Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
Ferdinando Arisi
La vita a Roma nelle lettere di Gaspare Landi [The Life in Rome in Gaspari Landi's Letters] (1781-1817)
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| Gaspare Landi, Portrait of Anna Maria Pellegrini, (1802), Collection Landi di Chiavenna, Milano |
[1] The core of the book presents the letters written by the Piacenza painter Gaspare Landi (1756-1830) to his mentor, the Marquis Giambattista Landi, a fellow citizen from Piacenza. The artist had a turbulent youth: abandoned by his natural father, he married at a very young age, and became father of two children already in 1777; in 1780 he was imprisoned for a combat, due to trivial reasons. Gaspare was probably destined for a career as a painter with purely local fortune, if Marquis Giambattista had not taken him to heart, had not become his protector and had not sent him to Rome to perfect the craft at the studio of Pompeo Batoni. The result is a dense correspondence which, unfortunately, is not complete: the letters sent by the painter to the Marquis between 1781 and 1792 have been lost, as well as the letters of the noble from Piacenza to the painter. The letters sent by Marquis Gaspar from 6 December 1792 to 1806 (the year in which the noble died) are preserved in the manuscript Landi 257 of the Municipal Library Passerini-Landi of Piacenza. The summary document of the epistles (see p. 7) was presented in 1977 by Giorgio Fiori in Vicende biografiche ed artistiche di Gaspare Landi (Biographical and artistic events of Gaspare Landi) (in Bollettino Storico Piacentino "Historical Bulletin of Piacenza" year 72, part 1, January - June 1977). The first full transcript is edited now, as a gift published by the Bank of Piacenza for Christmas 2004.
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| Gaspare Landi, Meeting of Hector and Andromache (1794), Civic Museum of Piacenza |
[2] Ferdinando Arisi speaks of 132 letters sent by Gaspare Landi to the Marquis of Piacenza, when in fact the numbering of the letters reaches 133. It seems the problem is solved, by signalling that the letter no. 29 is not by Gaspare, but the Count Federico Scotti della Scala. The letters are almost always sent from Rome, with exception of the period between the spring of 1797 and May 1800, when Gaspar returned to Piacenza to escape the well-known events of the war at that time.
[3] Landi writes with a very free hand, sometimes in an ungrammatical mode, certainly with an ease that makes us understand that the two corresponding parties were linked by a normally unusual familiarity between the artist and his patron. They talk about everything, and certainly the artistic discourses are not the ones which do the lion's share, ranging from requests for money to the accounts of daily life in the city, to gossip about living in the City of Piacenza. Of particular interest are the letters written between June and August of 1796. We are moving in the background of the troops of Bonaparte; Landi (who was certainly not a revolutionary) describes the atmosphere in Rome with cynical disenchantment; he provides information (letter 20) and asks for information (letters 17 and 19) on the fate of the works of art that are going to be requisitioned by the French. As an attachment to the letter 20, written on 20th August 1796 (p. 112), you will find a "very detailed, and seemingly final" list of a hundred works to be transferred from Rome to Paris (there is no indication as to who extended the list). You should read these missives in parallel with the ones sent by Gaspard Monge (director of requisitions) to his wife during the same period (see Gaspard Monge, From Italy (1796 to 1798), in particular p. 61-78).
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| Gaspare Landi, Self-Portrait (1779) |
[4] As mentioned, the letters sent by Gaspare between 1781 and 1792 went lost. The editor tries to remedy the situation by publishing excerpts from letters sent by Landi to Giampaolo Maggi (1747-1823), "master of elegance in the culture of Piacenza in the eighteenth and nineteenth century" (p. 15). These are not unpublished letters; the extremes of previous publications are reported in the notes on p. 39.
[5] The index of the names mentioned in the book is edited by Paola Riccardi.
[6] The book was sent as a gift from the Bank of Piacenza, which I would like to thank you for the courtesy.
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