ENGLISH VERSION Re-Reading Leonardo. The Treatise on Painting across Europe, 1550-1900 PART 6

Matteo Zaccolini. De' colori

Janis C. Bell
Zaccolini and the Trattato della Pittura of Leonardo da Vinci

in

Re-Reading Leonardo. The Treatise on Painting across Europe, 1550-1900
Edited and introduced by Claire Farago

[1] Janis C. Bell continues her analysis on the Prospettiva del colore (Perspective of colour) by Matteo Zaccolini. See, among the many precedent studies, Zaccolini and Leonardo’s Manuscript A and Zaccolini’s Unpublished Perspective Treatise: Why Should We Care? in The Treatise on Perspective: Published and Unpublished. We already know that Matteo Zaccolini left us four volumes of manuscripts in the Ashburn collection of the Laurentian Library in Florence, marked MS 1212 1-4. The manuscript is not autographed. It is a copy made in the entourage of Cassiano dal Pozzo, who planned its publication, but did not bring it to end. But Cassiano’s interest, or one who strongly promoted the printed edition of the Treatise by Leonardo, is certainly not accidental. “With nearly every chapter inspired by Leonardo, Zaccolini’s work was seen as a commentary on Leonardo by the only man deeply familiar with both of their writings: Cassiano dal Pozzo. Although he occasionally paraphrases his source [note of the editor: source whom, according to that time’s habits, he never mentions], Zaccolini is also original in some places, integrative in others” (p. 127). The sources are not particularly generous of biographical information on Zaccolini, yielding a figure of an essentially self-taught person, who moved from Cesena to Rome around the year 1600, joined the order of the Teatini friars and led a life entirely devoted to the decoration of churches and monasteries of that order (for his pictorial production, see the pages which Giovanni Baglione dedicated to him in Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti Dal Pontificato di Gregorio XIII del 1572 in fino a’ tempi di Papa Urbano Ottavo nel 1642 - ‘Lives of painters, sculptors, and architects from the pontificate of Gregory XIII in 1572 to the time of Pope Urban VIII in 1642’ (Vol. I, pp . 316-317). 

[2] The Treatise was probably drafted by Zaccolini between 1605 and 1618. It must be said that it has a strongly characterization compared to apograph manuscript. “His treatise is also most unusual in the context of coeval art writing for its focus on all aspects of coloring. He barely talks about invention, and does not concern himself with the education of young painters, nor with the representation of movement and emotions, nor with human proportions – all subjects of great interest to Leonardo... It is simply a practical guide to painting with an explication of the scientific principles of nature underlying representation. In this sense, it is very much like Leonardo’s Trattato, albeit more limited in scope. Zaccolini explores topics that were not explored in much depth by his sixteenth- and seventeenth century predecessors in the field of perspective and optics, with the sole exception of Leonardo. These topics include color perspective, drapery folds, background colors, cast shadows, reflections in water, the appearance of the horizon, the impact of height on visibility and color, and the effects of fog and other weather conditions. Indeed, every subject addressed by our Theatine was discussed by Leonardo” (p. 132). To sum up, “we might see Zaccolini as the inverse of the mid-century editors of Leonardo who, in preparing the abridged Trattato della pittura from the Codex Urbinas eliminated the last three sections containing passages on the imitation of all kinds of variant conditions in nature” (p. 132). 

[3] It remains to be clarified, in large part, the circumstances in which Zaccolini had access to the Leonardo’s writings. The problem’s complexity is two-fold: first, to understand what apograph manuscripts Zaccolini consulted and, second, how he even managed to study the autographs of Leonardo. With reference to the apograph manuscripts one thing, first of all, is worth mentioning: while we have a certainly not complete, but still indicative, framework for Florence, our data on the presence of apographs in Rome are entirely lacking. Zaccolini’s substantial permanence within Rome and his deep knowledge of the manuscripts oblige us to believe that the Cesena-born monk had the opportunity to study for years Leonardo exactly in Rome. The hypothesis that the working copy could be the ms. Barberini 4304 has been largely rejected; the ms. Barberini 4304 is definitely later (around 1630) and may be correlated with Cassiano’s attempt to come to a first edition of the Treatise. Carlo Pedretti, rather, reported the presence of another Roman manuscript , Ms. 968 of the Casanatense Library, in which, moreover, he was able to interpret an almost unreadable footnote that reads verbatim like this: "Ask Zaccolini" (probably an indication by a scholar, who reserves himself the right to ask Zaccolini for a clarification on a particularly difficult passage) . But nowadays most suspects are facing a copy of the Treatise (or its subsidiaries) that Egnazio Danti had in Rome around 1585 (see also Claire Farago. Who Abridged Leonardo da Vinci’s Treatise on Painting?). And anyway, if it is possible to move forward for apographs, to understand under what circumstances Zaccolini was able to see some Leonardo ‘s autographs (as demonstrated by Ms Bell herself in the aforementioned ‘Zaccolini and Leonardo’s Manuscript A’, and as evidenced by the Cassiano dal Pozzo in a biography handwritten on Zaccolini) is nothing short of frustrating and allows us to assess first-hand how little we know of the adventures that Leonardo’s folios knew historically . 

[4] As already mentioned, Zaccolini’s manuscript consists of four volumes , the titles of which are, respectively: On Colors (Volume I) , Color Perspective (Volume II), Lineal Perspective (III) and the description of shadows produced by straight opaque bodies (IV). Bell, after years of study, became convinced (p. 133) that the manuscripts were bound disorderly and that in reality the Colour Perspective, which is undoubtedly the most significant volume – because its link with the dictates of Leonardo – should have concluded the work. And now we are faced here with a whole set of new problems. The manuscript of the Laurentian, as mentioned, is not autographed, but it is a copy produced by the secretariat of Cassiano dal Pozzo in view of a publication that never materialised and was left at a still largely premature stage. Ironically, then, even for the Zaccolini’s Treatise we actually do not know if the sequencing of the work really responds to what were the intentions of the author. A critical edition of the manuscript, which was discovered by Carlo Pedretti in 1972 and transcribed for a very small circle of scholars by Bell herself in her doctoral thesis at Brown University in 1983, is still missing. We are moved by empathy, when the author writes (p. 144 n. 26): “I had intended to publish a critical edition until medical disability created extraordinary obstacles and delays. Currently a team of scholars including Simona Rinaldi, Rosella Vodret, and Francesca Fiorani have agreed to collaborate on this project with me with a projected completion of 2012”. And our sympathy can only increase when Bell goes on saying that "my comments here are preliminary, based on a comparative reading but not a full understanding of Zaccolini’s sources of inspiration” (p. 131), with a testimony of modesty that appears nothing but false and it is not common to many other scholars of Leonardo. The critical edition (to date) has not yet appeared. 

[5] The Colour Perspective is divided into 17 sections of variable length that take the name of Treatises (see pp. 134 -136) - there is an internal contraddiction: Ms Bell quickly browses all of them up to XVI, saying that it is the last one. In the first eight, Zaccolini “proceeds in a logical order from theory to practice, from general precepts to refinements of those precepts, and then to specific and more limited applications” (p. 135). The following sections appear less ordered, and the doubt remains whether all were actually intended to be published or if, as mentioned, the manuscript copy commissioned by Cassiano has somehow turned upside-down or even tried to integrate the material. The tribute to Leonardo, as mentioned, is very eye-catching: “perhaps the most significant difference in the individual chapters is that Leonardo’s are short precepts, whereas Zaccolini’s are detailed commentaries. Leonardo was intent on distilling the essence of nature from its complexity until he could reduce it to concise mathematical axioms. Like a mathematician, he sought to identify first principles in a precise, logical structure. Thus, his short texts are either the precept alone, or the precept followed by an example, or an example concluding with a precept... Zaccolini, on the other hand, was a master at explanation. He could elaborate on one idea at length without getting derailed, carefully building a foundation for increasing complexity from one chapter to the next” (p. 137).

[6] On other occasions (see the aforementioned Zaccolini's Unpublished Perspective Treatise: Why Should We Care? in The Treatise on Perspective: Published and Unpublished and still Janis Bell, Filippo Gagliardi on Leonardo 's Perspective) it was said that the manuscript Treatise of Zaccolini still obtained success in artistic circles, was studied by Domenichino and Poussin and was also cited by Baglione, Bellori and Félibien.