ENGLISH VERSION Luigi Lanzi. Viaggio del 1783 per la Toscana Superiore, per l'Umbria, per la Marca, per la Romagna

Luigi Lanzi

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

Luigi Lanzi
Viaggio del 1783 per la Toscana Superiore, per l’Umbria, per la Marca, per la Romagna, pittori veduti, antichità trovatevi
Edited by Costanza Costanzi

Marsilio editore, 2003
Isbn 88-317-8206-1


[N.B. On Luigi Lanzi see also in this blog: Luigi Lanzi, Letters to Mauro Boni 1791-1809. Edited by Paolo Pastres, Forum Editrice, 2009]

[1] This volume contains the transcript and commentary of the ms. 36.V, kept in the library of the Uffizi in Florence. It is one of the ten notebooks that Luigi Lanzi compiled immediately after, or even during the course of the journeys made in various regions of the Centre and the North of Italy to collect the preparatory material required by the writing of the first edition of the Storia pittorica (History of Painting) and, later on, by the preparation of a greatly expanded text published in Bassano in 1795 and in the following year. The information contained in ms. 36.V were already used for the preparation of the first edition appeared in Florence in 1792. 

[2] The criteria used for the transcription of the manuscript are displayed at pages 2 and 3. The text is accompanied by a considerable set of notes: their number is 1458. They occupy, presented in three columns, pages 119 to 230. In the notes, the "items referring to artists are followed" except in special cases specified at the beginning of p. 119 "by the transcript of the printed text of the History of Painting." For this purpose the publication by Sansoni publisher, edited by M. Capucci (Florence 1968-1974) is used. 

[3] Impressive, even if displayed in a way not always fully satisfactory, the photographic documentation. 

[4] The book review, signed by Marco Carminati in the Sunday literature insert (Domenicale) of the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore, is quoted below. The original review is conserved within the volume. 

Scaffalart 

Published the Inedited “Notebook” of the Journey by Luigi Lanzi in the Papal States in 1783 

Hunting pictures with the abbot 

by Marco Carminati 

In 1773, with the suppression of the Jesuits, Abbot Luigi Lanzi from Marche, a teacher of Greek and Latin, found himself temporarily unemployed. Initially, to kill time, the cleric agreed to translate the Opere e i Giorni by Hesiod, but he was gratified when he received a far more rewarding task by the Grand Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo in 1775. The monarch hired him as "assistant antiquarian" of the Royal Gallery of Florence (today’s Uffizi), reporting directly to Giuseppe Bencivenni Pelli, the new director general of the collections and custodian of the cabinet of gems. This would look like an irrelevant event, but it is not: if the history of art exists as we know it today - that is, based on the identity and recognition of schools, the evolution of style, and the intertwining and reciprocal influences between artists - we owe everything to that "trivial" hiring. 

Lanzi was then quite illiterate on arts, but this did not represent an obstacle. It came from the cosmopolitan milieu of the Eighteenth-century Rome, was a voracious and a much updated reader, and had already metabolized texts of Winckelmann and Mengs. Been appointed as deputy-curator, the abbot became interested in the new subject with the enthusiasm of the neophyte and threw himself headlong into his duties. Soon proved to have the right "tools": an unerring eye for a connoisseur, a prodigious visual memory and the desire to change things. A famous painting by Johann Zoffany , which depicts the interior of the Tribuna of the Uffizi, more or less at the time of Lanzi, documents very well the sumptuous disorder in which the grand-ducal galleries were held. The paintings on the walls were crammed from floor to ceiling, and considered as valuable upholstery; likewise the statues were counted as decorative items and placed a little accidentally in the octagonal space of the room. 

Lanzi received the dual task of conceiving a new arrangement for this spectacular confusion, and to carry out, if necessary, new acquisitions of works of art, in order to fill in any gaps. Initially it dealt with the antiques, trying to understand how it was possible to rearrange and make accessible collections of antiquities, especially in light of the new findings from Herculaneum and Pompeii. Reflections on how to arrange marbles anew ended up also with involving paintings. In 1780 he wrote to the Grand Duke, prompting to dismantle the pompous baroque staging and to focus instead on a more rational division of materials, 'by schools ' - he specified - so to note "gradually progress that art was doing." 

But what were the "schools" mentioned by Lanzi, if none had ever conceived painting as divided by schools? Giorgio Vasari had taught that it was necessary to narrate the "lives" of painters through large biographical medallions. Alternatively, there were descriptions of cities, travel guides, the "announcements" by art guides, based on the survey and the listing of art works in the area, church to church, building by building. No scholar had critical tools available at hand to divide the Italian painters in "schools", and even less in style streams. Well, this work was just undertaken by Lanzi, offering a new method of approach the discipline of art history. A method that still works today. It was not, mind you, an easy job. Not so much because of the difficulties raised by the tedious Bencivenni Pelli, who, disagreeing about that project, threw a big spanner in his deputy’s work, but because there was not enough painting material in the Florentine collections of that time to study and document all major Italian schools. 

It became clear that, to accomplish his plan of reorganization of the galleries, or rather of the entire history of Italian art, Luigi Lanzi needed travelling. The Grand Duke fully understood this need to move, but the director Bencivenni did not. Stubborn and reluctant, he did everything to impede the "transfers" of his associate. 

In order to avoid these inconveniences, Lanzi resorted to a little artifice: he pretended to be ill and in need of thermal treatment. On 5 July 1783 he asked permission to proceed to the Bagni di Nocera (Nocera’s Thermes) Coughing, paid farewell to everyone and left. He showed up only five months later. Where had he been all this time? To "drink the waters" in Nocera? 

Certainly not: the abbot had travelled around the whole Papal States. He had reached fifty locations in Marche, Umbria, Upper Tuscany and Romagna, visiting churches, oratories, fraternities, archaeological sites, public and private buildings, and viewing there an impressive number of paintings, drawings, coins, inscriptions and antiquities. While travelling, he had brought with him a notebook that he had filled in a very personal way. Neglecting the typical narrative form of an itinerant diary and any digression on literature, society, climate, urbanism and landscape, the travelling abbot had focused on the essential: on the notebook’s sheets he had described the antiquities examined in alphabetical order by location, and he had equally listed the paintings under the name of the painters, from A to Z. 

Despite their very strict sobriety, these notes shine because of the richness and variety of data, and the philological meticulousness with which they were compiled. Reading them ‘in one gulp’ may appear in fact a little bit stodgy, but this does not diminish their importance, because it is mostly through them that Lanzi based the drafting of the Storia Pittorica della Italia (Pictorial History of Italy), the monumental treatise published at the end of the eighteenth century who would consecrate him as the "founder" of modern art history. 

Remained unpublished for centuries, the notebook of the 1783 Italian journey has recently been given to the press at the initiative of the Marche Region, edited by Constance Costanzi, Bartolucci and Laura Piera Bocci. Being able to easily consult it today means above all "visiting" Rimini, Urbino, Ancona, Fossombrone, Cagli, Osimo, Loreto, Recanati, Camerino, Città di Castello, Arezzo, Gubbio and Perugia just a "moment" before Napoleon’s blizzards. The masterpieces by Piero della Francesca, Lorenzo Lotto, or Carlo Crivelli are still in place on the altars, enclosed in their amazing gilded frames. Next, there are the more "modern" paintings - which Lanzi shows appreciating more - signed by Guercino, Carlo Cignani, Simone Cantarini and the Gentileschis. The Eye of the Abbot is lightning: he identifies one by one the authors of works and groups them for voices. He makes very few mistakes. 

Lanzi cannot imagine it, but he is "photographing" an intact and unrepeatable Italy, with paintings placed in the places of their ancient and original destinations. Today, many of those works are scattered in museums and collections all over the world, and not just because of Napoleon. With the Italian Unity, the massive nationalisation of convents and monasteries bled further central Italy and in particular the Marche. Unfortunately, Savoy’s "confiscators" were not the last ones: after them came swarms of ravenous Roman and Florentine antiquarians, capable to ‘debone’ the territory as veritable grasshoppers. Lanzi could not figure this out. 

[5] For information on the other notebooks by Lanzi published to date, see the data sheet completed for the journey to Veneto, published by SPES.