Can One Speak of Painting if One Cannot Hold a Brush? Giulio Mancini, Medicine, and the Birth of the Connoisseur

Giulio Mancini (1559–1630) opens his “Considerazioni sulla pittura” (ca. 1619–21) with some programmatic statements about the right of a non-painter to judge a painting. In this essay we intend to propose a new interpretation of these introductory pages highlighting the fundamental interdependence between Mancini’s ideas on connoisseurship and the contemporary debate on medicine and its methods. Mancini recourse in fact to Aristotle’s treatise “De partibus animalium” and used the concept of “paideia” / “peritia” to justify his project of offering some advice which a man “who does not know how to handle a brush” may become a connoisseur.