Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION
Luciano Mazzaferro
The Original Treatises of Mary Philadelphia Merrifield
Part Three: The manuscripts connected with the Edwards family
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| Venice, Doge's Palace (Palazzo Ducale), The Chamber of the Great Council |
JUNE 2018: This post was published in 2014. Afterwards, an important set of letters were discovered in Brighton. They were sent by Mary Philadelphia Merrifield to her husband from Italy during the trip she conducted there between 1845 and 1846, in search of manuscripts evidencing the artistic techniques of the ancient Italian masters. Much of the information contained in this post may therefore be outdated, incomplete and sometimes incorrect. I published the letters in 2018 in La donna che amava i colori. Mary P. Merrifield. Lettere dall’Italia (1845-1846) – i.e. The Lady Who Loved Colours. Mary P. Merrifield. Letters from Italy (1845-1846) – Milan, Officina Libraria, 2018, isbn 88-99765-70-5. I would therefore like to point out this new publication to anybody interested. Nevertheless, I am keeping the old posts visible, as they testify what information was available before the letters were discovered and how the research on Mary P. Merrifield has evolved in recent years.
* * *
Note: Around 1998, our
father, Luciano Mazzaferro, devoted several months to the study of the 'Original
Treatises' published by Mary Philadelphia Merrifield in 1849. The result of his
studies is witnessed by a manuscript of about fifty pages that we are displaying
in full, divided into four parts: first of all the manuscripts found by Ms Merrifield
in Paris (the so-called Le Bègue manuscripts), then the Volpato manuscript, further
on those of Pietro and Giovanni Edwards, and finally all the rest. The notes to
the text are editorial and compiled in 2014, and of course take account of
updates appeared since the time of compilation to date.
This essay is part of a
series devoted to the life and works of Mary Philadelphia Merrifield. For the
first part, we refer to Giovanni Mazzaferro, “Mary Philadelphia Merrifield, the Lady of Brighton who loved the colours”.
It encompasses pages
885 - 889. Pietro Edwards came from an English Catholic family, which had immigrated
in our country after the well-known events of 1688 [1], and was by then firmly
integrated in Italy. He wrote in a good Italian [2], only rarely coloured by some
typical features of the Venetian dialect. At the end of '700 and early '800, in
some documents and writings about him, his surname was sometimes italianised as
Eduard; then, the original version ‘Edwards’ was re-established with the
result, however, to lead to inaccuracies and doubts which even now have not been
completely overcome. Giovanni Previtali [3] shows interest "for the
Englishman Pietro Edwards"; the IBN (Index
Bio-Bibliographicus Notorum Hominum, Corpus Alphabeticum. I Sectio generalis -
Bibliographic Index of Famous People, Alphabetical Apparatus, Section I -
General) [4] defines him as an "Italian" placing however, as a
precaution, a question mark, testifying the disorientation of compilers [5].
The text of the
conference, found at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, was partially
transcribed by the son of Merrifield (p. 848). The location of the manuscript is
not specified and it is to be assumed that it was not at all a distraction: the
text, kept in the office of the secretary of the Academy (p. 847), and not in
the archive or in the library, was possibly devoid of any mark. In the
collection edited by Merrifield these pages appear after the writing of Giovanni
Edwards, Pietro’s son: mainly for chronological reasons, we have reversed here the
order of presentation. Ms Merrifield prepared a single introductory note for
the two Edwards (pp. 845-848). The English version of these texts was not
accompanied by the original Italian text “as this MS. is rather historical than
technical” (p. 848).
After these
preliminary indications, it is good to dwell on the reasons which led Ms Merrifield
to devote some attention to Pietro Edwards, as well as on the ‘scarcely
fruitful’ outcome of her work in Venice, as she herself declared. When she came
closer in her studies to the last decades of the eighteenth century and the
beginning of the nineteenth century, Ms Merrifield did not feel anymore the
need to collect unpublished documentary material on the technique practiced by
the artists of that period: this was true both for those artists who were still
linked to an exuberant expressive taste as well as to those who adhered to the
new approach that was peculiar to the neo-classical age. She preferred instead
to focus on the restoration activity of those years, moved by the purpose we have
already mentioned at the beginning of this review, namely the desire to provide
useful insights to the British specialists working in that field. Ms
Merrifield’s focus was pinned on the Venetian school of restoration and,
indeed, on Pietro Edwards, who had been the most prominent representative
hereof. His activity had already attracted the attention of the circles in
London: "This restoration by Pietro Edwards" - you can read on p. 845
- "has been noticed in the Art Union".
[6] The quote is probably explained by the large credit that some art scholars
had reserved to the work of Pietro Edwards. Think first of all to Luigi Lanzi,
an author widely followed in Italy and abroad, whose Storia pittorica (History of painting) had been fully translated
into English by T. Roscoe in 1828. [7] In fact, Lanzi, in this work of large
and well-deserved resonance, had dedicated to the renovation work carried out
in Venice (and its most valuable exponent) a passage whose tones were more than
flattering. They are reproduced herafter with some cuts exclusively due to
reasons of space: "... a procedure has to be remembered" - he wrote
at the end of the eighteenth century "which in Venice had experienced a strong
development. While it does not tend to multiply paintings, it is nevertheless
highly advantageous to painting, tending to preserve us the works of the old
masters; and the procedure is to freshen and tidy up their pictures. This activity
was more required in Venice than in any other city, since the climate - very
adverse especially to oil paintings - never ceases with its salts to distress and
alter them. Therefore, that wise government took the decision to sustain the
activity of artists, who would watch over the preservation of public paintings
that were deteriorating... A workshop was opened ... in 1778 in a very large
hall in Saints John and Paul, and the presidency of the work was assigned to the
commendable Mr Pietro Edwards. The operations that are done around each painting
are many and long, and executed with incredible accuracy ... "[8]. Nor
should it be forgotten that, a few years after the first Italian edition of
Lanzi, his judgment had reappeared without substantial changes and, if
anything, with a firmer and more persuasive tone in the text of another
talented scholar of Venetian things. After having provided news on the
restoration made of paintings in his city, he had concluded that the Government
of the Republic of Venice could have not performed a better choice, when he had
decided to entrust the care of the whole enterprise to the eminent Mr Pietro
Edwards. I am referring to G.A. Moschini, known for his various publications:
first for a study of the Letteratura
veneziana del XVIII secolo (Venetian literature of the eighteenth century)
and in particular, for the third volume of this work in which he provides a
profile of Venetian art of those times, containing the judgment on Edwards [9];
thus for the guides of Padua [10] and Venice [11] and for various other
writings also designed and minted in such a way as to end up in the hands of
visitors, including foreigners, with obvious cultural pretensions. Ms
Merrifield, who often surprises us for the knowledge of texts of very low
resonance and almost unknown in the same Italian cultural circles, could not
have escaped the assessments by Moschini, an author whose reputation among
English specialists was never ephemeral, even before repertoires and
bibliographic guides made possible to spread the knowledge of his works and to
credit his wide reliability.
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| Tintoretto, The Heaven, Chamber of the Great Counsil, Doge's Palace, venice |
In the few pages
reproduced by Merrifield, Pietro Edwards takes a position in the now
long-standing controversy on whether to carry out restoration work or not. If
before 1730 or 1740 every employee in the work of restoration followed
uncritically the prevailing trends, in the following decades - this is the
author's thesis - different operators, warned by the many mistakes past,
adopted a much better and without any doubt satisfactory method. The revision
of the procedures for restoration - you can read on page 885 - continued in a
gradual and continuous way, “so that we can maintain on the base of
indisputable facts, proved by the testimony of more than sixty years, that the
art is now carried to a point of the highest utility, and has become so much
the more valuable and important inasmuch as the necessity of our having
recourse to its aid is daily augmenting”. The speech by Pietro Edwards is a
convinced and passionate defence about the work done by the restorers of his
time. The arguments in the opposite direction do not hold up to the
verification of facts and are often based on absurd ("foolish") errors
on time assignment. In fact certain
renovations, unquestionably badly made, were wrongly considered to belong to
the last decades, while they did belong to earlier times, when empirical
criteria now definitely overcome were still followed.
As you can see, Pietro
Edwards rejects the polemic positions of his detractors and even disagrees with
the extremely cautious positions of those who, following the principles already
established by A.M. Zanetti [12] recommended recurring to restoration only
under very exceptional conditions. It would be unfair however to think that,
for a general bias or simply for the sake of his craft, Pietro Edwards were led
- as some "ridipintori" of past times - to legitimize actions lacking
any serious motivation as well as deprived of any practical perspectives of
success. Although the present "note" does not focus on it, it should
also be taken into account that Edwards enunciated on several occasions some firm
points, which he never gave up. Already in a writing dating back to October of
1777, he railed against the deformers of "a picture by Leandro Bassano,
wholly repainted from top to bottom with inexpressible impudence" [13] and
warned against the "trickeries of criminal artists" [14]. Alessandro
Conti recalled, referring the precise words, that Edwards divided pictures into
four categories: those "who have no need whatsoever of any repair";
those "in the extreme opposite, reduced to such a serious state of deterioration
so that they did no longer admit any restoration"; then the "paintings
susceptible to be sufficiently repaired, but which - in the end – might not have
been worth the cost of this operation given the triviality of their merit".
Finally, a "fourth series of works" that are characterized both by
their "degree of value and merit" as well as by both the
"likelihood of success" of the restoration [15]. And he recommended intervening
just for this fourth and final group of works. Conti cites another writing by
Edwards where, in his capacity as "Inspector to the restoration of the
paintings of public reason", he requires operators to avoid any arbitrariness
and to refrain from renovations and changes made with the intent to remedy
errors, even obvious, of the artist whose work was potentially submitted to
restoration: "this spirit of censorship" - he told with acumen -
"... could easily degenerate into a dangerous license". [16]
The passionate
speech on restoration is coloured with topics of great interest, such as when Mr
Edwards shows a focus on "the useful practical treatise of Watin" (p.
888) - that is, to L'art du peintre,
doreur, vernisseur (The art of the painter, gilder and polisher), the
second edition of which had appeared in Paris in 1773 [17] - or when he gives a
large credit to Antoine-François Fourcroy [18] and other researchers in the
chemical industry. Edwards belongs to the Age of Enlightenment, is proud to
live in that age and to reap the benefits of it; he loves modern findings and -
even if he avoids to get rid of the experience already gained in previous
schools – he feels nevertheless the need to revise it in the light of recent
scientific discoveries. It would certainly be useful to follow him on all these
points, trying to establish, on the basis of reliable evidence, what was new
and what was old in his theoretical positions, and in the orientations that he imparted
to the "professors" engaged in the restoration. But one thing is
certain: Ms Merrifield does not care at all on this, watch with dismay and
despair the little material that she has managed to collect, and for the first
time after so many successes, she feels insecure and uncertain, like if the
earth gave way under her feet: "... the extracts I was able to
procure" – she warns on page 845 - "are extremely meagre." She
committed herself to look for and to learn more, but eventually she ended up
with very little in his hands.
But what did Ms
Merrifield want to find? What did interest her to such an extent as not to give
any importance to the suggestions which the short writing by Edwards still offered
her? What was her dominant thought and what was her intended goal? These
questions can be given a pertinent answer only considering that Ms Merrifield
had always sought to know - ignoring the rest - formulas, dosages and practical
steps followed in different eras, from the times of the earliest Middle Ages
until the age crossing the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And this interest
had never vanished, whether she examined the work done in the craft workshops
or in the studios of artists of safe reputation, or whether she tried to
understand the work performed in laboratories of restoration. Indeed, in front
of the restorers her (already very firm) convictions strengthened and her claims,
rather than waning, even increased considerably. In practice, they doubled.
Take the case of Mr Edwards. First of all, Ms Merrifield wanted to know what
were the systems followed by the Venetian school of restoration, the formulas
used, and the tricks practiced, in short the "secrets" of the
technicians that Edwards was required to supervise. But this was still not
enough. Ms Merrifield was convinced that the restoration experts knew, because
of a variety of circumstances, the technical characteristics of the masters whose
art works they were called to back up. Here is what she writes about the
restorers: " I have scarcely a doubt but that many [note of the editor:
experts assigned to the restoration] … either from tradition, or from the
accidental discovery of MS. recipes, or from both, and from some of the having
analysed the material used in these old paintings, possess the knowledge… of
having ascertained the pigments and vehicles used by the great Italian masters,
and the mode of their use and application” (p. 846). In essence, the restorers
were able to communicate two types or groups of "secrets", i.e. those
which they used to perform their work, and those who had been adopted by the
great masters of the past. Thus, the scope of the research was widened
considerably; and the London circles to which Ms Merrifield belonged did not
send any calls for caution or any signals leading to a substantial reduction in
work plans. Quite the contrary happened: factual pieces of information were
combined to rumours, creating new problems and causing inevitable false hints.
This is confirmed by Ms Merrifield herself: “In consequence of a report from
England, which reached me when I was in Venice, that Sig. Pietro Edwards had
discovered the old method of painting in oil, and had sold his secret to the
Government, I endeavoured to ascertain whether this was the fact.” (p. 848). Is
it not clear enough? In London it was argued that Edwards had discovered the
old technique of oil painting, and that he had sold this "secret" to
the Venetian Republic. One remains surprised, almost stunned, to note how such
imaginative stories could circulate among persons of high culture, routinely
engaged in a scrupulous examination of documentary sources.
Ms Merrifield
set to work and, after some fruitless searches, finally understood that the
statements originating from London were devoid of any foundation. She wrote,
visibly annoyed for the time lost: “By the kindness of the Count and Countess
Spiridion Papadopoli I obtained permission from the President of the Academy to
inspect the papers left by Sig. P. Edwards, which are preserved in the Academy,
and, from what I saw there, I am enabled to state my firm belief that no secret
was either bought or sold…” (p. 848) [19]. Nothing, in short, had been bought
or sold and the image of a Levantine Venice, accustomed to the traffic of all
things, and modelled on stale literary schemes, was shelved. But on other
points the English writer did not change her mind: evidently, it must have
seemed illogical to her that someone - especially Edwards, who had churned out
many reports and dissertations - never mentioned the "secrets" of the
old masters, and even the recipes and technical findings of Venetians restorers. And, since not all doors had
been opened to her, and more than one had even remained closed, or at least half
closed, it seemed logical to her to speak of interferences, of constraints and suspicious
decisions.
It is beyond any
doubt that phenomena of misunderstanding and rejection materialised. Ms
Merrifield approached several cultivated people residing in Venice (we find them
in the list of thanks at pages 10-11 in the preface) and is really
incomprehensible that none of them was able to indicate to her the Patriarchal
Seminary Library, in function since thirty years, where was - and still is – located
most of the documentation produced by Mr Edwards. The Academy did not behave in
a completely defensive way and indeed granted her, as we will see in the next
point, a wide-ranging authorisation, in sharp contrast to its previous
resolutions. And yet even this institution, where Ms Merrifield expected to
find much more than what was really present, came out with a somewhat censorious
attitude, which seemed to be just tailored to provoke the resented reactions of
the writer. "Venetian jealousy", she shouted in the introductory
notes. Yet, while giving these censoring and limiting attitudes all the weight
that they deserve (and without intentions to justify them in any way), it
should be also added that, while with a wider collaboration and with a bit more
luck Ms Merrifield could have shed light on certain aspects of certain significance,
she would have never been able to find out those "secrets" which were
so important for her. And she could have never found a script (no matter
whether short or long, whether circumstantial or just allusive) on such
delicate issues, for the simple reason that such writings had never been
drafted. After careful archival investigations made by the Olivato [20] and
Conti [21], there are sufficient arguments for excluding that Pietro Edwards had
ever prepared notes and reports on the methods used by the masters of the
Venetian Renaissance: it is possible that he has been able to guess something
of their "secrets", but it is almost certain (only unexpected
discoveries of new documentary material might lead one to think otherwise) that
he did not ever put on paper what he had come to assume or imagine on it. Moreover,
as regards the other type or group of "secrets", i.e. the formulas
tested in the decades-long restoration, the question becomes even easier. There
is no doubt that a few "secrets"
were used; but even in this case, it is immediately clear that Pietro Edwards
never paused to write on them, filling recipe books and handbooks (whether of
an original cut or modelled on the same or similar structures to those that Ms
Merrifield introduced us during her most valuable work). The conclusions
reached by Mr Conti in his major work seem very useful to us: Mr Edwards has
provided us with invaluable information on various aspects of restoration, but it
is all too clear that the methods to be followed in the restoration were never
examined in his relations of various types, to the point of even not remembering
that tweaks and additions were made in paint. Moreover - continues the historian
of restoration, almost with an air of not wanting to be taken for a fool - even
"today most of the restoration occurs in more or less acknowledged secret
..." [22]. To the Venetian Republic anything was never communicated about
such topics; equally, nothing similar had been ever requested by government
officials. If any technician of a certain scientific weight or with vast
political contacts posed detailed questions - Conti recalls the case of the
architect G. Selva - Pietro Edwards responded by providing information of
various kinds "without however specifying secrets or more complex
processes "[23].
I believe that
it is worthwhile to add another observation to those described Conti’s text.
Those methods that Merrifield would have had the pleasure of discovering were
indeed "secrets" and, because of their "secret" nature,
were not disclosed. Pietro Edwards not only felt that it was his duty to
refrain from any confidence (which de facto might have proved to be harmful),
but behaved with firmness when someone - resorting to various tricks - tried to
get their hands (or, more simply, his eyes) on things that were part of the
technical equipment of the laboratory for the restoration of public owned
Venetian paintings. This is attested by an incident described in a study on the
Clementina Academy of Bologna [24] (see pp. 272-273). On 4 August 1781, Pietro
Edwards wrote to the institute in Bologna to complain about that a member of
the Academy, who had gone to the workshop of Venetian restorers, had remained "a
couple of hours" looking at "different processes" and asking for
"specific questions to the workers." According to the customs of the
time, he used muffled formulas, but the substance is the one exposed above:
spying. The conclusion to be drawn is,
in short, as follows: Pietro Edwards, who had showed himself open and available
to implement the various indications from certain areas of research,
particularly from the chemical sector, closed promptly on himself and took on
the appearance of a hedgehog in a position of defence, whenever the risk loomed
that strangers were to put their nose out of matters that did not concern them.
On this case: Vincenzo Martinelli, secretary of the Clementina Academy, tried hard
to find excuses and answered as best he could, but what had happened was enough
for Edwards to break any relationship
with the Institute of Bologna.
These stories
and attitudes, brought to light only by recent studies, could not of course be
known to Ms Merrifield, who resented with bitterness and resentment of the
developments, without even taking too much care to hide her state of mind. The
accents of sorrow and regret, however, did not prevent her to react and to seek
for an alternative way of activity. And once again, she returned to act with
remarkable acumen, indicating such an unusual path as to leave even in her, so
sure of her ideas, some fear of being out of theme. She understood that the
best way to describe the activity of the restoration was to reconstruct events
and describe the history of restoration. She overcame the differences that
certainly materialised with the son of Pietro Edwards and she accepted an
extensive historical writing (or, better, the traits considered most salient to
this research). The writer of Brighton, in so doing, not only filled a gap
which must have seemed very annoying, but succeeded to indicate a method of
research that would be taken up with firm belief in our day.
(History of
the Civil Organization of Fine Arts in Venice, to Support the Planning of a Stable
System for this Imperial and Royal Academy of Venice)
It includes from
page 849 to page 889 [25]. The English version of a copy of a manuscript
written in Italian by the son of Pietro Edwards, who made use of information,
or even passages taken from reports drafted by the father. The date of
compilation (1833) is half way between Pietro's death, which occurred in 1821,
and the visit of Ms Merrifield in Venice (1846). Of Giovanni Edwards, the only
contemporary writer to Merrifield appearing in her collection, I have little information
to report. Ms Merrifield assures us that he had been "also" involved
in restoration work under the guidance of his father, but that “also" had
been added intentionally, suggesting that in most of his life Giovanni Edwards was
not involved in this type of activity or anyway did not committed to it in a
professional form. Ms Merrifield made his acquaintance during her stay in
Venice and – from the talks she had with him - she obtained some other news beyond
those contained in the manuscript. Significant seems to me the admission
contained in a note to page 863 ("the author of the MS told me ...”): that
'told me' seems to refer to a confidential conversation without rigid
formality, I would say even friendly. Ms Merrifield, when leaving Venice, commissioned
him the task of transcribing and sending her the papers of Pietro Edwards
preserved in the Academy: the transcript was never performed, but Ms Merrifield
tends to attribute the responsibility of non-compliance not to John Edwards,
but to the attitude of some of the Academy directors, that today we would say
imbued with bureaucratic spirit. [26] This information, as you can see, is entirely
derived from the work of Merrifield. From a different source (CLIO, III, p.
1701) I was able to get a single piece of news: in 1836 Giovanni let issue by printer
Orlandelli of Venice a 24-page booklet entitled Confutazione di recente sentenza con cui sembra interdetto ai letterati
non artisti il dare ragione delle belle arti (Refutation of a recent ruling
which seems prohibiting non-artist literates to reason on fine arts). I do not
know this script, which is missing from major public libraries in Bologna and therefore
I cannot say anything about even occasional reasons that might have suggested
it. The name of Giovanni Edwards does not appear in the DBI, nor in the Grove
Dictionary of Art publisher, nor in the IBN (Index bio-bibliographicum notorum hominum – Bio-biographical index
of illustrious people), nor in other repertoires commonly used to find
information about people involved in arts.
Compound to be
printed, the manuscript by Giovanni on the ‘History of the Civil Organization
of Fine Arts in Venice’ had not come to light for the censorial intervention of
public administration. Ms Merrifield writes: “The MS from which the following
extracts were made was written… with a view to publication; but in the Venetian
territories works on the fine arts are not permissed to be published without
expecial permission from the Academy of Venice. This permission was refused;
but the authorities at Vienna, to whom the MS. had been submitted, directed
that a copy of it should be made and preserved in the Academy at Venice. I saw
this copy among the Edwards’ papers in the office of the secretary of the
Academy” (p. 846 sg.). Did the author react to this interference? And if he
reacted, how did authorities behaved? Does the booklet cited above, released
shortly after, make any reference to that event? These are questions that I raised
to myself and for which I unfortunately lacked the time to respond. [27] Conti
did not find "surprising" at all that the Academy of Venice had
denied the approval to the publication of the paper and pointed out to the
disagreements with "some restorers employed by the State, especially on
the use of linseed oil" [28]. This is a permissible hypothesis and there
is no reason at all to deny that, in motivating its objection to the print job,
the Academy might have resorted to these or similar technical matters. However,
while aware that I am working on pure conjectures, I am led to believe that
there were many other and more strident reasons of friction (instead of, or
perhaps beyond the apparently aseptic technical evaluations): I am thinking in
particular to the frontal attacks and the open and defiant contempt shown by
Giovanni against Leopoldo Cicognara. The latter, a well-known and acclaimed
scholar of Italian sculpture, a friend of Canova, a bibliographer of certain
magnitude and an author of highly respected treatises in his time, had used to
be president of the Academy from 1808 to 1826, and when the manuscript was
completed (i.e. in 1833) was still living to Venice, where he had become a sort
of venerable and holy man, for art lovers. However, for many others he was an
old man who had been hit enough by bad luck to merit further biting rage. It
was (and still is) difficult to think that the Academy did not use its duties of
censorship in such case, to impede the publication of a work that contained a
really harsh attack on its former chairman, certainly still surrounded by the
affection, or at least by the respect of its various members. The same author
of the manuscript had to understand it. In order to loosen the strictures of
censorship and to gain the benevolence of the Austrian rulers, he construed a
eulogy - that seems at once stale and tasteless - on the usually forgotten or
mistreated activity of the Habsburg administration in the few years dividing
the peace of Campoformio (1797) from the peace of Pressburg (1805), i.e.
between the end of the Venetian Republic and the union of Venice to the
Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. "This remembrance" - so begins the act
of tribute to the imperial family - “is always a proof of the gratitude of the
Venetian nation, which experienced the effects of the royal and paternal
solicitude of his Majesty” (p. 866). I do not know the original Italian text, which
Ms Merrifield failed to reproduce, but it is very difficult to imagine that the
English version had substantially changed the meaning of these words, all saturated
- like those of the next two sentences - by a respectful homage to the Viennese
dynasty and – respectively – to the Austrian officials seconded and called to
represent it in Venice. Yet, despite the precautions, the script did not pass
the censorship; devotion and respect for the imperial family were not
sufficient to neutralize by the harsh reserves against the past President of
the Academy.
Such decisions,
however, are by their nature not irrevocable. Officers of any censorship
authority are rarely ideologues and their highly pragmatic views are affected
by changing circumstances, much more than one would think. When Ms Merrifield
arrived in Venice, Cicognara had already been dead for (not many for the truth)
years, but time passed had been sufficient to remove those reservations and
those scruples which had been felt as heavy as boulders, when the manuscript of
Giovanni Edwards had been examined and criticized. Censors changed their mind
and allowed Ms Merrifield to transcribe and perhaps to borrow (after the
approval by the censorship) the copy which the government of Vienna had
returned to the Academy. Ms Merrifield had been in contact with several members
of the cultural world present in Venice (with her compatriot Rawdon Brown, since
many years in this city to study Sanudo's diaries; with Giuseppe Cadorin, the
patient collector of documents on Titian; with Schiavone, the restorer of works
of Titian; with Giuseppe Valentinelli, of the Biblioteca Marciana, already
known for his earlier literature searches; with Vincenzo Lazari and other
figures mentioned in the preface). To deny her a courtesy would have not created
anymore the embarrassments of the past; moreover, it would have perhaps
appeared not only as an affront vis-à-vis the English scholar and the circle
around Peel and Eastlake, but also as a gesture of little consideration vis-à-vis
too many people living in the capital of Veneto. And so, they gave her the
permission they had first denied, perhaps by making sure - as usually all
censors like in such circumstances - that the work would not appear in its
entirety. Whether such an agreement existed or not, it is anyway certain that
the manuscript by Giovanni Edwards was not fully included in the work edited by
Ms Merrifield: were omitted both the first part that “contains the history of
several academies of paintings, & c., in Venice” (p. 847), and the third
part, judged by the curator as “uninteresting to the English reader” (p. 848). Also
the last few pages of the middle part were neglected, and instead were translated
all remaining pages, including - needless to say – those with the the pepper
arguments against the now neglected Count Cicognara.
Written with
extensive use of documents and, in most sections, with a deep emotional involvement
in the events narrated, the story drawn by Giovanni Edwards departs from the
usual, stale academic schemes and manages to get soon forgiveness for certain
expressions (too involved to be convincing) of excessive deference to the
established political power. Pleasant and readable, the work features many
elements of reflection. I like to hope that the entire manuscript, in its
original form and without the cuts that Ms Merrifield had to make for obvious
reasons of balance with the other texts, will be reprinted in a not hasty form and
accompanied by a convincing critical apparatus.
NOTES
[1] The escape
of James II (an avowedly Catholic king) and the landing in England of William
III of Orange, who a year later would become King.
[2] For a series
of writings by Peter Edwards see Loredana Olivato, Provvedimenti della Repubblica veneta per la salvaguardia del
patrimonio pittorico nei secoli XVII e XVIII, (Measures of the Venetian
Republic to safeguard the heritage of painting in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries), Venice, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Veneto
Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts), 1974.
[3] Giovanni Previtali, La fortuna
dei primitivi (The fortune of the Primitives), Turin, Einaudi publishers,
1964, p. 242.
[4] Index Bio-Bibliographicus Notorum Hominum,
Corpus Alphabeticum. I Sectio generalis, Vol 62, ad vocem (Bio-bibliographic
Index of Ilustrious People, Section I – General, Vol. 52 – see respective item).
Biblio-Verlag, 1993.
[5] It seems now
useful to anticipate some considerations on the exact name of Pietro Edwards,
also in the light of the fact that so far the issue seems to have been
overlooked. Ms Merrifield met his son Giovanni in 1846, and always called him
"Giovanni O’Kelly Edwards." Giovanni, in short, has a double surname.
In fact, as we will show later, all sources mentioning the son, and especially quotations
in his writings, have the signature Giovanni Edwards O’Kelles (and not O'Kelly). It is likely that Ms
Merrifield has adapted to English the diction of the surname as already modified
by a long stay in Veneto. I found one source that mentions Pietro (in 1847, i.e.
when he had already passed away since more than 25 years, when the son was on
the scene) as P. Edwards O'Kelles. This is the work Venezia e le sue lagune (Venice and its lagoons) Vol I, Venice,
Antonelli, 1847, p. 100. Therefore, it is not inconceivable in principle that
the son (Giovanni) wanted to add a second name to the first. Personally, however,
in the absolute absence of information, I prefer to think that it was Pietro
who did not want to use the second name for the sake of brevity. Whether O’Kelly
or O'Kelles, the surname is of obvious Irish origin and explains (possibly)
even the Catholicism of the family (obviously transplanted from Ireland to
England and then, after 1688, in Italy). As we will see from a later document, Giovanni
somehow retained a relationship to Ireland. What is certain (as he himself
wrote) is that he writes in bad English and feels the need to apologize for that.
See footnote 25. [G.M.]
[6] As of June
1841, the Art Union hosted a series
of articles 'On vehicles for painting' signed by J.E. On the September issue,
on page 149 column 2 is written: “The Venetian Government established and
liberally paid, a society of persons solely to preserve the pictures of their
great masters which were suffering from the climate of Venice. Their studio was
opened in 1778, and an Englishman, Peter Edwards, was the president.”
[7] Luigi Lanzi, The history of painting in Italy, from the revival of the fine arts to
the end of the 18 century, translated from the original Italian by Thomas
Roscoe. Londra, W. Simpkin &
R. Marshall, 1828.
[8] Luigi Lanzi, Storia pittorica
della Italia (History of Painting in Italy), Vol. II, edited by Martino
Capucci. Florence, Sansoni publishers, 1970, p. 181.
[9] Giannantonio Moschini, Della
letteratura veneziana del secolo XVIII fino a’ nostri giorni (On the
Venetian literature of the eighteenth century up to our days), Vol. III,
Venice, Stamperia Palese (Palese Printing), 1806, p. 54.
[10] Giannantonio Moschini, Guida per
la città di Padova all’amico delle Belle Arti (A Guide to the City of Padua
for the Friend of Fine Arts), Venice, Tipografia Alvisopoli (Alvisopoli
Typography), 1817.
[11] Giannantonio Moschini, Guida per
la città di Venezia all’amico delle Belle Arti (A Guide to the City of
Venice for the Friend of Fine Arts), 2 vols. Venice, Tipografia Alvisopoli
(Alvisopoli Typography), 1815.
[12] Anton Maria Zanetti, Della
pittura veneziana (On the Venetian painting), Venice, Stamperia Albrizzi (Printing
Albrizzi), 1771, pp. Preface. X-XI.
[13] Loredana Olivato, Provvedimenti
della Repubblica ... quoted, P. 155.
[14] Loredana Olivato, Provvedimenti
della Repubblica... quoted, P. 160.
[15] Alessandro
Conti, Storia del restauro e della
conservazione delle opere d’arte (History of the restoration and
conservation of works of art), Milan, Electa, 1988, p. 167.
[16] Alessandro Conti, Storia del
restauro ... quoted, P. 169.
[17] Jean-Félix
Watin, L’art du peindre, doreur,
vernisseur (The art of painter, gilder and polisher). 2nd ed. Paris, 1773.
[18]
Antoine-François Fourcroy, French chemist:
[19] We are
absolutely not able to determine whom this information came from.
[20] Loredana Olivato, Provvedimenti
della Repubblica ... quoted.
[21] Alessandro Conti, Storia del
restauro ... quoted.
[22] Alessandro Conti, Storia del
restauro ... quoted, P. 162.
[23] Alessandro Conti, Storia del
restauro ... quoted, p. 163.
[24] Stefano Benassi, L’Accademia
Clementina. La funzione pubblica, l’ideologia estetica (The Clementina Accademy.
The civil service, the aesthetic ideology). Bologna, Nuova
Alfa editoriale, 1988, p. 272-273.
[25] Of Giovanni
O’Kelly Edwards, as Ms Merrifield calls him, or Giovanni Edwards O’Kelles or
even G.E.O., as he signes in some writings appeared in the Gazzetta Privilegiata di Venezia (Privileged Journal of Venice) we
know practically nothing. Using pure common sense one could think that - when Ms
Merrifield met him in 1846 – he might have been about seventy years (his father
was born in 1744; assuming Giovanni was born in 1774, he would have had 72).
Merrifield tells us that he also "was" a restorer, suggesting that he
used to be one. I found some information on his works drawing from the Saggio di bibliografia veneziana (Essay on
Venetian bibliography), by Antonio Emmanuele Cicogna, published in 1847. Here
is cited as the author of the following brochures:
- Esame critico intorno a tre pitture recentissime esposte nello scorso anno al pubblico giudizio in Venezia (Critical examination around three very recent paintings exhibited last year to the public judgment in Venice), Picotti, 1832; (Critical examination around three very recent paintings exhibited last year to the public judgment in Venice), Picotti 1832;
- Confutazione di recente sentenza con cui sembra interdetto ai letterati non artisti il dare ragione delle Belle Arti (Refutation of a recent ruling which seems prohibiting non-artist literates to reason on fine arts), Venezia, Tip. Molinari, 1836;
- Supremo officio di debita e cristiana amicizia che a la onorata anima di Odorico Politi udinese, professore di pittura nel Veneto Istituto di Arti Belle già passata di qua a vita migliore nel dì XVIII ottobre 1846, e propiziata da esequie solenni ne la chiesa di San Silvestro in questo giorno XXI gennaio de l’anno 1847, i veraci suoi conoscitori ed estimatori piamente tributano (Supreme office of duly and Christian friendship with the honoured soul of Odorico Politi from Udine, professor of painting in the Veneto Institute of Fine Arts, already passed away to a better life in the eighteenth day of October 1846, and propitiated by a solemn funeral in the church of San Silvestro in this twenty-first day of January of the year 1847, bestowed by his true friends and admirers), Venezia, 1847;
- Intorno alla lapide Rodia posta nel Seminario Patriarcale di Venezia, opuscoli vari a. 1834-1835, 1836. Around a tombstone from Rhodes placed in the Patriarchal Seminary of Venice, several pamphlets, years 1834-1835, 1836. "So is entitled a collection from various sources, on all what appeared to illustrate a highly interesting tombstone from Rhodes. The authors are: Giovanni Veludo, Giambattista dottor Koen, Giovanni Edwards O’kelles, Alvise Giorgio Jacopo Corner, il dottor Franz ec.."
Really, very
little. Actually, judging by the type of titles we are talking about, and in
particular by the “refutation of judgment”, which will be discussed later, Giovanni
seems to us to present himself as a literary scholar who is delighted by art things.
However, there
is no mention of the manuscript on the Storia
dell’Organizzazione civile delle Belle Arti (History of the Civil Organization
of Fine Arts) of which Ms Merrifield published abstracts in the Original Treatises. In our findings, the
manuscript was never published, we do not know whether it happened because it
went lost or because it was not deemed of interest. What is clear is that Ms
Merrifield says he consulted it ‘in the office of the secretary of the Academy’
and not among the papers of Pietro Edwards. The Secretary of the Academy at
that time (and only for a few months, since he died on January 1, 1847) was
Antonio Diedo.
That the
interests of Giovanni were those of a scholar, but were not limited to the
field of art, is proved by a letter in the Archives of the Irish College in
Rome. The letter is dated April 27, 1847: we report hereafter the archival
description:
“CUL/NC/4/1847/24
Holograph letter from John Edwards O'Kelles, Casa Tagliapietra, Venice to 'My
Right Reverend Father.'
27 April 1847,
Eng. 1p.: O'Kelles encloses an article detailing the lineage of the Stewards
Family in Italy which he wishes to have translated into English or Irish and
published in the 'Catholic Magazine of London'. O'Kelles apologises for his
lack of English as he has spent all his life in Venice.”
The letter shows
that Edwards was very probably of Irish descent and aimed at the publication of
an essay on the history of the Stuart dynasty, expelled from England in 1688.
[GM]
[26] Of course
it is not possible to establish what happened. It should be remembered,
however, that on January 1, 1847, the secretary of the Academy, Antonio Diedo, died
and in its place, a few months later, Pietro Selvatico was elected. Moreover,
Mr Selvatico almost could not settle himself, since the following year broke
the riots of 1848. The change of direction may have inhibited Giovanni from
making the transcript; but it may well be that Giovanni did intentionally not
want to keep the promise, or, for all we know, that he died shortly thereafter.
[27] Today the ‘Refutation
of the recent ruling’ is freely available on the Internet and therefore I could
read it. The address is:
I can therefore
say that the Refusal (of an unbearable
verbosity) has nothing to do (at least directly) with the complaint made by the
Academy in respect of the manuscript in 1833. This is the refutation of an
article ('sentenza') appeared in the Gazzetta
Veneta (but it seems more correct to say, in the Gazzetta Privilegiata di Venezia, the Privileged Official Journal
of Venice) on 16th July 1836, in which it was claimed that writers were not
able to make any comments worthy of attention about art objects.
Giovanni had
already been embroiled in a controversy taking place in the Gazzetta Privilegiata between 1834 and
1835 on a tombstone originating from Rhodes and stored in the seminary of Santa
Maria. The news is provided by Giannantonio Moschini in La Chiesa e il seminario di Santa Maria della salute in Venezia (The
Church and the Seminary of St. Mary of Health in Venice) on page 135, published
in 1842. Beyond the aspects of content, we want to emphasise that, on the
Journal, Edwards signed generically as G.E.O. It is therefore not excluded that
a more thorough analysis of the papers published in periodicals in Veneto in
those years (something that is entirely outside the scope of this paper) can
afford to find other writings of John Edwards O'Kelles. [G.M.]
[28] Alessandro
Conti, Storia del restauro ... quoted, p. 172.
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