Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
Felsina pittrice
Lives of the Bolognese Painters
Volume one: Early Bolognese Painting
Edited by Elizabeth Cropper and Lorenzo Pericolo
Part Two
Harvey Miller Publishing, 2012
Isbn 978-1-905375-84-4
 |
| Francesco Francia, Adoration, 1498-1499, Bologna, National Gallery Fonte: Wikimedia Commons |
[9] The Felsina pittrice was written in clear disagreement with Vasari (Malvasia worked on 1568 Vasari’s version called Giuntina, reprinted in Bologna in 1647 by Carlo Manolessi) What is that Malvasia really disliked? First of all, the underlying idea of history underpinning the Vite, namely the vision of history as a "fracture": the art that, because of the barbarian invasions, inevitably died and then was reborn when, by the will of God, Cimabue was born in Florence. Along this view, Cimabue himself learned the secrets of the trade from "some Greek painters", who were brought to Florence by the local government to rediscover the painting. Than he exceeded them widely in skill and then in turn was overcome by Giotto and so on. More than just a naive and distorted Tuscan-centric vision of art, Malvasia did not conceive history as a fracture, such as ‘death’ and ‘rebirth’. For him, history was first of all tradition and memory. Even the art is tradition and memory, and proceeds by stratifications. It is true that the ‘dark ages’ marked a decline of artistic production, but never a total disappearance, and when things started to get better, the recovery of the quality of the art world happened in Florence as well as in Bologna, and in many other cities of Italy. The idea of Malvasia, therefore, was not to replace the supremacy of Tuscany with that of Bologna, but to propose a different way of seeing art development of art: no fracture, no death, but tradition and development. What the Bolognese count reproached to Vasari was that he had not wanted to see the traces of this Italian renaissance when (more than a century before) they had to be even more clearly visible, just to superimpose the theoretical model that was actually a strategically convenient in Florence. To corroborate his thesis, Malvasia called the testimony of writers who had already argued with Vasari in this regard: for example, Giulio Mancini (to whose unpublished work our author drew frequently) and Carlo Ridolfi. If the story is first and foremost memory, the main task of the historian is to preserve it: and therefore to go in search not only of ‘contemporary emergencies’, but also of the testimonies of so-called ‘primitives’. Malvasia did not go around inspecting frescoes and paintings to injure Vasari or because he is convinced that such works are of a particular quality. He did it because they are the pictorial evidence of ancient memory, and memory must be preserved. Then, it is clear that we are not faced with a modern historian (and least of all with a modern art historian): for example, being a man of tradition, Malvasia attached particular importance not only to the written sources, but also to oral and popular wisdom. It was an intentional, programmatic choice, as Elizabeth Cropper states, quoting a passage from the Felsina Pittrice at p. 35 (which in turn had been already highlighted by Perini Folesani): " I will credit single individuals [who] after the memory of events had ceased, took to writing them down entirely according to their own will and wishes. And does written history, in which we are supposed to believe so firmly, offer us more than oral history, by which we do not wish to abide? Do we not see falsification every day in Herodotus, Thucydides, and similar untrustworthy authors?" With the clear limits of a man who lived in the mid-Seventeenth century, Malvasia showed nevertheless particular sensitivity: one of all (resulting mainly from the Scritti originali), that for the so-called "ocular inspection". The sources, whether written or spoken, were to be checked, when possible, with the personal observation of the images. Malvasia as an "expert- connoisseur" before his time? Much simpler, Malvasia was a man of his time and of his country. He was member of the University of Bologna, where Marcello Malpighi taught medicine (he knew about the Felsina project) and Gian Domenico Cassini astronomy. The latter was a great friend of Carlo Malvasia’s cousin. Therefore Malvasia borrowed the inspection method of the ‘ocular inspection’ from the university of sciences in order to transfer it to the arts (p. 7).
 |
| Amico Aspertini, Madonna in glory with saints (detail), Lucca, Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi Fonte: Wikimedia Commons |
[10] Due to the ‘ocular inspection’ Malvasia was also able to publish in 1686 Le pitture di Bologna (The paintings of Bologna), the first artistic guide of the city, in whose preface he found a way to defend himself from the heavy criticism against his Felsina. Cropper rightly highlights at least two important aspects of the 1686 guide, also in relation to Felsina: first, the idea of providing visitors the opportunity to see all the protagonists of arts in Bologna, regardless of their personal taste, thereby including then also the primitives, as well as, with regard to the moderns, certainly not only the Carracci brothers. It would then be up to the visitor to judge. And second, the modernity of paintings of Bologna, as a guide aimed at a genuine "ocular inspection ": "Malvasia accepts that his reader will not wish to walk the streets of all four quarters systematically, given the wide and irregular distribution of the works of art to be found in the city. He has marked with an asterisk in the margins those outstanding works that he imagines the reader… will want to go in search of. And he urges this reader to use the index to find the names of artists whose work he likes and then compile a list of the locations of those works. In other words, Malvasia prescribes no narrow chronological genealogy or official itinerary based on a canon, but rather the ocular inspection of works distributed in space, following personal taste in an experience that continuously tests hypotheses in pursuit of truth. Through this experience the traveller would be “debunked and well-informed" (p. 17).
 |
| Annibale Carracci, Quo vadis, Domine?, 1602, London, National Gallery Source: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/annibale-carracci-christ-appearing-to-saint-peter-on-the-appian-way |
[11] The terms of the controversy with Vasari are more or less clear. Malvasia had no intention to cancel Vasari or to replace him, and, indeed, often referred to him as a chronologically nearer and more reliable source. Things got worse, and much more, when he clashed with Filippo Baldinucci. Baldinucci represented Vasari’s orthodoxy. In the same years in which Malvasia was writing his Felsina, Baldinucci, on behalf of the Medici, was writing the Notizie dei Professori del Disegno. This was not a simple upgrade of Vasari’s Vite, but the rewriting of a work (more than a hundred years later than the original) in which the thesis of the death and rebirth of the art in Florence was raised to absolute dogma. “Expanding upon Vasari’s account, Baldinucci describes how painting and sculpture, having passed from Greece to Rome, had been driven out of Italy and back to Greece and Egypt by waves of barbarian inundations. Together with architecture, the sister arts were then saved by God through a special dispensation to Tuscany. And in the first volume Baldinucci provided not only a family tree of Cimabue’s own (highly questionable) noble descent, but also the tree of the earliest artists working in descent from Cimabue down to Giovanni da Campi (d. 1339)… If he was granted a long enough life, Baldinucci intended to construct an “albero universale” that would include some two thousand names of all the artists active up to his own time and related through their teachers” (p. 9). Baldinucci was classification, erudition, genealogy forced into a canon which cannot be discussed. Malvasia, in this sense, was quite eccentric to his setting. Malvasia was the enemy. Mind you: Baldinucci’s dogma was fine for the Medici (who, understandably, promoted it). It also worked very well even in Rome, which accepted it to the very maximum with a specific variant: that at some point," the splendour of the arts" moved from Florence to the Urbs, thanks to the enlightened policy of the Popes. Circles in Florence and Rome had a clear perception of the danger represented by Malvasia. To eliminate the danger they had only one solution: destroying him. The first volume of Felsina came out at the end of 1677 (although on the title the year 1678 appeared). The first volume of Baldinucci’s ‘Notizie’ was released in 1681. But already in 1679, the Florentine historic published an excerpt from the opera, il ‘Saggio’ (the Survey), in which, in addition to some lives, presented twenty-two pages of refutation of Felsina. He cared personally to take him to Rome (he had not yet been there) to distribute it in ecclesiastical circles. Soon after (I omit the intermediary steps) exploded the controversy over Raphael called “boccalaio urbinate" (mug seller). It would go on forever (see Girotto, p. 53-55). The danger was escaped. Malvasia had lost all credibility in the eyes of Baldinucci’s contemporaries. Malvasia’s work became nothing more than an opportunity for storytelling.
 |
| Agostino Carracci, Communion of St. Jerome, 1592-1597, Bologna, National Gallery Source: Wikimedia Commons |
 |
| Ludovico Carracci, Madonna dei Bargellini, 1588, Bologna, National Gallery |
[12] The question of the ‘boccalaio urbinate’ is not my thing at all. I do not think it was a lapse nor I believe to the hypothesis of an act of "sabotage" without the knowledge of the author. I do not believe it, because Malvasia showed such attention in the stages immediately preceding and following the publication, that such a gaffe seems unlikely. One thing is certain: the Bolognese historian committed (metaphorically) suicide. The work would not be reviewed in any Italian magazine. To tell the truth, Malvasia had to be somehow conscious that the ideas at the basis of the Felsina would be hardly accepted. In fact, when abandoned the initial hypothesis to dedicate the volume to the Senate of Bologna, the author decided to look abroad and to address himself to Louis XIV, the Sun King. Malvasia was seeking legitimacy abroad. It is known that Malvasia maintained relations of personal friendship with Roger de Piles, who probably had provided some information in preparing the work. Surely, Carlo’s choice is to promote the work in French circles on the one hand, and to give prestige to it with a dedication to Louis XIV and - why not - to derive some personal benefit from the French crown for the demonstration of admiration he provided. In French libraries several specimens are conserved, which Malvasia sent for promotional purposes. In addition to the copy sent to Louis XIV, a copy was sent to Roger de Piles. A further exemplary “was sent to the members of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris, accompanied by a brief poem and signed in Malvasia’s own hand; this was then presented to the Académie, which met in plenary session on 19 November 1678, by Gédéon Barbier Du Metz, arousing lively interest among the present” (Girotto, p. 52). The Felsina was also reviewed in the Journal des Sçavans. For a history of the reception of the work in France, which also affected large transalpine art collectors, see Chiara Gauna, “M come Malvasia e Mariette: disegni, stampe e giudizi di stile tra Bologna, Parigi e Vienna” in Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, , Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, serie 5, 2011, 3/1.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento