ENGLISH VERSION Annamaria Ambrosini Massari (edited by). 'Learned friends'. Amico Ricci and the Birth oh Art History in the Marche. Part One

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

‘Dotti amici’. Amico Ricci 

e la nascita della storia dell’arte nelle Marche ['Erudite friends'. Amico Ricci and the birth of art history in the Marche region]

Edited by
Annamaria Ambrosini Massari

Part One

Pesaro, Il lavoro editoriale, 2007

[1] Let us begin by praising: it often happens to have collective works in our hands, which gather writings also of a good standard, but unrelated to each other and missing any common link, so that the overall result is somewhat bland and leaves objectively disappointed. This is certainly not the case of this ‘Dotti amici’ (Learned Friends), which must have been the result of a long process of documentation on the sources, probably not without obstacles and difficulties, if the curator was working on it at least since 2004; and we think it was well worth the effort. We can say - using an expression dear to Ms Ambrosini – that a "polyphonic" work was born, in which each contribution is closely related, but complementary to the other ones. In this polyphonic piece, the letters of Ricci and his corresponds really give a vivid impression of the richness and complexity of the scholar world, which was the cultural background in which the noble from Macerata acts. Last but not least, one cannot but appreciate the completeness of the critical apparatus. It remains to be said, before speaking of the work, that reading it also gave us the full awareness that we have just begun a journey. Amico Ricci is expecting more willing volunteers. They should, for example, engage in a critical edition of the Memoirs, which analyse more thoroughly the cards of him and of his 'educated friends' preserved in the homonymous fund at the communal library of Macerata. They should also address the issue of preparation of the other great work published by Ricci, the Storia dell’architettura in Italia dal secolo IV al XVIII (History of Architecture in Italy from the fourth to the eighteenth century) (Modena, 1857). The impression, however, is that a new road has been opened in a convincing and authoritative way.

[2] The index of the book is displayed below:

• Anna Maria Massari Ambrosini. Preamble;
• Alessandra Sfrappini. Presentation;
• Andrea Emiliani. Introduction;
• Anna Maria Massari Ambrosini. 'Learned friends'. Amico Ricci and the birth of art history in the Marche;
• Anna Maria Massari Ambrosini. A discovery in the Ricci Fund of Macerata: manuscripts and drawings by Alessandro Maggiori;
• Elisa Barchiesi. Amico Ricci: biography and works;
• Anna Cerboni Baiardi. Between documentation and collections: The engraving in the study of Amico Ricci;
• Anna Maria Massari Ambrosini (editor), in collaboration with Elisa Barchiesi. From the Epistulary of Amico Friend: Letters on art, 1827-1845;
• Anna Maria Massari Ambrosini and Maria Maddalena Paolini. Reasoned index of the epistolary

Appendix:

• Amico Ricci. Travel to various villages in our mountain run in September 1828 (by Anna Maria Massari Ambrosini, in collaboration with Elisa Barchiesi).

Reviewing a collective work isn't easy. We'll talk about those essays you can see in bold in the index above. The review is divided in two parts.

Carlo Crivelli, Annunciation with S. Emidiius, London, National Gallery

[3] The text of the Preamble of the authoress is displayed below, practically in its entirety. 

"This volume highlights such a dense as well as forgotten and undervalued cultural framework, which is the local scholarship in the first half of the nineteenth century ...

The person and work of Amico Ricci play a central role, catalysing many different (local and national) realities, for the remarkable endeavour of writing the Memorie storiche delle arti e degli artisti della Marca di Ancona (Historical memories of the arts and artists of the Marca of Ancona) published in Macerata on 1834 – a real 'polyphonic' work, offering, especially in the manner and in the early stages of its preparation, an insight into the situation of the method and studies.

The volume is the result, first, of an investigation into the little-visited but equally abundant Ricci Fund preserved at the Mozzi-Borgetti Library of Macerata. The fund proved to be full of useful materials to study the life, the work, and the work method of Ricci and, therefore, the state of scholarship of his time, with a significant impact on the relations he had within his area but also more widely nationally.

The reconstruction of this interconnected cultural system is especially due to the Epistolary, of which a selection is presented hereafter, targeting the years and the protagonists of the researches which Ricci performed to draft his Memoirs. More generally, the Epistolary evocates a new focus on art works and artistic heritage, marking, with progress and setbacks, the slow transition from the system of scholarship of the seven-nineteenth century to that of modern philology and art history.

The selection drawn from the letters of Ricci offers a range of ideas and interpretations of the major themes of the research, showing a very lively and active local context, a thick interaction with the national level, in a constant dialectic between conservatism and progress. Each of the correspondents represents different ideas and problems in the reconstruction of the cultural climate that is illuminating the operating method of Ricci, while he proceeds to the drafting of the Memoirs and, later on, in the long period of work for the never finalised second edition (whose evidence is a originally annotated work, also at the Fund Macerata – marked as Ms 240-240 a).

The original idea of a critical edition of the Memoirs... became increasingly secondary to the gradual emergence of characters, ideas, reports, news, models, objectives that were outlined in the handwritten cards and were then compared with the actual printed text.

An example, in this sense, is also the text published in the appendix to the book, which brings together some of the stages of a Viaggio per i vari paesi della nostra montagna, a journey to the villages of our mountain, made by Ricci in 1828 and 1831, to take direct vision of the works to be treated in the Memoirs.

The liveliness of the scene that was taking shape also required a clarification of some basic issues, prior to any other analysis.

In fact, working on those materials, we discovered little by little the different authorship of a significant group of manuscripts, traditionally attributed to Amico Ricci and actually relevant to his background.

The author of them turned out to be one of the most important Ricci’s 'Learned Friends', the Fermo-born Alessandro Maggiori. I have placed an essay on him prior to the one by Elisa Barchiesi (dedicated to the life and works of Ricci), because it did not make sense to proceed without this readjustment of roles, and because of the fact that Maggiori was a teacher and guide for Ricci, also as a creator, in the early nineties of the eighteenth century, of a history of art and artists from the Marche.

The essay of Elisa Barchiesi follows, [who] ... has progressively developed the first modern, comprehensive profile of the biography and works of the scholar from Macerata, exploring cultural sources, methods, aesthetic settings and relationships. She should also be given the merit of a fundamental collaboration in the transcription of the manuscript material presented here.

Anna Cerboni Baiardi concludes the section of the essays, opening the horizon on a fascinating, but very intricate part of the fund, the one of the incisions, outlining the role of Ricci as art lover and collector, in relation with the most interesting cultural events of the time, local and national. "

Carlo Crivelli, Polyptych, Ascoli Piceno, St..Emidius' Cathedral

Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari
'Educated Friends'. Amico Ricci
and the birth of art history in the Marche

[4] In 1834, the Marquis Amico Ricci published in Macerata the Memorie storiche delle arti e degli artisti nella Marca di Ancona (Historical Records of the Arts and Artists in the Marca of Ancona). It was a work of an extremely innovative character; with "an exclusively focus on the artists and works of the Marche. Ricci discussed for the first time the theme of art history in a territory almost identical with today's regional borders of the Marche, from the sixth century AD to contemporary times" (p. XXXII). Compared to today's borders only the northern part of the region remained excluded from the survey, consisting at that time of the delegation of Pesaro and Urbino. "However, a modern consciousness of identity was outlined. Moreover, the topics covered included painting, sculpture, architecture but also the so-called minor arts, giving a weight to this neglected section of art production, in the reconstruction of a complete picture of the historical development of art and its presence in the Marche" (p. xxix). The work enjoyed a sudden fortune, only to be condemned to a long period of oblivion later on (see the essay on it by Elisa Barchiesi, especially pp. 136-153). A general (and generic) disapproval by art criticism of the first half of the twentieth century about the nineteenth century Italian art literature weighted negatively on Amico Ricci’s work. Such writings were seen - except well-known exceptions - as a mere literary exercise, paying little attention to the direct comparison of the works and with blatantly rhetorical and eulogistic tones. Julius von Schlosser himself will only define Ricci as a "diligent illustrator" of the history of the Marche, only to immediately prefer remembering him as "the author of the first history of Italian Architecture" (The Art Literature, p. 529).

Cola dell'Amatrice, Eucharist with the Apostles, Ascoli Piceno, Pinacoteca civica
Source: http://www.musei.marche.it/web/RicercaOpere/DettagliOpera.aspx?id=20&idtc=4

[4] Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari does not certainly deny the limitations of the work by Ricci, but pledges to evaluate him in a more comprehensive and complete manner, now that the manuscript fund of the Marquis - preserved in the Library of Macerata - has finally been "rediscovered". Thus, it is true that the Memoirs appear in many ways as an accumulation of scholarly materials, without any attempt at interpretation; it is also true that, compared to the manuscript material, "Ricci selects and cuts, however not in order to follow any interpretative hypothesis, but for fear of any hazard. This, usually just disappear the most useful insights, including apparently minor news, crucial to the understanding of events" (p. XXXI-XXXII). It is however equally true that, if one goes back to Ricci’s handwritten cards - in particular to the Epistolary that in those years binds him to a dense network of "learned friends"  - an author of a different calibre turns out, more open-minded and free to judge, far more critical of literary sources, much closer to the direct observation of the artwork and the reconstruction, through it, of languages and styles. In short, a scholar turns out, who established a method (see again the work of Ms Barchiesi, in particular pp. 104-110), a method - if you want - achieved by successive approximations, with more or less advanced accents (as returned by the examination of the Epistolary and its correspondents). But also a method that generally describes a degree of continuity with the erudition of the eighteenth-century of an Enlightenment type, accompanying it until the early decades of the nineteenth century. From this point of view, it makes little sense, in our humble opinion, worrying about "classifying" the thought of Ricci from a theoretical point of view, comparing for example to that of Alexander Maggiori, who was the master of the Marquis. Maggiori remained attached throughout all his life to the Bolognese classicism of the Carracci, and particularly to that of Ludovico Carracci; to the contrary, Amico Ricci - who always showed special attention to contemporary artists (pp. XXXVII-LV) - was a neo-classicist with accents increasingly tending to purism. But what is more important is that both of them – when faced to a work of art – reveal for example a modern attention to the problems of restoration and conservation of the artistic heritage of the Marche. "There is full awareness of a situation that threatens the heritage, regardless from divestitures and sales, which consists of the ignorance of the citizens with regard to these valuable assets that they should feel like their own "(p. XXXVI). So that – whether a follower of Carraccis or a neoclassical – differences count for little when the common ground is the sensitivity to the preservation of the artwork and the subsequent scholarly interest in the local art production (even of those primitives, whose discovery is still in its very infancy).

[5] "On the crucial role of the handwritten cards and letters, as a means of communication par excellence, the attention has been recently pointed to the work of Giovanni Previtali [La fortuna dei primitivi. Dal Vasari ai Neoclassici], who received a fundamental and continuous stimulus from the interpretive model of scholarship learned in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries).

End of Part One. 
Go to Part Two