ENGLISH VERSION Alessio Mattioli, Modo di fare i smalti coloriti dato da Alessio Mattioli per uso de’ Mosaici alla Revd. Fabbrica di S. Pietro di Roma (1731)

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Alessio Mattioli

Modo di fare i smalti coloriti dato da Alessio Mattioli per uso de’ Mosaici alla Revd. Fabbrica di S. Pietro di Roma [On the Way to Produce Glass Pastes, written by Alessio Mattioli for the purpose of repairing the mosaics in St. Peter in Rome]

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Il mosaico parietale. Trattatistica e ricette dall'Alto Medioevo al Settecento

A cura di Paola Pogliani e Claudio Seccaroni

Nardini editore, 2010

[1] The handbook by Alessio Mattioli is on pages 110-115 of the book. In the introductory chapters of the same book, Paola Pogliani and Claudio Sacconi published a survey entitled “Il ricettario di Alessio Mattioli e la produzione degli smalti per i mosaici della Fabbrica di San Pietro” (di Paola Pogliani e Claudio Seccaroni).

[2] Alessio Mattioli worked for over twenty years in the production of glass pastes for the creation of mosaic surfaces in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Since the years following the Council of Trent, the Church had shown particular interest in the mosaic as a form of recovery of the religious spirit which had manifested itself first of all in the early Christian churches. The main difficulties, however, were of a technical nature. The production of glass paste was located almost exclusively in Venice and the range of colours that resulted was quite limited, leading to outcomes that certainly could not compete from a qualitative point of view with the most common altarpieces. Mattioli became famous in Rome because of the ability to produce "opaque paste which satisfied the requirement of pictorial mimesis and made it possible to achieve an extensive variety of shades. The importance of Mattioli’s innovations mainly consists in having developed a not very glassy compound with which it was possible to produce totally opaque glazes, suitable for providing numerous gradations for each colour. This allowed to extend the range of tones necessary for the realisation of articulated chiaroscuro painting"(pp. 60-61). Mattioli was known in particular for his ability to create a glaze with purple colour called porporino, of which he apparently had the ability to create sixty-eight different shades. As was often the case at the time (we are in the first half of 1700), this fabricator born in Ascoli (we know very little of his biography) was tied exclusively to the Fabric of St. Peter's since 1731. Moreover, as from 1743, given his skills, he obtained in turn by the Fabric of St. Peter the right to be the exclusive manufacturer of glass pastes for the Basilica. The technique of production, of course, was surrounded by absolute secrecy, but at the time of concluding the first contract with the Fabric, in 1731, Mattioli physically handed over a manuscript containing the "secret of the mosaic of cinnabar and its gradations, written and sealed." The goal of the Fabric was obvious: in the case of death or of any other reason that would have stopped the production by Mattioli, it would have been possible to refer to the manuscript that guarded technical secrets. This would have made feasible to continue producing pastes of the same quality with other artisans.

[3] What is certain is that the manuscript went lost almost immediately (certainly before 1743, the year of the second and most important contract). Mattioli was displeased (unfair competition has never been appreciated) and expressed his disappointment in writing. However, he was careful to downplay the importance of the handbook he had delivered in 1731, since in the meantime he had acquired significant technical improvements in the production of porporino. Somewhere, however, the original manuscript continued to exist, given that in 1744-1749, a German, Frederick Stribal, wrote a translation in his native language, still preserved in the Vatican archives. In conclusion, whether the original creator wanted or not, in some way the recipes by Mattioli had their own circulation. 

[4] In 1879, Giuliano Vanzolini published in Pesaro the third edition of Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio di Cipriano Piccolpasso. The appendix of that work also included “Notizie intorno al fabbricare la majolica fina raccolte dal Canonico Gianandrea Lazzarini parte in Roma, parte dal Sig. Filippo Antonio Calegari, e molte più dal Sig. Giuseppe Roletti professore di detta manifattura nelle Fabbriche di Torino e Milano”. It was an extensive anthology of recipes in which a specific given remained substantially unnoticed in the past: a core of prescriptions relating to glass paste, entitled “Modo di fare i smalti coloriti dato da Alessio Mattioli per uso de’ Mosaici alla Revd. Fabbrica di S. Pietro di Roma”. The title of the section made the authors of this paper (in particular, this aspect has drawn the attention of Claudio Seccaroni) suspect that this might be at least a copy of the manuscript delivered by Mattioli to the Vatican in 1731. He assumed that such copy might have been transcribed by or on behalf of Gianandrea Lazzarini from Pesaro, as recognized in some way by the same Vanzolini. Researches were therefore conducted among the papers of Vanzolini’s Archive, now preserved at the Oliveriana Library of Pesaro, and two texts directly relatable to those published in the appendix of ‘Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio’ have been indeed found. These are two transcripts of the Treaty of Mattioli (both marked with ms. 934, folder VIII), the first incomplete and the second one with all twenty-seven chapters that have been published by Vanzolini. It seems reasonable to assume that these are copies of the original manuscript of 1731 (or of another copy) ordered by Lazzarini , delivered to Vanzolini and included by the latter as an appendix to Piccolpasso. The discrepancies of the manuscripts with the printed text are minimal, so that it was decided to bring here the version published in 1879, highlighting any differences in footnotes.