ENGLISH VERSION Le Memorie di Giuseppe Bossi. Diario di un artista nella Milano napoleonica 1807-1815

Giuseppe Bossi. Self-Portrait

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Le Memorie di Giuseppe Bossi

Diario di un artista nella Milano napoleonica 1807-1815 [Giuseppe Bossi's Memoirs. Journal of an artist in Napoleonic Milan 1807-1815]

Edited by Chiara Nenci

Jaca Book, 2004

Isbn 88-16-40689-5

[On Giuseppe Bossi see in this blog also: Giuseppe Bossi, On Leonardo da Vinci 's Last Supper, Reprint of Milan Edition 1810, Skira editore, 2009]

[1] Critical edition of the Memoirs of Giuseppe Bossi, compiled from 1807 until shortly before his death (1815). "In an appendix to the volume we found useful to report the unpublished manuscript list of the collection of antiques ... and the sale catalogue of the painter’s works who were in the study at the time of death" (p. XX n.).

[2] Text of the back cover:

"When by the end of 1807 he began to keep a diary of his life, which would stop only a few days before his death in 1815, Giuseppe Bossi had just turned thirty years old, but was already very much self-conscious and fully aware of the role he had as an artist, in a Milan which was capital of the Kingdom of Italy and pervaded by the Napoleonic ideology. After the first lessons learned at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, a scholarship in Rome allowed him to approach the true great models of Renaissance painting and classical statuary, and to attend the studios of Antonio Canova, Felice Giani, and Angelica Kauffmann, a veritable forge of international neo-classicism. Back in Milan, in the role of secretary of the Academy of Brera, he steered the Milanese institution from 1801 to 1807 to an enlightened and profound renewal, providing it with new regulations, an extraordinary educational kit and a picture gallery, which were essential instruments for the "education and the general increase of good taste." 

But it was precisely with the resignations as secretary, given with great bitterness at the beginning of 1807, which sprang the tale of the memories, a great tool for understanding an artist from the moment when he felt he had regained his freedom, seen as vital condition for the expression of his art. Drafted in the years of Bossi’s highest public recognition, in his studio where he received princes, kings, prominent personalities of the Italian culture and foreign travellers passionate about fine arts, the Memoirs guide us in the wrinkles of an European Milan, impressive site of prestigious public work, and scenery of political, social and cultural change, recorded by the pen of an extraordinarily effective painter, who was one of the most sensitive interpreters of his time."

Brera Picture Gallery: the Great Court

But it was precisely with the resignations as secretary, given with great bitterness at the beginning of 1807, which sprang the tale of the memories, a great tool for understanding an artist from the moment when he felt he had regained his freedom, seen as vital condition for the expression of his art. Drafted in the years of Bossi’s highest public recognition, in his studio where he received princes, kings, prominent personalities of the Italian culture and foreign travellers passionate about fine arts, the Memoirs guide us in the wrinkles of an European Milan, impressive site of prestigious public work, and scenery of political, social and cultural change, recorded by the pen of an extraordinarily effective painter, who was one of the most sensitive interpreters of his time."

[3] The text of the review work, signed by Fernando Mazzocca, appeared on the Sunday insert of Sole 24 Ore on 6 February 2005 (the original article is retained within the volume).

DOMENICA – Protagonisti dell’arte

The Shining “Memories" of the Artist and Official who revamped the Academy in Milan and established the Art Gallery
Bossi, the Re-founder of Brera

The Diary drawn from 1807 to 1815 testifies the great love for women and Leonardo da Vinci and documents the commitment to save the ‘Last Supper’ and the utopia of writing and publishing all the Manuscripts of the Master

by Fernando Mazzocca

We due to the extraordinary critical and philological work of Chiara Nenci and the commitment of a glorious Milanese institution such as the Academy of Brera, if today we finally have a corrected edition of the Memories of Giuseppe Bossi, an invaluable tool to deepen the knowledge of Neoclassical Milan and a fundamental witness of the Napoleonic era in Italy. These Memories (published only partially in an incorrect transcription) were written between 1807 and 1815 by a man of genius, the protagonist of the intellectual ferment that inflamed Italy between the Revolution and the Empire. Painter of great talent, fine writer, scholar and collector, but also a formidable cultural organizer (he was responsible for the re-establishment of the Academy of Brera and the construction of the magnificent Art Gallery), Giuseppe Bossi (1777-1815) found himself in a turning point of his life in 1807. Writing about himself was like drawing a balance of the past and reflecting on new choices. Withdrawing from the public commitment by resigning from his duties and in particular from the prestigious task of Secretary of the Academy, had meant for this proud and independent intellectual recovering his freedom, that he declared was "preferable to any other right" convinced that “in no court, either large or small, there was any freedom".

The fall of Napoleon and his abdication in 1814 confirmed him in his voluntary separation from public commitment. The judgment that he gave in those tragic circumstances is still very actual and seems to anticipate the argument by Manzoni in the '5 Maggio' Poem [n.d.t.: a poem written by Alessandro Manzoni to commemorate the death of Napoleon. For an English translation of the poem see here: http://allpoetry.com/poem/8531405-Il-Cinque-Maggio--English--by-Alessandro-Manzoni]. "This great man, almost suddenly, founded an empire on the basis of violence: and no violence is durable. The French, who did not wish to consider him as Italian when he did great things, now denied considering him as a French, after he had been abandoned by fortune. Any nation could be honoured to have him, but none should wish the rebirth of such a man."

Become "more joyous, and lover of the simple pleasures of solitude" and at the same time confirming himself as "disdaining richness and honours", Bossi could now devote himself on the one hand to grand cultural projects and on the other hand (more and more convinced in the "my old attachment to celibacy“) to the personal pleasures which he called – without any metaphors - as the "glorious deeds of the cock" (a very nice man, he protected his independence thanks to "my system of holding brief liaisons with libertine and free women").

Among his grandiose plans were included many cultural ambitions. For example, the literary one, with the “impetuous, irascible, ardent but tender" Alfieri as a model. And then there was the ambition for art, which was for him (a wonderful designer, scholar of the masters of the past and sniffing collector) a true, all-encompassing and magnificent obsession.

At the top of his mind was Leonardo da Vinci, of whom Bossi seemed to have inherited the same eccentricity and dissatisfaction (unable to carry out the projects, he loved the unfinished, and had an encyclopedic mentality). His major commitment was the creation of a copy of the Last Supper in Santa Maria delle Grazie, which should reproduce as faithfully as possible the original appearance of the semi-lost masterpiece. 

Leonardo. Last Supper. S.Maria delle Grazie (Milan)

Giuseppe Bossi. Drawing from Leonardo's Last Supper

Giacomo Raffaelli. A Copy from The Last Supper (mosaic)
Church of the Minoriti, Wien

Bossi’s canvas, which was destroyed by bombing in the last World War, served for the mosaic version commissioned by Eugene de Beauharnais and then brought by the Austrians to Vienna in the Minoritenkirche, the church of the Italian community.

For Bossi it was a great challenge to be able to recover the ancient legendary beauty of that work, which had been injured by the " barbaric touch-ups " of the various restorers and foiled restorations such as the one by Mazza, "a cheesy painter " that " gross the surviving few relics with a more deadly poultice than the first, and overlaid ten figures from left to right of the beholder. After Mazza - continues an indignant Bossi - there was no more chance to fear; yet the damp wall, the water flooding the contours of the Grazie in 1801, the various invasions by soldiers, whether French or German, always teased by every beautiful art, reduced this unhappy painting to the state of true stinker and now its state is such that it is frightening and sorrow. The modern crusts fall on every side. The few old layers, soiled by double retouching, nitro and dust, can be found only by a diligent expert, provided he would identify them (from the mud produced by Mazza) with the middle of a bridge, made to support the great project of a renovation, and to bring life back in this three centuries old dead body."

As we know, the strenuous efforts on Leonardo's Last Supper, copied in the design of large cartons (he confessed that he was a "highly boring job") before transferring in oil on canvas, will have a far more lasting outcome in the exemplary monograph that Bossi devoted to the Last Supper, arousing the enthusiasm of Goethe and scholars from all over Europe. Dealing with Leonardo was also a patriotic undertaking. Bossi reports that in 1808 conceived the "project of making a run in Paris in good season, then copy all the Leonardo’s manuscripts, and return to print them Milan. I would like to go, compile writings, and return in six weeks. We would need good advice, and it will not fail. The occasion of my work on the Cenacle would justify my research, and alienate any suspicion that I would think of something else. Pretending to take note, I would copy everything by taking advantage of my capacity to read without mirror the hand of Leonardo (i.e. Leonardo’s famous writing, reversed from left to right). The Viceroy would taste to see publish by a Milan editor those codes that had been stolen to bury them in Paris."

We do not know for what reasons this bold undertaking of academic espionage did not go ahead. But the merits of Bossi vis-à-vis the genius of Leonardo da Vinci remain immense , so much so that it is considered without doubt his greatest scholar, artist and maybe even collector (think of the wonderful drawings he collected , finished after his death at the Venice Academy) of all times.

The Memories, interrupted by his death in 1815 (the manuscript preserved in the National Library Braidense in Milan ends with four white pages) close with an impressive description of Milan, lost and in the grip of insurgents, after the fall of the Kingdom of Italy. The dramatic image of the Finance Minister Prina " killed and dragged naked through the mud in many places ... terrible example for those who take pleasure in stripping the people” dominates a city “full of thugs who came from every part of the region, called by the hope of plundering, … while people threatened Palazzo Marino." Now Bossi, faced with the same events that deeply impressed the young Manzoni, suspended all judgment, concluding that "time will prove many things, and especially the damage produced by revolutions where costumes are not good and strong ."

The Lynching of Giuseppe Prina (Contemporary Engraving)

[4 ] On Giuseppe Bossi’s attempt to " critically" reconstruct Leonardo's Last Supper, see also the opinion expressed by Luigi Grassi in Teorici e storia della critica d’arte. Volume terzo: Il Settecento in Italia (Theory and history of art criticism. Volume Three: The Eighteenth Century in Italy) (pp. 204-206).

5] On Giuseppe Bossi see also the Scritti sulle arti (writings on the arts), published by Roberto Paolo Ciardi.