziato allo stesso tempo, Cibo è in contatto con i maggiori studiosi del tempo come Pietro Andrea Mattioli e Ulisse Aldrovandi e si dedica a rappresentare, sullo sfondo delle piante rintracciate nel corso delle sue numerose spedizioni botaniche, i paesaggi delle Marche e dell’Umbria, restituendo lo skyline rurale e urbano del tempo, mescolando la fedeltà al dato naturale con una sorta di idealizzazione arcadica della semplicità della vita in campagna, che è anche espressione di una sensibilità religiosa evangelica ispirata alle idee della Riforma. Dell’opera di Cibo, personalità riservata e modesta, si perse ben presto memoria e i suoi disegni andarono dispersi in numerose biblioteche del mondo, spesso attribuiti ad artisti nordici o fiamminghi, fino a quando diversi codici e disegni furono rintracciati ed a lui attribuiti da Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi. Ora raccolti, catalogati, riprodotti e studiati in questo straordinario volume illustrato, che spiega anche per quale motivo il paesaggio marchigiano sia stato percepito per molto tempo come un’Arcadia ideale.