ENGLISH VERSION Giovanni Maria Fara. Albrecht Dürer nelle fonti italiane antiche: 1508-1686. Leo S. Olschki editore, 2014

Albrecht Dürer

Self-Portrait at 28 (1500)

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

Giovanni Maria Fara
Albrecht Dürer nelle fonti italiane antiche
1508-1686 [Albrecht Dürer in the Italian ancient sources]

Leo S. Olschki publisher, 2014
Isbn 978 88 222 6297 4

I do not think to offend anyone by stating that Giovanni Maria Fara is the leading art expert on Albrecht Dürer in Italy. Over the past 15 years he has published (in addition to an endless series of essays) at least three fundamental volumes for the knowledge of the German artist in Italy: first Albrecht Dürer teorico dell’architettura. Una storia italiana (Albrecht Dürer as a theorist of architecture. An Italian Story) (Leo S. Olschki publisher, 1999), the first Italian translation of the Treatise on architecture by the Nuremberg painter. Then he has dedicated himself to a meticulous review of Dürer’s work as engraver, in Albrecht Dürer. Originali, copie, derivazioni (Albrecht Dürer. Originals, copies, derivations), in which all printed works of (or those attributed to) the German artist and held by the Prints and Drawings Department of the Uffizi are analysed (Leo S. Olschki, 2007). Finally, the critical edition of the manuscript translation by Cosimo Bartoli of the Underweysung der Messung, i.e. Dürer’s Treatise on geometry (Nino Aragno publisher, 2008). At the beginning of 2014, always for the types of Leo S. Olschki, has sorted out now Albrecht Dürer nelle fonti italiane antiche. 1508-1686 (Albrecht Dürer in the ancient Italian sources. From 1508 to 1686). [1]

Can a collection of sources be ever exciting? Without any doubt, yes, it can. Since Fara browses 189 sources, quotes their main passages and comments them. They are all included in the period under chronological examination (from the Libellus by Christoph Scheurl in 1508 [2] to the biography which Baldinucci devoted to Dürer in his work entitled Cominciamento e progresso dell’arte dell’intagliare in rame (Origin and progress of the art of engraving copper) (1686) [3]. And what might look like a simple list gives us instead a precise picture of how the approach of the Italian cultural world vis-à-vis the German artist changed broadly and of certain aspects of his work (engravings, paintings, treatises) in particular.

It is necessary to make a preliminary consideration on the treatise production by Dürer. The Nuremberg artist sent to the prints three treaties: the first is the Underweysung der Messung (1525), essentially a treatise on geometry (but not limited to it, given that the last part of the text is meant to illustrate systems to detect perspective); it follows a treatise on fortifications in 1527 (i.e. a treaty of military architecture); then finally Dürer concludes in 1528, with the treaty on human proportions (Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion), published posthumously in 1528, thanks to the work of Willibald Pirckheimer. In fact, the European fortune of Dürer’s treatises is mostly due to the translation of the three treatises in Latin (the universal language of the time) by Joachim Camerarius. Actually, in Italy, Cosimo Bartoli translates into Italian – at a very early stage, on suggestion by some friends – the Underweysung der Messung in 1537, but this translation has, in itself, a mere reference value, since the version of Bartoli was never made ​​public. The translation serves rather to better understand the formation of Bartoli’s specific professional expertise (Bartoli, a few years after - let us not forget - would translate in Italian the De architectura by Leon Battista Alberti). All treatises by Dürer are consulted in Latin, at least until 1591, when Giovanni Paolo Gallucci presented in the Italian the Quattro libri sulle proporzioni umane, (Four books on human proportions ), with the addition of a fifth one, on which we will discuss below. For the rest, the references to the German editions are very limited.

Dürer came definitely to Italy one time, between 1505 and 1507. It is possible (indeed likely, but not certain) that he had been already there between 1494 and 1495. On both occasions, the goal of the journey of the Nuremberg painter was Venice. From Venice (between 1505 and 1507) we know that the artist moved to Bologna and Ferrara. Definitely he never saw Florence and Rome. In Venice, Dürer had been called to paint the altarpiece of the Feast of the Rosary in the church of San Bartolomeo in Rialto, the church par excellence of the German community in the lagoon city.

Albrecht Dürer, The Altarpiece of the Festa del Rosario (1506)

The fate of the altarpiece is strange. It remained in San Bartolomeo only one century. In 1606 it was sold to Emperor Rudolf II of Habsburg, who twenty years earlier had transferred the capital of the empire from Vienna to Prague and collected works of art not only for pure art taste purposes, but also to ensure a greater prestige to the Imperial Palace. Not by chance the altarpiece is still in Prague, in the local National Art Gallery. All of this to point out that the main pictorial evidence of the permanence of Dürer in Italy vanished at a relatively early stage.

Dürer as a painter, Dürer as an engraver

Dürer's fame as a painter, in short, is basically confined within the Venetian region, and refers to the Feast of the Rosary. Some devotional "small pictures" are also quoted, which the artist painted during his stay in the lagoon (there are traces thereof in Dürer’s letters to German correspondents). On them, the most reliable evidence is a letter from the young Giulio Mancini, later on a famous collector and author of those Considerazioni sulla pittura (Considerations on Painting) (1614-1621), which remained in manuscript, but were plundered by almost all art writers of the time. Completely different is the reasoning on the etchings. The fame of Dürer as engraver is sudden and crosses Europe, triggering a collectors’ race, as well as the production of a series of replicas, fakes, paintings and prints, often inspired by each other, on which there is vast evidence in the sources collected by Fara. Throughout the sixteenth century and beyond, whenever it comes to talk about Dürer as an artist, the reference is about Dürer as an engraver, and judgments on his own artistic production are referred to engravings. However important the role of the Nuremberg in the production of chisels and engravings may have been, it is clear that it is a (deliberately) limiting vision. Dürer as theorist of arts is not the object of interest, and it is felt it is better he should not be. Let us explain more accurately.

Dürer before Michelangelo, Michelangelo instead of Dürer

One of the distinctive aspects of Fara’s review (which already occupied him on other occasions) is to identify a period – of at least two decades, from 1520 to 1540 ca. – in which the art, but above all the theoretical thought of Dürer are particularly appreciated in Florence. Looking to the North is nothing extraordinary in the Tuscan city: contacts with (and collecting of) Flemish painting in the fifteenth century Florentine are known to all. In the case of Dürer, however, the interest in the treatises has to be added; let us remember that the Latin translations of Camerarius date back to the 1530s. In this sense, the manuscript translation made ​​by Bartoli around 1537 is indicative of a non-trivial interest. Only a few years passed and everything changed. The translation is removed, and Bartoli will never quote it. Clear evidence of references to architectural principles set up by Dürer will be attributed later on by the same Bartoli to Michelangelo. In Vasari's Lives edition of 1550 there is no dedicated biography; the references to Dürer are basically two (in the life of Raphael, where the friendship between the two is quoted, and in that of Michelangelo in which it is said that the young Buonarroti trained himself on a Dürer’s engraving – a wrong information, then corrected in 1568). What happened? The Florentine myth of Michelangelo was born; the argument had strengthened of the rebirth of arts through Tuscan art. There is no space for Dürer anymore. It is acceptable that Dürer may, with its engravings, have provided inspiration to dozens and dozens of artists; it is however unacceptable that somebody not belonging to the Florentine tradition can cast a shadow on the project of glorification of the power of the Medici. More than the substantial removal from Vasari’s Lives in the Torrentiniana edition (1550), it is important what has been written by Ascanio Condivi, biographer of Michelangelo, only three years later (1553): Condivi claims to know that Michelangelo "when reading Albrecht Dürer, considered it very weak ... Albrecht [editor's note: we are talking about the Treatise on proportions] treats only on the measures and variety of bodies, on which he cannot provide certain rules, drawing the figures as were standing as piles; he did not say anything on what mattered most, namely actions and human gestures" (p. 72). This equals to say: Dürer wrote of proportion, while Michelangelo did not; but Dürer’s proportions are like men standing as piles; acts and humans gestures must be learnt by watching the painting by Michelangelo.

Albrecht Dürer: Two pages from the Trattato sulle proporzioni umane
Source: http://theshipthatflew.tumblr.com/

When in 1568, the Giunti edition of Vasari’s Lives is published, Dürer has a lot more space (but not a life of its own) within the biography of Marcantonio Bolognese (Marcantonio Raimondi) and other engravers of prints; his biography is that of an engraver, not a painter or a treatise authors. Vasari draws up a proper inventory of engravings and chisels of the German (sometimes giving accurate information, sometimes failing to distinguish copies from originals), which will naturally have a fundamental value for the following collections; and presents Dürer’s catalogue in tandem with that of his pupil, Lucas van Leyden. From that moment on, the binomial Dürer-Lucas van Leyden will be a commonplace of Italian art literature. But if an assessment of Dürer as painter is searched for, you have to go to the Life of Pontormo, when speaking of the frescoes of the latter in the Certosa of Florence. And what is criticized is not that Pontormo has 'invented' starting from engravings by Dürer, but the fact that he adhered excessively to his 'German way': "Nobody should believe that Iacopo is to be blamed because he imitated Albrecht Dürer in his inventions. This was not a mistake, as many painters made it constantly. But he should be blamed because he inspired himself to such a German manner in everything, in drapes, heads and attitudes. He should have avoided that, and only make use of the inventions, for he could master entirely with grace and beauty the modern manner "(p. 155).

Jacopo Pontormo, The Ascent to Calvary (1523)
Certosa del Galluzzo, Florence

The author believes, moreover, (personally I am not entirely convinced) that the use of the name in the Italian-like version Alberto "Duro" (and not "Dürero") is not a coincidence, but a deliberate semantic choice, to emphasize the "hardness" of the German school [note of the editor: the surname Duro is like the noun duro in Italian, and means hard].

The historical judgment by Vasari and the substantial censure in Florence will affect the following decades, as logical. Not surprisingly, when the Venetian translation of the Treaty on proportions of 1591 comes out, Gallucci chose to add a fifth book "in which it is discussed, through which ways the Painters and Sculptors can show the diversity of the nature of men and women, and through which means they can show the passions, which they experiment due to a series of different adverse events which may occur”. This is a response to the criticism by Convidi on the fact that Dürer speaks only in terms of proportions of straight men like piles, and the notes to Vasari on the ' hardness ' of the artist.

Dürer and Baldinucci

When in 1686 Filippo Baldinucci writes his Cominciamento e progresso dell’arte dell’intagliare in rame, (Origin and progress of the art of engraving copper), he feels the need to start the series of 18 biographies starting it precisely with that of Albrecht Dürer. And he warns also the need – for him, that we could be define more ‘Vasari-like’ than Vasari himself in the pursuit of the centrality of Tuscany in the renaissance of the arts - to complete the information provided by Vasari, in particular with regard to the paintings of the German master. If the basic conclusion is the same as its predecessor, namely that painting across-the-Alps, despite the diligence and accuracy, never reached the grace and decorum of the Florentine manner, Baldinucci clearly feels the need to bridge many gaps on the biography. Baldinucci, it is known, is an extraordinary collector of information, whether more or less reliable. He then makes recourse to Vasari for the work of engraving , on the other hand to Van Mander and his Lives of the Painters of the Netherlands and Germany (1604 and 1618 second edition) to arrive at a more complete view. Then, of course, he is not ashamed to recover whatever interesting has been published in the Italian literature on art, from Lomazzo , Gallucci, Tassoni and Agucchi. All of this with the well-known limitations of the author: his is a bookish culture, based on the collection of information, not the vision of the works. Inevitably, then, in the catalogue of Dürer are included a series of paintings (and, more generally, works) which are note his owns, but which will continue to be considered as original up to the nineteenth century; everything that is Nordic will go to swell the work of Dürer, who then becomes a kind of model of an indistinct region of Northern Europe. In doing all this, however, Baldinucci expresses and represents a collecting trend that has grown up in Italy during the seventeenth century. He does not invent attributions; he reports attributions that have been assigned to him, in a superficial way, in the world of Italian collecting. Those attributions were then duly reported in the contemporary of literature art.

Between Vasari and Baldinucci

In fact, the most I go forward, the most I realise how frustrating it can be to review a book like this, because the paths to be followed would be dozens and dozens and, of course, I have no possibility to do it. I point out below a few streams of work, without any pretention of completeness, but only to indicate how many ideas the work provides :

the fortune of Dürer’s Treaty on geometry, on the one hand from a mathematical point of view in a narrow sense, on the other hand in the architectural treatises of the sixteenth century in particular (see in particular Daniele Barbaro); and yet the particular fortune of the last book of the treatise dedicated to perspective (just think of the reputation acquired over the years by the so-called 'Dürer’s sportello'). Nor is it a mystery that, especially in the sixteenth century, it is the Treaty of geometry to be the most cited and commented on in the artistic literature;

The Dürer's 'sportello'
Fonte: http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/bdtema/ibpr.asp?c=5003&xsl=7

-      the fortune of the treaty of military architecture, which is a genre in its own right, and that is accepted, de facto, as being fully part of an art that is mainly Italian. Dürer, in short, is seen as an Italian military architect with a foreign surname (see in particular the Della fortificatione delle città  (On the fortification of cities) by Girolamo Magi (or Maggi) of 1564 as a treatise which is in effect providing clearance to Dürer in a historical view of the discipline) ;

the opinion expressed on Dürer on by the theorists of the Counterreformation (and here the first one coming to mind is the Cardinal Paleotti with his Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre et profane – Discourse on the sacred and profane images). Dürer is considered as a devout painter and alien to every vice, and then made ​​freely accessible and indeed recommended by the Church after the Council of Trent. A fact far from obvious, if you think about certain excesses that the Counterreformation simply triggered on the geographical origin of authors and /or works;

-        the particular sensitivity, but also specialized knowledge of the artistic and treatise work, which Giovan Paolo Lomazzo shows towards Dürer in his treatises of 1584 and 1590 (Fara argues that, prior to the Italian translation of Gallucci 1591, some passages of the Trattato dell’Arte de la Pittura - Treaty of Art Painting - of 1584 would, in fact, be the first attempt of an Italian translation of Dürer’s books on human proportions).

Dürer in the Italian Libraries

The final chapter is for true connoisseurs. Fara has taken the trouble to survey and classify all known copies of Dürer’s treatises kept in Italian libraries. Too modestly speaks of a necessarily incomplete list. The fact is that we are talking about 197 units surveyed, the majority of which consists either of the Latin editions or the Italian edition of the book on human proportions in the translation of Gallucci of 1591. He went to check the notes of possession, but also and above to see which specimens are annotated. He listed them out and opened thereby new avenues of study for scholars who wish to apply in the coming years to the study of the transposition of the thought of the Nuremberg artist's (and not of the Antwerp artist, as in the inaccurate words of Vasari) in Italy .

  

NOTES

[1] If we add to this that Giuditta Moly Feo published the new Italian edition of the Four Books on Human Proportions in 2007 (conducted on the German princeps of 1528, and not on translations from the Latin), published by Bononia University Press, it is clear that within relatively short 15 years, Italian scholars from Dürer had the opportunity to have access to modern and commented editions on almost all theoretical work of the German artist.

[2] Treating clearly on the work of Italian sources (as specified in the title) you may be wondering why the Libellus de laudibus Germaniae et ducum Saxonie, published by Christoph Scheurl in Leipzig in 1508, is listed. Simply because it includes some poems composed by the Italian humanist Riccardo Sbruglio to celebrate the passage of Dürer in Ferrara in 1507.

[3] Recently published by Evelina Borea (2013) in the series Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi. Moreover, in the commentary on the life of Dürer it is explicitly written that it refers to previous tests by Fara.