Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
Francesca Muzio (a cura di)
Un trattato
universale dei colori. Il Ms. 2861 della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna [A Universal Treatise of Colours. Ms 2861 at the University Library of Bologna].
Leo S. Olschki editore, 2012
[1]
The ms. 2861 of the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna has its own particular
history. Definitely, it always attracted the interest of scholars. Mary P. Merrifield included its transcript within its Original Treatises On the Arts
of Painting, calling the manuscript Segreti per colori (Secrets for colours)
in the year 1849. At that time the manuscript was preserved in the Library of
the Regular Canons at the Convent of San Salvatore di Bologna, with mark 165,
but had already travelled a lot. It had been confiscated from the religious by
the French in the epoch of Napoleonic requisitions (see Paul Wescher, I furti
d’arte. Napoleone e la nascita del Louvre), but had been returned to Bologna with the restoration.
Years later (1867), following the suppression of certain ecclesiastical bodies,
the code came into possession of the University Library, assuming precisely the mark 2861. The then director
of the Library, Olindo Guerrini, let it be transcribed and prepared a new
edition, together with Corrado Ricci, as he did not know about Merrifield’s
edition. So the Libro dei colori. Segreti del sec XV (Book of colors - Secrets
of the XV century) appeared in 1887. (Very often is still ignored that
Merrifield acted well before). Just of no importance, to the contrary, is the
edition by Castellani of 2007. Moreover, there is a modern transcription (2008) of the
manuscript (the edition is edited by Pietro Baraldi, available online at http://www.bub.unibo.it/it-IT/Biblioteca-digitale/Contributi/Manoscritto-bolognese.aspx?LN=it-IT&idC=61817
[2]
Francesca Muzio now proposes a new modern transcription of the code, a transcription
of definite interest. Muzio provides some new elements, drawing however conclusions
which, honestly, leave us perplexed. First of all, she reports (p. VI) that Giovambattista
Passeri, in his Istoria delle Maioliche fatte in Pesaro e ne’ paesi circonvicini (An history of the porcelain made in
Pesaro and in surrounding villages) (Venice , 1758) transcribed the recipes for
glazes for ceramics contained in the code. Passeri said explicitly that he had
consulted the code of San Salvatore, and identified it with sufficient clarity
to establish that we are talking about ms. 2681. Passeri (1758), therefore -
Muzio says - had the merit of having revived the code to the attention of the
technicians, "long before M.P. Merrifield published a few recipes in 1849". Now, maybe it's time for a critical discussion. Passeri in his Istoria indeed
mentioned the code, but without any mark or description (except for saying that
it is written partly in Latin and partly in the vernacular and that it dates
back to the late 1400s); he transcribed a maximum of twenty recipes in a couple
of pages, without framing them in whatsoever context. Merrifield, to the
contrary, in her Treatises transcribed de
facto all eight chapters of the code, devoting to them nearly three hundred
pages. I honestly do not understand why to boost Passeri’s role and belittle
Merrifield’s merits. Especially since, in her introduction to the transcript,
Merrifield specifically mentions Passeri just about glazes
and pottery (p. 338), however without noting that some recipes of the code were
transcribed by Passeri himself.
[3]
Thus, why to amplify Passeri’s importance to diminish that of Merrifield? Perhaps,
the curator wants to strengthen the main thesis of her own work, namely to
state on the one hand that the code indeed dates back to mid fifteenth century,
but that on the other hand (being effectively a compilation) it was assembled in
Pesaro by local circles operating in the creation of ceramics and majolica (although
affected by strong influences from Siena as the recipe-book’s overall plant). In her
introduction, Muzio provides a series of hints leading to that conclusion, based
on archival research, providing sometimes overly forced insight. From this
point of view it is not clear why the fact that Passeri (from Pesaro) knew the
code is not in itself a sufficient hint, without any need to go further. In
short, while recognising the undoubted validity of this new transcription, and the attention that has been paid (especially
in philological terms), the impression is that the curator let herself carry
away and transformed hints into firm evidence, an evidence that probably will
never have . Just for completeness , it should be noted that Merrifield had
instead suggested a completely different origin of the code (basically in
Bologna) and that Guerrini and Ricci have given up completely in this respect,
as they were aware of the compilation nature of the work and therefore of the
serious risk that the origin of the recipes would be extremely heterogeneous.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento