ENGLISH VERSION. Michelangelo Muraro. Il 'Libro secondo' di Francesco e Jacopo Dal Ponte. Verci editrice, 1992

Jacopo Bassano. Self-Portrait

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

Il Libro secondo di Francesco e Jacopo Dal Ponte [The second book by Francesco and Jacopo Dal Ponte]

A cura di Michelangelo Muraro
Commento e note di Daniela Puppulin

G.B. Verci Editrice, 1992

[1] The name of the editor, Michelangelo Muraro, appears at the top of the title page instead of the author. It should however be immediately stressed that – if we now have and can refer to the Libro secondo – the exclusive merit belongs to Muraro, who managed to find it with tenacity and determination, studied it for decades and finally donated to it the “Museum Library and Archives” of Bassano del Grappa. So it was really a misfortune that this beautiful edition came out only a few months after the death of Muraro, and thus he could not see his work completed.

[2] Text of the strip :

"The publication of this volume, the result of many years of research by Michelangelo Muraro and a team of assistants, takes place in occasion of the year devoted to Dal Ponte, when we celebrate the fourth centenary of the death of one of the greatest exponents of the sixteenth century Venetian painting, Jacopo Dal Ponte said Bassano.

The Libro secondo di dare e avere della famiglia Dal Ponte con diversi per pitture fatte (Dal Ponte family’s second bookkeeping book with customers) is one of the bookkeeping masters which the Bassanos compiled, by name and according to the double entry system in their workshop; it is the second in a series of four, and the only one that has come down to us. The manuscript contains records that relate to the period between 1511 and 1580 , but allows us to reconstruct in a more complete way above all the thirty years from 1520 to around 1550, a period marked by significant changes, in which the direction of the workshop passes from Francesco to his son Jacopo.

In their registers Francesco, mainly up to 1539, and later Jacopo, recorded revenues and expenses, assets and liabilities regarding "pitture fatte” (paintings produced). To emphasise the importance of this documentation, just remember that it mentions 160 works (including altarpieces, banners, paintings, frescoes, sculptures, and drawings) and in addition numerous handicrafts.

On the trace of the manuscript, Michelangelo Muraro was therefore able to find and appraise paintings, frescoes, sculptures by Jacopo which had been considered as lost.

Jacopo Bassano. La Cena in Emmaus

But the book, which is a true reflection of the functioning of an ancient workshop of painters (and indeed the most comprehensive text of its kind that has survived), assumes the importance of a historical source, far beyond the narrow limits of the most traditional art history. For the manuscript is particularly rich in news related to the facts of daily life, from prices, measures, value of various currencies, and it may in fact be an interesting document to research "material culture". And beyond this, the book allows us, under the apparent dryness of a row of names and numbers, to become aware of a large number of data relating to the commissions which the Bassanos received, the type of contracts they entered into, the collaboration they had with various artisans, and the payments they received, either in cash or in kind, in consumer goods or in work performance. Thus it displays the economic reality and the spiritual life of a specific provincial world, very different from the Venetian one.

Drawing from the many themes offered by the manuscript, in his long introductory essay Michelangelo Muraro gives a wide-ranging portrait of Jacopo Bassano and his environment, analysing the life of the workshop, the works documented in the manuscript , the province in which the Dal Pontes operated during a period so rich in political and religious tensions; and finally, starting from the vastness of the proposed framework, Muraro reaches the innermost secret of the art of Jacopo , the "pittura di tocco” (brush strokes) in which the artist "surpasses any feature based on drawing and plastic elements, to penetrate the soul of things .

The volume is accompanied by notes on the manuscript, by historical information on the characters, by various devices, a number of indices, and a rich set of illustrations that make the reading of the Libro secondo by Bassanos easier and more complete."

Jacopo Bassano. St. Valentine baptizing St. Lucilla

[3] Please find below the text of the review on this work, signed by Flavio Caroli, which appeared on Sunday 26th July 1992 in Sole 24 Ore (the article is taken from Biblioteca Multimediale del Sole 24 Ore – Cd Rom Domenica 1983-2003 Vent’anni di idee - Multimedia Library of Sole 24 Ore - Cd Rom of the Sunday insert 1983-2003 Twenty years of ideas). The review is preceded by a short essay by Marina Mojana

SUNDAY – Found the "Book of Accounts " by Jacopo Bassano, who founded the “Genre Painting" from the Venetian Province

The balance sheet of a "figuriere"

Titian’s Heir Earned for a Portrait seven Times less than the Teacher. And even less for a Fresco.

by Flavio Caroli

During the sixteenth century Bassano del Grappa gives birth to a modest family of painters and craftsmen. The laboratory is located a stone's throw from the Brenta river and the house where the founder Francesco lives and works, together with his sons Jacopo, Giambattista and Girolamo, is immediately called "dal ponte” (close to the bridge) for the footway which joins the two banks. This is the genesis of the Dal Pontes, numerous and fertile province painters, known today thanks to Jacopo said Bassano, that a book and an exhibition consecrate in the Olympus of the great Venetian painters. 

The book written by Michelangelo Muraro - and soon in bookstores for the types of Verci publishers - is commented widely in this page. As for the exhibition, dedicated to Jacopo Bassano in the fourth centenary of his death (1510-1592), it will open in the Museum of Bassano del Grappa on 5 September [1992] to close only on 6 December [1992]. It is the first comprehensive exhibition on the artist since 1957 and gathers 68 paintings and 35 drawings, many of which are in delicate coloured gesso (gypsum) painting. Curated by the Superintendence of Veneto, in collaboration with the Museum of Bassano and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the exhibition will be the starting point for a new understanding and appreciation of Jacopo’s long and varied career. At the same time two exhibitions will be held. The first one at the State Archive of Bassano, will be entitled La famiglia di Jacopo. L’origine, la parentela, la casa, il patrimonio, la vita civile e religiosa (Jacopo’s Family. The origin, the relatives, the house, the property, the civil and religious life). The second one at Palazzo Agostinelli will be entitled Jacopo Bassano e l'incisione. La fortuna dell’arte bassanesca nell’incisione di riproduzione dal XVI al XIX secolo (Jacopo Bassano and engraving. The fortune of Bassano’s art in the reproduction engraving from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century). [Note of the editor: The above text was by Marina Mojana. It follows now the review by Flavio Caroli].

Titian vs. Jacopo Bassano, 7 to 1. This is the ratio between the prices that are paid for portraits of the two Venetian masters, in the course of their lives. Jacopo, who revolutionized the family traditions devoting himself to this specific genre (neglected, or just not "understood" by his father Francesco) receives 18 lire for the effigy of " Zuanne of Tommaso the baker" and touches the sky with a finger when the “magnificent monsieur Bernardo Moresin, lord mayor of Bassano" pays to him 31 lire in 1542. It is his peak. We compute an average of 25 lire for portrait. Titian, the official painter of the Venetian Republic, in addition to the 100 ducats per year collected from the brokerage of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi [n.d.r. the German merchants’community in Venice], claims 25 ducats, equal to 155 lire, for each portrait of a Doge, the Venetian ruler.

Well aware of the risk of rebukes by the employees of this financial newspaper [note of the editor: the Sole 24 ore is the main economic daily of Italy, and hosts an excellent cultural insert every Sunday], we will endeavour, with our ridiculous economic knowledge and the awareness that such comparisons have no scientific credibility, to translate these figures in contemporary terms to us. It will be possible to find some suggestion. Around 1540, the daily wages of a master mason, a carpenter or a blacksmith, both in Bassano and Venice, were 16 -20 soldi, say about one lira (it takes just 20 soldi for one lira). Let us assume that the remuneration of the same craftsman is now 150 thousand lire a day [note of the editor: around 75 euros today]; we can therefore equalise one venetian lira of mid of the sixteenth century Venetian with 150 thousand lire today [around 75 euros]. An average portrait of the painter from Bassano would be paid 3 million 750 thousand lire [around 1,800 euros]. For the portrait of the doge, Titian would receive 23 million 250 thousand lire [around 12,000 euros], to be added to the annuity of 93 million lire [around 45,000 euros] from the brokerage of the Fondaco. 

By and large, these are credible figures. Life is hard and provincial, in Bassano. But Jacopo, one of the choicest and most tormented minds of the sixteenth century, after a fleeting youth glimpse of the splendours of the lagoon, always refused to depart from it. He works in the workshop with his father, a decent painter - artisan of the old-fashioned early Cinquecento way, and with his brothers. In the cool spring mornings, he throws a glance at the Brenta river (the workshop is right there, a few steps from the famous Bassano bridge), he caresses the bluish streak in the Alpine foothills, and is content with this. He explicitly rates the value of his day to 2 lire (the double as a carpenter), 300 thousand lire [around 150 euros] today. Then he gets to work. And the work is not that of a Venetian master, the city where the trade union, the "Arte dei Depentori" (Guild of painters) makes sure that that each member shall act only within its qualification: there is the "colonel" of the "figurieri" (i.e. painters), well separated from that of miniaturists, the drawers, the gilders, the cuoridoro [note of the editor: leather gilders], the cartolari [note of the editor: book binders], the mascherieri [note of the editor: mask makers] and targheri [note of the editor: makers of face shields]. 

In the workshop at the Bassano bridge, everything is being done, and pretty well, with still mediaeval experience and ability. Altarpieces, frescoes, but also banners, and statues. And in addition, the decoration of a number of things for which common people would normally go to the local “painter": weapons and insignia, frames and curtains, candles and candlesticks, boxes and inkwells, cots and bedding, even a "banderola di marzipan" (marzipan banderol) and two "carte de zugar” (playing cards)." The most difficult commitment is, however, the carving and gilding of frames, a task in which Giambattista, Jacopo's brother, has specialized. And sometimes you have to get to the fields, because the Dal Ponte (this is the name given the family, always because of the notorious runner on the river, designed by Palladio) also exercise the function of expert surveyors, noting, (by public or private commission), the "mudelo" (model) of locations of places, i.e. cartographic maps needed to settle boundary disputes, maps which are then forwarded to the appropriate office in Venice. There is work enough. The most important asset, of course, is made ​​up of sacred works. The workshop of the Dal Ponte holds a kind of monopoly on the whole plateau of Asiago and Feltre, right down to the plain that stretches along the banks of the Brenta: a vast and administratively discontinuous territory, which includes part of the present-day provinces of Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, Venice, Belluno, and that, for the ecclesiastical hierarchy, brings together, like today, in six dioceses (those listed above plus Feltre). 

But that the Bassano took advantage of their prestige, it is not really fair to say. For the high altarpiece in the

church of the monastery of Santa Maria di Camposanto, in Cittadella, the price is 70 lire (just over 10 million lire today [5,000 euros]). When the fee rises steeply up to 409 lire (over 61 million [30,000 euros]), as it happens for the alterpiece made ​​by Jacopo in 1541 for the confraternita dell’Immacolata Concezione (Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception) in the town of Asolo, this happens because the shop also receives the commission to realise the frame ( "adornmento" or "caxamento"). For a complete work of frame, the price varies from 186 to 620 lire (from 28 to 93 million lire [14,000 to 46,000 euros], five times the cost of just the painting. The proof is easy. The altarpieces in the towns of Oriago and Onara depict the same subject, the Noli Me Tangere, have similar dimensions, and are performed in the same round of years. The first, with the frame, costs 620 lire (that's 93 million [45,000 euros]), the second (only canvas, paint, and nothing else), 100 lire, around 15 million around [7,500 euros]. Why be surprised? The carving and gilding commitments are lengthy, requiring many hours of work, and the work in the craft world, is priced by time consumption. The frescoes are a quick item, and so the price is low. Must be made ​​"fresh ", in fact, until the plaster is wet. Ten strokes of the brush and go. If the endeavour is not huge, a few day's work. The "altarpieces in the wall" (as is defined in Bassano the technique that Michelangelo used in the Sistine Chapel), are valued on average 25 lire (less than 4 million today’s lire [2,000 euros]). It may even happen that Jacopo is called to add a figure in a fresco, and come home with no more than 2 lire and 8 soldi, approximately 400 thousand lire [200 euros].

Let us draw some conclusions. Excluding barter (wine, grain, clothes and shoes), the artistic production makes the Bassano approximately 1,080 lire per year (162 million today’s lire [around 80,000 euros]. To which must be added the proceeds of craft, even a "rabesco sopra una fassa da putin” (arabesque on the face of a child). But you have to subtract the substantial cost of materials, labourers and workers. 

It is not wealth. In fact, in the family, all try what they can to contribute. Francesca, the mother of Jacopo, "tira seda" (rows silk) for the Guadagnin family, and Gerolamo, the brother priest, puts away some money with grammar lessons. They cannot afford a horse, so when Jacopo has to go to Castelfranco, Cittadella and Asolo must lease one. For a portrait, he must borrow a jacket ("zipon"), but he ruins it and must then reimburse the damage. Finally, there is the great adventure: the house. The artist is more than forty years old, when buys a ruin for 118 lire (less than 18 million [9,000 euros]), and yet it seems that the endeavour exceed its forces. He follows the day-to-day work, controls in person the workers, saves workforce costs until the restoration does not reach the roof, note the purchase and the cost of lime. Then he can breathe a sigh of relief; and there, in that house, in the room that looks "a sera” (to West), many years later, he will dictate his last will. 

Where does he write down everything, Jacopo Bassano? In the "libri dei conti” (accounting books) of the family, four in all, of which miraculously survived the second, which is about to be given to the press (Michelangelo Muraro, Il libro secondo di Francesco e Jacopo Dal Ponte), for the types of Verci Publishers, under the patronage of the Cini Foundation; with an admirable transcript from the manuscript by Daniela Puppulin, and superb historical and linguistic apparatus by Franco Signori and Antonio Trevisan. We would not have today the most complete and fascinating insight into a painting workshop in Italy in the Sixteenth century, if Muraro, (who died shortly before seeing fruition of the fatigues of a lifetime, and in proximity of the great exhibitions in Bassano, opening in early September), had not spotted distant references to this dry but eloquent diary, had not traced it at a private family in the immediate after-war time, and had not then been generous by donating it to the Museum of Bassano. 

Nothing to do with the other great diary of the same century, the sublime Libro dei Conti (Account Book) of Lorenzo Lotto, who is the desolate and "philosophical" chronicle of a defeated and stray painter in the peripheral streets of Italian art. 

Here everything speaks of concreteness, the layout is based on double counting (with maximum attention to revenues, and lower accuracy for expenses, not without annoyance for taxes, the "colta reale (royal collection)", "la colta per Padoa" (collection for Padua) counting agreements in alphabetical order, not so much of surnames, which are not yet established at that age, but the first names of the clients, whether they are local nobilotti (mid-level nobles) or “massari”(stewards) of some community. The records include a long period of time, from 1511 (Jacopo, of whom we do not know the exact date of birth, probably has just seen the light) to 1580. The key thirty years are however between 1520 and 1550, a period in which the direction of the workshop goes from old Francesco to his principal heir. More than 160 works of art are mentioned (it is a priceless merit by Muraro to have discovered also a sculptor Jacopo), many of which have been identified and - even more succulent achievement for art historians - dated. Let us take the example of the absolute masterpiece of sixteenth-century painting that is the "Beheading of the Baptist " in Copenhagen , on which fights arose for decades, and which may now be finally anchored to 1550. 

Jacopo da Ponte. Beheading  of the Baptist (1550)

It is worth reading the tasty chronicle of a not even thirty years old Jacopo who begins to climb, with undisguised pride, the tastes of the aristocracy in Bassano. In 1539, he received from Marco Pizzamano, heir of the family di Pietro, who will be the 115th mayor of the town, the commission for carrying out a painting, which was found today at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford: "Il sugeto del quadro sie la Disputa de Christo de dodice anni tra dotori”(The subject of the painting will be the dispute of Christ at 12 years with the doctors). Except that "finito che fu il quadro, li piacque et io el pregai che m’il volese conceder per darlo a un altro zentilomo che m’el domandò come lo viste; m’el concedete; lo mesurò nella camera et era tropo picolo; il volsi dar al dito mesier Marcho et li domandai il resto; mi proferse un scudo et mio fradelo Zambatista lo vendé; et così è restato le cose” (Except that, when the picture, was finished, he liked it. I prayed him that he would authorise me to sell it to another gentleman, who asked for it as soon he saw it. He authorised me, after he measured the painting that were in the room and thought it was too small. I addressed myself to this Mr Marcho and he offered one scudo and my brother Gianbattista sold it. And this is the way things went). Competition is the soul of commerce ...

So that, we can even poke our nose in the relationship of the artist with his fellow citizens, seizing the moment when he made fundamental intuitions. On 19 March of the same year 1539, between jobs for Zaneto dal Corno, a "salarolo in Basan” [note of the editor: somebody organising conservation of food under salt in the town of Bassano], the "book of accounts " notes: " Depenzerli la sua caxa, la faxa dinanzi, al pozo de comun, fata a istorie ." (To paint his house, the facade in front of the common spring, to draw histories). On 27 March, the brother Giambattista, who is obviously the cashier of the family, receives a first payment. In August, the seven balconies on the facade are painted white and blue, and the 11th of the same month of August is noted the “compido pagamento della fazada et la arma de legno dorada e arzentada." (Complete payment of the facade, including the timber scaffold, gilded and silvered). The fresco decoration on the facade the Piazzotto del Sale (the Salt small square) in Bassano, is thus completed in less than seven months. But there's more. In the second register, Jacopo proves his already excellent expertise in painting animals. He depicts many: sheep, goats, deer, geese, ducks, a donkey, a monkey, a lion and an eagle. Now, since there is no paint expert who does not keep into his eyes his preferred procession of God's creatures, it is worthwhile to carry out thorough investigations. On Bassano’s decisive openings (probably superior to those of Veronese and Tintoretto), we make reference to the enthusiastic critics to the forthcoming exhibition in September. We find that, before Grechetto, Giuseppe Bazzani and Géricault, Jacopo is the most subtle interpreter of animalistic psychology in the whole course of art. But that he was a founder of the “genre” painting, it was even too widespread known. In fact, here is identified (with a clear day, month and year) the spark of his thoughts. 

On 5 October 1548, Bassano is in Citadella, to conclude an agreement with Nicola da Pesaro for a painting commissioned by the Venetian nobleman Antonio Zentani. The painting " Va longo braza uno al più, et alto quarti 3" (with a length of one arm at most and an height of 3 quarters of it, roughly 70 x 50 cm), will be paid 15 lire (2 million 250 thousand lire today [around 1,100 euros]), and will have the theme "Due brachi (bracchi), cioè cani solo" (Two Italian pointers, i.e. only dogs). In the "book of accounts" no other subject of this type is quoted. The original fissure of the accomplished Renaissance is produced here. 

Jacopo Bassano, Two dogs

Michelangelo Muraro has the intelligence to demonstrate that the "genre scene" comes from the changing world of the poor, a world that implicitly denies the classical ideal; it sudden finds a dazzling literary dignity in the glimpses of the anonymous and faceless life, in the eternal cycles of agricultural humanity and seasons. With Ruzante, make the first steps in art the hovels of straw and dung, the atavistic hunger, the tragedy and horror of the Venetian farmer, who still manages to get away from the curses of "roerso mondo” (rotten world). In Trentino, the " guerra bifolca" (peasant war) rages. The Bassano bind to pauperistic brotherhoods of original Christianity as the one of St. Paul, which calls for a statutory agreement, mutual assistance, and organizes the care of the sick and the unfortunate: “Ancora volemo e ordenemo che li nomi di cumfrati e suore debian sia scriti solamente semplicemente, e no sia scrito denanzi: Mis., o maistro, né madona o maistra, perché Cristo è misier e maistro de tuti”. (Still we want and will order that the names of the brothers and sisters will be written simply, and not preceded by Mr or Master or Ms or Mistress, because Christ is mister and master of everybody).

For Jacopo Bassano, the passage from the sacred painting to the genre scenes knows no poetical and intellectual interruption. The buyers of paintings that feature sheep and oxen belong to the same brotherhood for which the artist worked, by painting banners and altarpieces; brotherhoods which welcome some instances of the Protestant Reformation, which had spread quickly through the streets of the Valsugana Alp valley. We are in a spiritual universe not far from reformed Catholicism that forced Lorenzo Lotto into exile. However, the Venetian protests: “sono di fede et religion cristiana, e chi si ingana, suo dano” (I am of Christian faith et religion, and if somebody believes the contrary, he is wrong and it is his problem"). It is the universe of "wayfarers painters" which leads some of them to produce fundamental cycles in morally uncontaminated localities, or in which it is lawful to escape the formality of which Titian is perfect interpreter: the above mentioned Lorenzo Lotto in Trescore Balneario, Paris Bordone in San Simon Vallada, Jacopo Bassano in Marostica, Enego, Tezze and Castigliano [note of the editor: all very isolated and small locations, mostly unknown in other regions of Italy].

His diary should not be taken lightly. Behind these pages that exude modesty of life, we read the striking parable of a man who, in the countryside, comes to terms with Mannerism in the same period of Titian, participates in the spiritual travail of a civilization largely hidden from history, and from that rich humus of civilization shapes, through sheer force of imagination, expressive solutions that will be infinitely appreciated and deducted from the culture to come.

This is the late Renaissance of the doubt and humility, which will be dragged in Rome by Caravaggio. It is always the same Italy, dark and brilliant, under the ambiguous dome of those who govern it.

[4] The book, composed in Bembo font and printed in the Bertoncello printing plant on ' Tintoretto' paper, is distributed exclusively by Leo S. Olschki publisher in Florence.