ENGLISH VERSION Giulio Cesare Gigli. La Pittura trionfante. I Quaderni del Battello Ebbro, 1996

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Giulio Cesare Gigli
La Pittura trionfante [Triumphing Painting]

Introduction by Silvia Ginzburg; 

Notes by Barbara Agosti

I Quaderni del Battello Ebbro, 1996

A Reader’s Note by Luciano Mazzaferro

[Note by Giovanni and Francesco Mazzaferro: This text is the transcription and faithful translation of a manuscript "Reader’s Note" (at the head of the manuscript appears in fact the word "nota di lettura") compiled by our father, Luciano Mazzaferro, around the year 2000. The endnotes are instead editorial and were compiled in 2014].

A small writing has been reprinted in its entirety, which the Brescia-based scholar Giulio Cesare Gigli published in Venice in 1615, for the types of Giovanni Alberti [1]. The writing appears to be in the catalogue of the Library of Bossi [2] (p. 93) and in the one of the Library of Cicognara, who included it in the section of didactic poems (Vol. 1 , p, 179) [3] accompanying it, as it was his custom, with brief references. Although usually very precise in his details, Julius von Schlosser (p. 623) [4] considers this book in verse as a glorification of A[ndrea] Schiavone, who - in truth - is only the first of the many painters mentioned by Gigli, and certainly not the artist to whom who most praise and attention has been addressed. With respectful and polite words, Ms Ginzburg gives more emphasis to the fact that Schlosser has cited the booklet in his famous manual on artistic sources, than to the hasty and distorting judgment he gave on Gigli’s writing: "... The Pittura Trionfante [n.d.r. Triumphant Painting]" - reads the first page of  the introduction - "did not escape the masterly survey of Schlosser, who, however, knowing it only indirectly, could not reserve anything more than a quick and effectively misguiding hint to it."

Gigli had the intention to draw up an opus of larger proportions, to which he wanted to confer the title of  "A pictorial competition". The plan did not come to good end, and what was left was this lean little book that, according to the intentions of the author, should have been a simple anticipation, almost a diagram of the most challenging job he wanted. In the pages printed in Venice "the author imagines to see the parade following the triumph of painting in a procession of painters whom he names the one after the other, providing a brief commentary - often only an adjective – on the style characteristics of each individual" (p. 5). Agosti points out (p. 65) that the personification of Painting to which various artists pay homage "is taken from the item of Cesare Ripa’s Iconology" published in 1593 (which immediately became famous and was reprinted many times between 1602 and 1613). 

Gigli’s work, despite its brevity, has several aspects or patterns of interest. I will remember three ones and omit others that seem less substantial.

A page from the hand-written 'Reader's Note' by Luciano Mazzaferro

First point: the many painters parading in front of us (or at least most of them) do not advance in a random order, neither are arranged by the author according to various themes or genres of their works, but are grouped according to the local schools to which they belong. The parade opens with sixteen Venetian painters, followed by six artists from Vicenza and eleven from Verona, four from Mantua, seven from Cremona, thirteen from Brescia (Gigli’s home town), five from Bergamo, eight from Milan, five from Genoa, eleven from Bologna, three from Siena, seven from Florence and four from Rome. To these one hundred characters other twenty-three are added from "different native countries", such as Ferrara, Modena, Pavia, Parma and Urbino. The criterion is in fact geographical and tends to enhance the diversity of schools of painting in central-northern Italy, in open contrast with the approach by Vasari who, as it is well known, favoured Florence to the detriment of other regions. "The most significant aspect of this poem" - I read in the strip - "is the early adoption of the concept of painting school." Adverse reactions to Vasari’s point of view had already been present, mostly justified by the defence of colour resources and of Venetian painters, anchored to this expression tool. But now the conflict widens, comes from the individual territories to invest forgotten or, at least, neglected locations. We see a breadth of interests and an open-mindedness that allow to anticipate some essential features of later art history research, outlining how it developed - of course with more precision and systematic positions - in Lanzi’s work [5]. The latter was careful to follow the artistic manifestations of our country in their rich articulation of tastes and of local streams. Ms Ginzburg writes on p. 10: " The list of painters cited by Gigli already contains the grid of a historiography of Italian regional schools that (as far as the north and, in part, the centre are concerned) is not much less detailed than the one of Lanzi ... Pittura trionfante is the first instance known to me in which an attempt appears to describe the complete artistic geography of Italy between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From this point of view, it is an extremely valuable document of the state of regional consciousness at that date."

And here is another reason of interest, the second one. Gigli demonstrated himself contrary not only to Vasari’s views, but also against the theories of Zuccari [6].  "If the line dear to Gigli is the one of reality-oriented painters "- writes on p. 80 Barbara Agosti - " ... he will most probably not have been in agreement with Zuccari’s abstract-oriented positions, in the first decade of the century " on display in the Idea di pittori, scultori e architetti. Nor is it unimportant that this writing came out only in 1607, just eight years before the edition of the Pittura trionfante: this shows how Gigli followed carefully the facts which matured in the artistic circles and took a stance showing , where it appeared necessary, his dissent .

Third point. It is, in all probability, the one to which most importance is given by modern criticism. At a very early stage, just five years after the death of Caravaggio, Gigli shows towards him "an admiration that he would not devote to any other painters mentioned in the text. These few verses are sufficient to prove it" (pp. 53-54 ) :

Quest’è il gran Michelangel Caravaggio,

il gran protopittore,

meraviglia dell’arte,

stupor della natura,

sebben versaglio [sic] poi di rea fortuna

This is the great Michelangel Caravaggio,

the large proto-painter,

wonder of art ,

stupor of nature,

although target of an adverse fate

A so excited judgment and, in the immediately preceding verses, a lively portrait of the painter led to neglect other merits and characteristics of Gigli’s small work and to consider it almost exclusively as a valuable point of reference for the evaluation of Caravaggio’s artistic events. [7] It is not by accident that Gigli’s name, after a long period of neglect, reappeared in 1951 in the anthology on Caravaggio edited by Roberto Longhi [8]. The testimony and the opinion of the Gigli were, from then on, often used by scholars on Caravaggio. I have no claim to completeness: I quote, however, the work with which Sergio Samek Ludovici described the life of Caravaggio [9], the monograph by Angela Ottino della Chiesa printed by Rizzoli [10] and the recent study by Marco Bona Castellotti [11] .

NOTES

[1] On Gigli’s poem see also Maddalena Spagnolo, Appunti per Giulio Cesare Gigli: pittori e poeti nel primo Seicento (Notes for Giulio Cesare Gigli: painters and poets in the early seventeenth century) in Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte (Research of History of Art), 1996, no. 59 , p. 56-74 , available online at https://www.academia.edu/996072/_Appunti_per_Giulio_Cesare_Gigli_pittori_e_poeti_nel_primo_Seicento_in_Ricerche_di_Storia_dellarte_1996_N._59_pp._56-74

We do not believe that our father was aware of the contribution of Maddalena Spagnolo.

[2] Catalogo della libreria del fu cavaliere Giuseppe Bossi. (Catalogue of the library of the late Cavalier Giuseppe Bossi). Note critique of Paola Barocchi, S.P.E.S. Studi per Edizioni Scelte, without date (reprint of the 1817 edition).

[3] Leopoldo Cicognara, Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte e d’antichità posseduti dal Conte Cicognara (Annotated catalogue of books on art and antiques owned by the Count Cicognara, Arnaldo Forni publisher, 1998 (reprint edition 1821) .

[4] Julius Schlosser Magnino,  La letteratura artistica, (Literature on art) 3rd edition. Nuova Italia, 1967.

[5] Luigi Lanzi, History of Painting in Italy, edited by Martin Capucci. 3 volumes, Sansoni, Florence, 1968-1974 .

[6] Federico Zuccari, Idea de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti, (Idea on painters, sculptors and architects), Turin, 1607.

[7] For a complete bibliography of the writings on Caravaggio in art sources see nowadays Stefania Macioce , Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Fonti e documenti 1532-1724. (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Sources and Documents 1532-1724). Rome, Ugo Bozzi publisher, 2003.

[8] Roberto Longhi, Critica caravaggesca rara in Paragone, 1951.

[9] Sergio Samek Ludovici, Vita del Caravaggio dalla testimonianze del suo tempo (Caravaggio's life from testimonies of his time). Milan, Edizioni del Milione, 1956.

[10] L’opera completa del Caravaggio (The complete works of Caravaggio). Edited by Angela Ottino dalla Chiesa, presentation by Renato Guttuso. Milan, Rizzoli, 1967.

[10] Marco Bona Castellotti, Il paradosso del Caravaggio. (The paradox of Caravaggio). 2nd ed., 1998. Milan, RCS Libri