Defeat of Radagasio below Fiesole

Defeat of Radagasio below Fiesole

Giorgio Vasari, Defeat of Radagasio below Fiesole, 1563-5, Italian, oil painting on wood, 25 x 54cm, Florence, Palazzo Vecchio Museum.

The Gothic king Radagaisus led an invasion of Roman Italy in 405 with his ultimate plan being to sacrifice the (Christian) Roman senators to the gods and then burn the city of Rome to the ground. He was defeated by the general Stilicho and executed. Some of Radagaisus’s army was drafted into the Roman army, others disbanded, and many were enslaved. Less than five years later, Alaric I would lead a successful conquest of Rome and his forces included some of these same men. This 16th century painting depicts the defeat of Radagasius as pained by Giorgio Vasari (an artist best remembered for his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects an important, if not highly subjective treatise on Italian Renaissance and mannerist artists. This work is considered by many to be the foundation of the field of art history.) It is one of the paintings done by Vasari in the Salone dei Cinquencento (Hall of the Five Hundred) at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. At the behest of Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, the hall was enlarged and decorated between 1555-72. Many of the frescoes and paintings celebrate various military victories by Florenties as well as the life of Cosimo I. Vasari provides detailed explanations of his artistic work and the reasoning behind the choices in his Ragionamenti (“Reasoning”), published posthumously in 1588.

FROM VASARI: “Questa è la rotta di Radagasio re dei Goti, successore d’Alarico, il quale venne in Italia con un esercito innumerabile di Goti, e danneggiò molto la provincia di Toscana e di Lombardia, ed in ultimo si pose all’assedio della città di Firenze. Ma, sentendo egli venire in aiuto della città l’imperadore con l’esercito de’ Romani, si ritrasse ne’ monti di Fiesole, e nelle valli convicine, ed essendo ridotti in luogo arido, e trovandosi sproveduti di vettovaglia, furono quivi assediati da Onorio e dall’esercito de’ Romani; onde i Goti (sendone prima stati tagliati molti a pezzi) si arresono. E questa fazione seguì il giorno di Santa Reparata intorno agli anni di Cristo 415, e, per più vaghezza della pittura, ci ho finto Mugnone, che ha Fiesole sopra, che si maravigliano di questo conflitto” (G. Vasari, Ragionamenti, Firenze 1588).”

Palazzo Vecchio Museum