ENGLISH VERSION Piergiacomo Petrioli. 'Gaetano Milanesi. Erudizione e storia dell’arte in Italia nell’Ottocento. Profilo e carteggio artistico'.

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro

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Piergiacomo Petrioli

Gaetano Milanesi.

Erudizione e storia dell'arte in Italia nell'Ottocento. Profilo e carteggio artistico [Scholarship and history of art in 19th Century Italy. Profile and letter exchange on art]

Accademia senese degli Intronati, 2004 [ma estate 2005]

Isbn 88-89073-01-2

[1] In his Per la storia dell’arte, published in 1887, Adolfo Venturi argues that only three Italians deserve to appear in the list of those who have dedicated themselves to the emerging discipline of art history: Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Giovanni Morelli and Gaetano Milanesi . His statement was widely shared. Yet, in our day, the figures of Cavalcaselle and Morelli enjoy a certainly greater popularity than Milanesi. On Cavalcaselle, it is easy to refer to the fundamental monograph by Donata Levi; as to Morelli, to the recent publication of the notebooks by Jaynie Anderson. About Gaetano Milanesi,virtually nothing can be reported, apart from a few pages of Paola Barocchi in more than one of his works (take for example the Introduction to the facsimile edition of the Opere di Giorgio Vasari cured by Milanesi, then re-published in Studi vasariani, and the revival of some of the writings of the Siena-based historian in the first volume of Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia. Dai neoclassici ai puristi, 1780-1861). Incredible, especially if we think we are talking about the man who published fundamental editions of Vasari's Lives or of Cennini’s Libro dell’arte. It was really high time to repair such a bad wrong. Piergiacomo Petrioli did it, in a work of not a small size, which yet the author defines as ‘necessarily partial’. Petrioli is wrongly modest, because the material that finally puts at the disposal of scholars is literally a real mine of knowledge. The almost physically tangible contradiction with reality (over a thousand pages of correspondence on art cannot be defined as ‘necessarily partial’) gives however an idea of the vastness of Gaetano Milanesi’s interests.

[2] Petrioli moves first from documents, as every scholar should make when proposing new sources to the attention of the public (and as Gaetano Milanesi, among the first in Italy, had taught): “The remarkable legacy of Gaetano Milanesi is preserved in the Biblioteca Comunale di Siena. It comprises, in addition to the personal library... nine large volumes of correspondence. Senders include some of the greatest players in the history of art and European culture of the time. In the fund are also included twenty-five volumes of manuscripts (transcripts of documents, drafts of unpublished articles, pamphlets ) in which Milanesi addresses key issues of the debate on arts at this time ... " (pp. 1-2). "This collection of letters was compiled by transcribing from the entire epistolary [note of the editor: i.e. from the nine volumes containing correspondence] all those letters that relate to themes, situations, and topics on research on history of arts, problems of restoration and conservation of works of art and monuments, and contemporary art. The result is a framework consisting of a selection of 1330 letters, a very varied landscape which highlights the intense and continuous relations which Gaetano Milanesi had with some of the greatest exponents of the history of art at his time ... " (pp. 203 -204 ).

[3] It is always with reference to the correspondence of the scholar from Siena that Petrioli develops his comments, singling out some of the aspects that most conspicuously emerge from the same, beginning with the formative years and the great importance which at that time played the attendance of the club Viesseux and the circles linked to the Antologia. "The Antologia is intent on rediscovering the values of Tuscan and Italian traditions...; these historical studies are conducted, however, not anymore according to a scholar and partially parochial idea, but following the models of the new historiography of German imprint, which aims at a rigorous recovery and study of the sources... Its pages host the writings of some of the most senior figures in the history of art of the time (worth among all Cicognara) in Italy and abroad [see Paola Barocchi, Gli scritti d’arte della Antologia di G.P. Viesseux 1821-1833 , Florence, S.P.E.S. 1979]. The publication in the Antologia of the writings of Baron Rumohr proved to be important, even for the formation of Milanesi. Translated from the Neapolitan Antonio Benci, they were a crucial step for introducing and popularizing in Italy a philological approach to art history... This thus created a valuable connection between art historians of the German and Florentine group, interested in the Tuscan Renaissance" (pp. 14-15 ). To simplify to the maximum, it is in the light of these few lines that should be read and interpreted the figure of Gaetano Milanesi, his career should be understood (Milanesi became director of the State Archives of Florence in 1861, at 48, and remained there until death, which occurred in 1895) and his choices as an author addressed. Philological approach and rigor in the interpretation of sources: the first "battlefield " is the one of local sources , the overcoming of mere erudition (typical of the Eighteenth-century) through a critique of the writings of Abbot Luigi De Angelis or of the "antiquarian" Ettore Romagnoli. They led later on to the publication of Documenti per la Storia dell’Arte Senese (between 1854 and 1856) and the Discorso sulla Storia Artistica Senese (1862). Soon after, he made further steps, encompassing the publication in 1859, along with his brother Carlo, of the second edition of the Book of Art of Cennino Cennini (conducted by interpolation on a scientific philological basis of the Medicean Laurentian Code P.78.23 and the Code Riccardiano 2190, while the first critical edition - in 1821 - had been based on another manuscript of more recent date) as well as the critical edition of the letters of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1875), up to the famous edition of Vasari published by Sansoni, which will be discussed later.

[4] And yet Milanesi was not an isolated figure and alienated from the contemporary world. This is shown by the epistolary, on the one hand highlighting the professional relationships with a multitude of Italian and foreign scholars, on the other hand witnessing the attendance of the artistic circles of the time, adherence to the Italian literature movement called ‘Purismo’, and the friendship with members of that movement like Luigi Mussini, to whom the Treatise on Painting by Cennino Cennini is dedicated. As to the relationships with Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, it is worth quoting some passages (the author of this work had already studied this in Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle e Gaetano Milanesi, published within Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle conoscitore e conservatore, Venezia, Marsilio, 1998). "The story [editor's note: dating problems in relation to the Majesty of Guido da Siena] clarifies how the critical methods of Cavalcaselle and Milanesi, so different from each other, resulted finally not antithetical but complementary (something of which the two scholars themselves were well aware). In other terms, the two in practice traced in parallel the fundamental guidelines of the novel exegetical science of art in Italy, in which connoisseurship and archival research must converge, merging the figure of the "connoisseur" and the schola. As reiterated by Donata Levi... [editor's note: in Cavalcaselle: il pioniere della conservazione dell’arte italiana, quoted., p. 192] : "In the working process of Cavalcaselle the archival document or entry were factual support, but not crucial"; just the opposite with Milanesi, which, however, in his seminal article Dell’erudizione e della critica nella storia delle belle arti reveals the close mutual dependence in the art-historical studies of documentary research and connoisseurship" (p. 39).

[5] Anyone who has even the most elementary notions about Vasari's Lives knows the importance of Gaetano Milanesi for a modern use of that work. Copying with Vasari meant for Milanesi to get to the very core of the problem of historiography that had accompanied him since the Antologia. The editions of Vasari's Lives were certainly not lacking, but all those published until Milanesi’s intervention are limited to a lesser or greater extent, to incense the artist's work, without checking his reliability on the basis of the sources (see on this Riscoperta del Vasari e dei primitivi. Puristi e antipuristi in Paola Barocchi, Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia. Dai neoclassici ai puristi, 1780-1861, pp. 443-553). On Vasari, Milanesi was merciless: although aware of his stature, the painter of Arezzo was regarded as a lively storyteller who loves to color and often distort the reality on the basis of a lively imagination (I am glad to read in the book on this an unpublished article by Milanesi, dated 1846). All those news that are not supported by documentation, for Milanesi, are to be considered completely unreliable. In short, over the course of nearly forty years, the Sienese scholar sifts Vasari and transforms him into a modern author, usable by the contemporary historiography of art because now finally comforted by philological investigation. Almost forty years, I said. Milanesi actually produced not one but two editions of the Vite. In the spring of 1846, along with his younger brother Carlo, his friend and companion Carlo Pini, and Vincenzo Marchese he began working to the edition that will be printed by the publishing house Le Monnier. "In October of 1849, Le Monnier started working to the print edition. Gaetano Milanesi, in practice, is the auditor general of the whole work, with the task of correcting and editing the writings of other scholars... The work... is completed and published in 1855. As from the beginning, it is felt as an essential point of reference, thanks to documentarist research, for a renewed practice of art history founded on the objective given of documents... " (pp. 85-86 ) . It should be noted that the text of the Vite is the Giuntina edition (1568) and that the four scholars refer to the Passigli edition, which saw the prints in Florence between 1832 and 1837, first edited by Giuseppe Montani and, once he died, Giovanni Masselli (also notes of the same edition are quoted). In 1868 Barbera published the Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architetti di Giorgio Vasari, selected and annotated by Gaetano Milanesi. It was an anthology for school use: "... the annotations are not abundant, as indeed required by a publication of primary educational and informative purposes; they are mostly drawn from those of the previous edition Le Monnier ...; nevertheless there are some new ones, and not of little importance" (p. 99) . It shows that Milanesi has certainly not abandoned the study of Vasari and that, indeed, the amount of documentation that directly or indirectly has accumulated since the publication Le Monnier makes now the time ripe for a new and more complete edition. These are the Opere di Giorgio Vasari, published in nine volumes by a Florentine publishing house , founded just in 1873 – it is Sansoni - , published between 1878 and 1885. The endeavour is conceived with many new elements, starting with the desire to present the complete set of the writings of Vasari and then also including the Ragionamenti (Arguments), published posthumously thanks to Giorgio Vasari the Younger and the Letters, with unpublished letters collated by Milanesi. The success of the new edition is once again triumphant, so that will be used routinely cite as Vasari - Milanesi. Of course, over the years, just as an ultimate consequence of the historiographical processes set in motion by Milanesi, there will be those who will identify some weakness (for instance, Schlosser in his Letteratura artistica), but the fact is that until the recent edition Bettarini-Barocchi – anybody who wanted to study the Vite could not disregard Milanesi’s text. 

[6] Still some brief remarks on the volume: the letters are cataloged in alphabetical order of correspondent and, within each corresponding partner, in chronological order, beginning by putting those letters for which it has not been possible to find any dating. The book opens with an essay by Bernardina Sani entitled Il carteggio artistico di Gaetano Milanesi. Un percorso nella moderna storia dell’arte italiana. The page numbering is reversed compared to what is usually done: Arabic numerals precede the Roman ones, with the letter taking over as from the start of the correspondence.