Historians of Italian Art Literature (Edizioni Labor)

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro

CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

Gli storici della letteratura artistica italiana [Historians of Italian art literature]

(Edizioni Labor)

[1 ] Today I want to talk about a really very simple specimen - catalogue of 34 pages only. The catalogue illustrates perhaps the most ambitious publishing project of the Italian post-war literature in the field of art. Ambitious project, we said, but unfortunately unlucky. In the mid- sixties, the Milanese publishing house Labor (founded in 1934 by Daniel Ercoli) launched the series of Gli storici della letteratura artistica italiana (historians of Italian art literature), edited by Angela Ottino Della Chiesa and Bruno Della Chiesa . In their introduction the editors clarify the breath of the project. We quote excerpts: "This collection includes photolithographic reproductions conducted on the original editions of twenty-five major texts of the history of Italian art from 1550 to the end of the eighteenth century .. Since a long time the need had been felt to reproduce these texts in facsimile of the original editions. But the pure reproduction, facsimile or otherwise, of the ancient text is not sufficient to the modern scholars of art history. What they need – for a rapid and certain consultation – are historical updates, current attributions, news about the works which went destroyed or damaged or were transferred abroad or lost at all, precise registers and accurate historical data. To the even lexical darkness of texts in question, to the inevitable errors, gaps, all changes... it has been responded by the compilation of introductions and indexes (to complement the texts) based on the findings of specific studies. Each work will therefore be accompanied by an introductory bio-bibliographic essay about the author, about his sources of information and subsequent studies to date, and an minutely analytical index on the artists, characters, places, monuments, and mobile works mentioned, as well as the difficulties in terminology, techniques and language contained in the text. These editorial sections have been entrusted, work by work, to particularly highly qualified scholars.... After the publication of the series, a general correlation alphabetical directory will serve as a guide and a link to all the works reprinted."

[2 ] In fact, things went very differently . Of the twenty-five works pledged, only five were published before the Labor editions would eventually go bankrupt. In some cases, the bio-bibliographic essays or directories – which were ready, but had not published because of the economic collapse of the publisher - saw the light with many years of delay. Here we propose the plan of the series as well as results from the specimen published by Editions Labor in 1967. We also indicate who should have taken care of the issues of the planned individual volumes, and specify whether, in the nearly four decades that separate us from those times, any of the works in question has been published elsewhere as a reference edition (to be clear , a real critical and annotated edition, not a mere reprint) . Very often, as we will see, it was not the case, and that in itself is enough to understand what we really missed.

[3] Plan of the collection:

Giorgio Vasari. Le vite (The lives) etc ... in the Torrentini (1550) and in the Giunti (1568 ) editions, edited by Angela Ottino Della Chiesa and Bruno Della Chiesa . Unpublished. Edition of the reference: Bettarini - Barocchi (published by Sansoni then SPES) ;

Giovanni Baglione. Le vite (The lives) etc. .. (1642), edited by Marco Rosci . Unpublished. See the edition by the Vatican Library, edited by Jacob Hess and Herwarth Röttgen (though not entirely completed) ;

Giovanni Battista Passeri. Le vite dei pittori, scultori ed architetti che hanno lavorato in Roma, morti dal 1641 al 1673 (The lives of the painters, sculptors and architects who have worked in Rome, dead between 1641-1673) (1722), edited by Valentino Martinelli and Anelia Pinna. Unpublished, please refer to a facsimile reprint by Forni;

Lione Pascoli . Le vite dei pittori e scultori ed architetti moderni (The lives of modern painters, sculptors and architects) (1730-1736) , edited by Valentino Martinelli and Anelia Pinna. Unpublished. In 1992 Electa Publishers Umbrian published a critical edition "promoted by Valentino Martinelli" ; 

Giovan Pietro Bellori. Le Vite (The lives) etc ... (Rome, 1672), edited by Anna Pallucchini . Unpublished. The reference edition is currently the critical edition by Evelina Borea in 1976 (Einaudi);

Raffaello Borghini. Il Riposo (The Rest), curated by Marco Rosci. Published in 1967 (1000 copies, retail price ITL. 30,000);

Francesco Scannelli. Il Microcosmo della Pittura (The Microcosm of Painting), curated by Guido Giubbini. Published in 1966 (1000 copies, retail price ITL. 20,000);

Luigi Scaramuccia. Le finezze de’ pennelli italiani (The subtleties of Italian painters, by Guido Giubbini). Published in 1965 (1000 copies, retail price ITL. 12,000);

Filippo Baldinucci. Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua (Notes on the Teachers of Drawing); edited by Angela Maria Romanini and Maria Civita Cardi. Unpublished. A facsimile reprint of the first edition was planned. The issue of reference is now the reprint of the second edition (the work of Ranalli), published by SPES between 1974 and 1975 (with indices by Antonio Boschetto). See also the index of the work written by Philip Pouncey;

Francesco Saverio Baldinucci. Vite dei pittori scritte dall’avvocato Francesco Baldinucci figlio di Filippo (Lives of the Painters written by the lawyer Francesco Baldinucci son of Filippo); edited by Detlef Heikamp and Giovanni Previtali. Unpublished;

Carlo Ridolfi. Le maraviglie dell’arte (The wonderful works of art) etc ... (1648), curated by Lionello Puppi. Unpublished. The Mazzaferro library owns a facsimile reprint of the third edition;

Marco Boschini. La carta del navegar pittoresco (The map of navigating and painting) (1660), prepared by ... [not shown]. Unpublished. A critical edition was made by Anna Pallucchini in 1966;

Anton Maria Zanetti. Della Pittura Veneziana e delle Opere Pubbliche de’ Veneziani Maestri (Of Venetian Painting and Public Works of Venetian Masters) (1771) by Francesco Valcanover.Unpublished. There appears to exist no modern annotated edition;

Tomaso Temanza. Le Vite (The lives) ... (1778), edited by Liliana Grassi. Published in 1966;

Bartolomeo Dal Pozzo. Le vite dei pittori, degli scultori e degli architetti veronesi (The lives of the painters, sculptors and architects from Verona) (1718), edited by Licisco Magagnato . Not published in the series, but still came out and printed by Labor in 1967 (i.e. before their bankruptcy) first in a edition "private", than in 1800 copies, for the centenary of the Banca Mutua Popolare di Verona;

Francesco Maria Tassi. Vite dei pittori e scultori e architetti bergamaschi (Lives of the painters, sculptors and architects from Bergamo) (1797), edited by Franco Mazzini. Published between 1969 and 1970 (1000 copies);

Giambattista Zaist. Notizie storiche dei pittori, scultori ed architetti cremonesi (Historical news on the painters, sculptors and architects from Cremona) (1774), edited by Alfredo Puerari.Unpublished. However, the work was published in 1976 by Banca Popolare di Cremona;

Raffaello Soprani. Le vite dei pittori, scoltori ed architetti genovesi (The lives of the painters, and architects, sculptors from Genoa) (1674), edited by Gian Vittorio Castelnovi. Unpublished. Critical edition in preparation (since twenty years) by Maurizia Migliorini;

Raffaello Soprani and Carlo Giuseppe Ratti. Le vite dei pittori, scultori ed architetti genovesi, in questa seconda edizione riveduta, accresciute ed arricchite da Carlo Giuseppe Ratti (The lives of the painters, sculptors and architects of Genoa, in this second edition, revised, augmented and enriched by Carlo Giuseppe Ratti) (1768), edited by Gian Vittorio Castelnovi . Unpublished. Published in the late 1990s with a rare edition, with commentary edited by Maurizia Migliorini;

Carlo Giuseppe Ratti. Delle vite dei pittori, scultori ed architetti genovesi tomo secondo (The lives of the painters, sculptors and architects Genoese second volume) (1769), edited by Gian Vittorio Castelnovi. Unpublished. Published in the late 1990s with a rare edition with commentary edited by Maurizia Migliorini ;

Carlo Cesare Malvasia. Felsina Pittrice (1678), edited by Giancarlo Cavalli and Andrea Emiliani. Unpublished. Please refer to a facsimile reprint of 1841-1844 edition by Forni. Only as from 2012 to the National Gallery in Washington has given birth to a very ambitious project to publish a critical edition of the work,in sixteen volumes (Harvey Miller Publishers). To coordinate this endeavour Elizabeth Cropper and Lorenzo Pericolo. At the moment they released the first volume, dedicated to the "primitive" painters in Bologna. The second delivery (but in fact the thirteenth volume in the series), with the life of Domenichino, is about to be published;

Luigi Crespi. Vite dei pittori bolognesi non descritte nella Felsina Pittrice (Lives of Bolognese painters not discussed in Felsina Painter) (1769), edited by Stephen Bottari , Renato Roli and Anna Ottani Cavina. Unpublished. There is no modern critical edition. Please refer to the Forni facsimile reprint;

Giovan Pietro Zanotti. Storia dell’Accademia di Bologna (History of the Academy of Bologna) (1739), edited by Stephen Bottari, Renato Roli and Anna Ottani Cavina. Unpublished. Please refer to Forni facsimile reprint. It should however be mentioned that Renato Roli and Anna Ottani Cavina have succeeded, in 1977 , to publish the commentary, written originally for Labor in the series Acts and Memoirs of Accademia Clementina of Bologna;

Gerolamo Baruffaldi. Vite dei pittori e scultori Ferraresi. (Lives of the painters and sculptors of Ferrara) (1844-1846), edited by Amalia Mezzetti. Unpublished. Please refer to reprint Forni. It should however be said that the Mezzetti has managed to publish, between 1980 and 1983 , the Index raisonné of the work (with the collaboration of Emanuele Mattaliano) ;

Bernardo De Dominici. Vite dei pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani (Lives of the painters, sculptors and architects of Naples) (1742-1743), edited by Raffaello Causa, Giuseppe Scavizzi e Arnaldo Venditti. Unpublished. The critical edition was published between 2004 and 2007 by Fiorella Sricchia Santoro and Andrea Zezza (Paparo editore);

Guglielmo Della Valle. Lettere sanesi sopra le Belle Arti (Letters from Siena on the Fine Arts) (1782-1786), edited by Enzo Carli and Moriando Margherita Lenzini. Unpublished. There is no modern critical edition;

Lione Pascoli. Vite de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti perugini (Lives of the painters, sculptors and architects of Perugia) (1732), prepared by Valentino Martinelli and Bruno Toscano . Unpublished. There is no modern critical edition. Please refer to a facsimile reprint by Multigrafica