Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Giovanni Mazzaferro
“My Gratitude to Cennino Cennini,
my Tribute to the Masters of Siena”:
the Myth of Cennino Cennini
and an Art Nouveau Fresco in Budapest
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| Figure 1) Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch, Pilgrimage to the Fountain of Art (fresco), Budapest, Franz Listz Music Academy, 1907 © Nóra Mészöly |
Pilgrimage to the Fountain of Art is one of the masterpieces of the Hungarian artist Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch. It is a fresco in Art Nouveau-style, painted in 1907 by Körösfói-Kriesch for the new headquarters of the Academy of Music in Budapest. The purpose of this essay is to highlight how, in a not at all random manner, the iconographic program culminates in an eloquent writing at the base of the fountain. The inscription reads:
Cennino Cennininek hálámat
Hódolatomat a sienai mestereknek
My gratitude to Cennino Cennini
My tribute to the Masters of Siena [1]
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| Figure 2) Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch , Pilgrimage to the Fountain of Art. Detail with the dedication to Cennino Cennini and the Masters of Siena, © Liszt Ferenc Zeneakadémia |
The ‘humble’ Cennino is at the centre, therefore, of a complex figurative framework, in which art and music are intertwined, but where, in general, the artist draws and makes all themes, which are own of his poetics, rise to the top. Cennino as a myth; a myth that will cross Hungary until the Second World War in a clear manner, and of which we were able to find hidden traces even in the period of the communist regime [2].
Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch
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| Figure 3) Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch (1867-1920) |
Aladár Kriesch was born in Budapest in 1867 [3]. Like many other Hungarian artists, his youth is characterized by educational journeys that bring him to Germany, Italy, Spain and France. From each of his life experiences, Kriesch absorbs, with great eclecticism, some aspects that he will rework later in a personal way. In Italy, for example, where he stayed between 1891 and 1892, the artist met his compatriot Ferenc Szoldatits, one of the last epigones of the Nazarenes, and certainly had the opportunity to develop his interest in the frescoes and paintings of the primitives. We would be surprised if (given the dedication that we have just seen in his 1907 Pilgrimage) he had not visited Siena, and more generally if he had not seen the great cycles of frescoes in Tuscany, dating back to the Middle Ages; equally, it must have occurred in those years that he made his acquaintance not so much with the (in fact completely lost) paintings, but rather with the Treaty of Cennino Cennini, consulted in the edition of the brothers Milanesi [4]. A work which - according to tradition - he always carried in his pocket with him; something much more like a breviary, in short, than simply a manual of artistic techniques [5]. It is in Paris, however, that Kriesch encounters, through a French mediation, the Pre-Raphaelites, and remains fascinated. The influence of the Pre-Raphaelite experience, as well as that of the Arts and Crafts Movement of William Morris marks him in any of his future choices.
If Kriesch travels across Europe, he has however his retreat in Transylvania, in the region of Kalotaszeg (the current Romanian Tara Călatei). And here we must deal briefly with history. Transylvania was at the time an integral part of Hungary, and was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It moved to Romania only in 1920, after a conflict following the First World War and the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire which was part of Hungary. It still exists in Transylvania, and in particular in the region of Kalotaszeg, a strong minority of Hungarian language and tradition. The meeting with Transylvania, where Kriesch goes on holiday with his family since an early age, is the encounter with the folklore that becomes art, with mystery, with ancient legends related to the world of barbarians. It can be said, in some way, that Transylvania and its legends are for the artist equivalent to the medieval world of the English Pre-Raphaelites. What is certain is that Kriesch binds himself to this land so much, that he decides for a surname change (we are already in 1907) in Körösfói-Kriesch, where Körösfói comes from Körösfő, the name of a village in the region (the current Romanian Izvoru Crişului).
The success comes as from the end of the century. But for Körösfói-Kriesch art and life are intimately tied together. In 1901 the artist moves to Gödöllő, a town about thirty kilometres from Budapest, (still today) famous for its royal palace (built in the mid-eighteenth century), where often spent their holidays the Emperor Francis Joseph and that Sissi, to whom we cannot but connect the face of Romy Schneider.
In Gödöllő, with the consent and perhaps even with a financial help of the government, Körösfói-Kriesch founded an art colony, which has its guiding star in the participation to the Secession, reworked with native elements. The choice - it is quite clear - replicates somehow that of the Arts and Crafts by William Morris, starting with the famous Red House built around 1865; more generally, the form of artistic colonies is typical of Art Nouveau movements (to tell the truth, not only of them) of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, where everything comes together: the house is art, craft is art, art is life organised in models of existence generally based on an anarcho-socialist collectivism. We could cite many of those examples, in an interplay of influences and cultural exchange that is self-perpetuating, especially in Central Europe: here is certainly not the time to examine the various ways in which the 'Secessions' and Art Nouveau movements are declined on the continent, but it is right to note that the Hungarian one fits with success with the international movement (for example, with the presence at the Italian Biennale exhibitions and the Viennese Secession exhibition of 1905).
Of all the various national secessionist expressions, the Hungarian one is indeed considered the closest to the original ideas of the Arts and Crafts, and not just from a stylistic point of view, but because of the community lifestyle and for the widely socialist and Tolstoy-inspired ideas (tolerated by the imperial government) that permeates the community of Gödöllő. And there is no doubt that what I have just said here has indeed a solid foundation. Körösfói-Kriesch, for example, dedicated a successful monograph devoted to Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites in 1904. If, however, the British influences are clear, I would like to report that an aspect is evident in the works of the artists of Gödöllő, and Körösfói-Kriesch in particular: the (romantic) concept of the sacredness of art. Even for religious reasons, it distinguishes the Hungarian experience from the English one, and it is much closer to Italy and Catholic Europe. The artist is the living expression of the Priesthood of Art, the true "religious" vocation uniting artist and "true art". If the revolution of the Pre-Raphaelites is mainly a stylistic one, the Art Nouveau across Europe also represents a revolution of the spirit on a romantic base. And the true prototype of this artist-priest is precisely Cennino Cennini, who has not only handed down a manual of techniques, but also a way of life, an approach to and an interpenetration in art, a breviary of humility and purity of spirit, where the individual is lost and merged in the collective and where the collective result is greater than the sum of the contributions of the individuals. It is not our intent to venture into an analysis which we have been already able to examine on other occasions, in particular with reference to the relationship France – Germany [6]; but one needs to just remember the figure of Jan Verkade, a Dutch artist who converted to Catholicism, decided to take his vows and became part of the monastery of Beuron, known for attempts that were initiated there for a renewal of sacred art in Europe. We are recalling Verkade because he authored in turn another translation (the second one in German) of the Book of the Art by Cennino (1916), which - without any doubt - aligns approach and sensitivity to the feelings of the colony of Gödöllő.
Franz Liszt and the Music Academy in Budapest
The theme of the spiritual and the sacred (but also of the profane) art is not a unique aspect of the artists of Gödöllő. It comes up again, for example, in music. If there is a composer in which such interest is substantiated, there is no doubt that he is Franz Liszt. The music literature of Liszt on this subject is boundless (think about the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses for piano). Liszt dedicated himself to the development of so-called ‘program music’ with a series of symphonic poems and studies for piano. His musical production of religious topics is really vast [7]. And his attention to the idea of the artist as a priest of the art and as a prophet is of such importance that in 1865 (after a very eccentric love life) Liszt received the tonsure and the minor orders (from that moment on and for the last twenty years of his life he was commonly called the Abbé Liszt).
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| Figure 4) Franz Liszt (1811-1886) |
Our attention to Liszt is due to the fact that he was the founder of the Academy of Music in Budapest in 1875. Initially located at the home of the musician, the Academy moved into a neo-Renaissance building in the current Andrássy Street, where it remained until the first decade of the 1900s (Liszt died in 1886; the Institute was officially dedicated to him only in 1924). A new building was built to this purpose, in 1907, and used as a concert hall, but mostly as a music school. The palace (dominated by a statue of Liszt) was recently returned to its former splendour (it was officially re-opened on October 22, 2013, the anniversary of the birth of the composer) after a four-year restoration. The facade of the building, designed and built by the architects Flóris Korb and Kálmán Giergl, is in an eclectic classical style that does not leave fully foresee what is contained within: the triumph of Art Nouveau.
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| Figure 5) Facade of the Music Academy of Budapest Foto Thaler Tamás, wikipedia |
You cannot describe the interior of the building except by resorting to expressions of wonder and amazement. From the entrance you enter a magical world in which to dominate are the green of covering and the gold of mosaics and frescoes, cleverly enhanced by a play of light that literally leaves you speechless.
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| Figure 6) Entrance of the Music Academy, © Liszt Ferenc Zeneakadémia |
All the decorative aspect within the Academy is an expression of Art Nouveau. The frescoes and mosaics, as mentioned, are the work of Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch; the stained glass windows are produced by Miksa Róth, the most famous craftsman in the industry at the time (not all current windows are original); the pottery comes from the equally famous manufacture of Vilmos Zsolnay.
With the help of a Hungarian text signed by C.Z., published in the journal Magyar Iparművészet in 1908, we are able to reconstruct the iconographic program followed by Körösfói-Kriesch in creating the cycle of frescoes in the Academy [8]. Of course, references to the world of music are dominant. In visual terms, everything depends on the development of a rigidly symmetrical decoration, which unfolds from the centre of the ground floor and then returns to connect, in the great fresco of the first floor.
The central area, entirely decorated in a golden mosaic, contains a plaque commemorating the construction of the building, which was built by will of the Emperor Franz Joseph. At the respective sides of the tombstone two pairs of angels - playing the lyre on a blue background, in an otherwise golden mosaic and full of rigidly geometric decorations - are directly related to the experience of Byzantine mosaics (and, in those same years, to the iconography of the Beuronese school) [9].
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| Figure 7) Angels playing the lyre (mosaic) © Nóra Mészöly |
The fresco decoration begins with two friezes at the two corners (left and right) leading to the side corridors and the stairs. Two parades are represented: one depicting sacred music (fig. 8) and the other secular music (fig. 9). The first displays a veritable procession opened by three singers, followed by four characters, who probably hold the rods of a canopy, beneath which lies the religious authority. The march of secular music, instead, is an expression of folklore and represents a typical Hungarian wedding march of the fourteenth century. In both parades, spaces are marked by angels holding a festoon; the angels actually mark a specific musical rhythm, marking the timing of the beats of music, while the figures are the tones.
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| Figure 8) Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch, The procession of the sacral music, © Liszt Ferenc Zeneakadémia |
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| Figure 9) Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch, The procession of the profane music, © Liszt Ferenc Zeneakadémia |
The two processions meet in the great central fresco of the first floor (fig. 1) which (besides the usual symmetric division determined by the presence of the Fountain of Art) also adds a score of two registers. The upper one seems to refer to a heavenly entity or, anyhow, of an entity with an ultra-mundane nature; the lower one consists instead of a theory of massless figures, rather pictured with sinuous lines, which are approaching to drink at the source of art wisdom. In the lower right corner of the fresco, like if he wanted to further clarify the scene, the artist writes: Elzarándokolnak a Művészet forrásához, which means “They go on a pilgrimage to the Fountain of Art”.
As mentioned above, the upper register of the Pilgrimage presents representation of a clearly allegorical meaning, in a beautiful colour combination of golds, blues and browns (fig. 10). The five nude female figures are the sister arts (Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Literature and Music), in a spiritual union in which to be crowned by the other four (and could not be otherwise, given the location of the fresco) is the Music. The taste for decoration finds its culmination in the huge tarp with a brown background that is opened like a stage, behind the symbolic figures. Six maidens, three on this side and three on that side, corroborating the perfect symmetry of the scene, play big horns to celebrate the scene.
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| Figure 10) Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch, Pilgrimage to the Fountain of Art (detail) © Nóra Mészöly |
The sister arts are standing on the art fountain, fountain that is thereby the true central element of the composition (fig. 4), to mark the separation of spaces both vertically and horizontally. On the sides of the base of the source, once again carved up in a perfectly symmetrical way, two pairs of bare-breasted maidens, bending on the source; and behind them two theories of characters, looking to the source, in a stillness with at times a bit gloomy posture (see the woman with a mantle and a black veil on the left).
The faces reserve some surprises: some are clearly stylized, but others recall celebrities. It is not easy for us, as we do not have a thorough knowledge of the Hungarian world, to be able to match names and figures, but in some cases we are objectively facilitated. In the row to the right of the viewer (fig. 10), for example, the first figure bending towards the source, wrapped in a mediaeval surcoat, in bladder green with brown lozenges, that differs in this sense from the red surcoat by Botticelli, is none else but Dante Alighieri. We should not be surprised that Dante ends up in a Hungarian fresco (after all, here also finished Cennino Cennini); the myth of Dante, as it is well known, is a constituent element of the Pre-Raphaelite poetic, but more generally of a whole romantic culture that looks to Middle Age through the eyes of the dream. This applies also to Hungary, where mother tongue translations of the Divine Comedy were already available. Liszt himself had composed a symphonic poem dedicated to our poet [10]. Behind Dante, other figures: a man of whom we see only the pensive face (but so marked, that it seems he could be identifiable by others more experienced than us) and then, in a sort of brown cassock, a young Franz Liszt, the man to whom we owe the creation of the Academy; the Abbé Liszt, in the collective imaginary of that era. And yet, barbarian figures, reminiscent of the legends of Hungary and Transylvania; probably some kind of a hero from a past which delivered its own memory to sagas (there may be for example a fantasy picture of Attila, king of the Huns and ancestor of the Hungarians); hidden stay a man dressed in contemporary bourgeois style, another clear allusion to some character of the Hungarian milieu, and, again, a soldier in full uniform who, according to information provided to us might be Francis Rakoczy II, the Hungarian national hero, head of the Hungarian uprising against Austria in the early 1700's [11]: a very delicate matter, if you think that, at the time, Hungary was part of the Habsburg Empire and, downstairs, Franz Joseph is thanked for having built the new Academy.
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| Figure 11) Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch. Pilgrimage to the Fountain of Art (detail) © Nóra Mészöly |
The figures on the left (fig. 12) turn out to be more difficult to identify. Certainly there are religious elements that do not appear on the right: the priest with his long white beard could be straight out of a few short stories of the Old Testament; women are gathered in prayer (the magnificent elegance of the woman with an ash blue dress and a white veil, with tapered hand fingers that are going to join in the act of worship). In the background, a figure with a beard; of course we could be wrong, but we are absolutely convinced that this is a self-portrait of Körösfói-Kriesch: he also came to drink at the source of art and to pay tribute in his own way, to Cennino Cennini and the Siena masters.
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Figure 12) Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch. Pilgrimage to the fountain of art (detail)
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It may be interesting to know that one of the major auction houses in Hungary, the Nagyházi Gallery in Budapest, has recently offered for sale a tempera (always dated 1907) by Körösfói-Kriesch that, without doubt, is a preparatory study, in small dimensions (50 x 28 cm), of the Pilgrimage to the Fountain of Art (the opera was presented with the title Az élet forrása, or Source of Life). We display an image (fig. 13) below to grasp the main differences between the possible solution object of the tempera and that which was eventually realised as a fresco.
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Figure 13) Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch, Source of Life (1907)
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If the system of two registers (upper and lower), and if the symmetry vis-à-vis the source are ideas that the artist obviously carries with him from the outset, it is just obvious that here the main difference is the greater importance of the role by Liszt, who is head bowed in front of the source, in the attitude of one who is about to receive a sacrament; and, in front of him is an angel, who then disappears in the final fresco, which is holding out a bowl to him filled with spring water in a ritual reminiscent, of course, the Catholic Communion. Liszt, however, does not hold that sort of cassock which he appears instead to wear in the final version of the Pilgrimage. We do not know, moreover, whether the idea of dedicating the fresco to Cennino and the Sienese masters had already been formed at this point of the project.
Dedication to Cennino which - incidentally - appears to be strongly underestimated in the description of the work, although in Hungary fairly well known (the Music Academy is a must for all those who want to get inebriated of the Hungarian Secession). To give an example: the Hungarian Post Office, just in 2013, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Körösfói-Kriesch, has dedicated to him a postage stamp and chosen the Pilgrimage to the Fountain of Art as the most representative painting of his artistic activity. It is however often the case to mention the written explanation in which the author shows that all the characters are going to the source of art, while the dedication to Cennino is mentioned only in very rare occasions, probably because of the cryptic nature much more for the modern Hungarian .
We like to think, then, that these notes may have contributed to a better understanding of how important it was Cennino in the thought and work of the Hungarian artist.
NOTES
[1] To my knowledge, the presence of the label on the fountain has gone largely unnoticed until now. It is the merit of Nóra Mészöly to have documented its presence in the photographic documentation related to the presentation of the restored Academy (October 2013). The photographs of Nóra Mészöly are simply stunning. I am thanking her for allowing me to reproduce them in this article, and I am certainly glad to refer to one of his beautiful photo albums, entitled 'Secession - Art Nouveau in Hungary'
[2] Please refer to Giovanni Mazzaferro, Cennino Cennini, A mysterious edition and Hungary in the early 1900s and Francesco Mazzaferro, Cennino Cennini in Hungary: in search of the anonymous author of the first Hungarian translation.
[3] For the biography of Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch we drew basically http://www.art-nouveau.hu/art.php?menuid=1&id=34
[4] Il Libro dell’Arte, o Trattato della Pittura di Cennino Cennini da Colle Val d’Elsa,di nuovo pubblicato, con molte correzioni e coll’aggiunta di più capitoli tratti dai codici fiorentini [The Book of Art, or Treatise on Painting by Cennino Cennini of Colle Val d'Elsa, again published, with many corrections and on adding more chapters taken from the Florentines codes]. Edited by Gaetano and Carlo Milanesi, Florence, Le Monnier, 1859.
[5] In a volume published in 1918 by Béla Köhalmi and published by Kiadása Lantos (this is a collection of tips on reading of 87 intellectuals of the time, who list the fundamental books of their lives, Körösfói-Kriesch fills his personal ranking of the most significant of his life. The first place is for the 'Libro dell'Arte' by Cennino Cennini ("it has been my bread and water for years"), then Goethe, the Divine Comedy, the Odyssey, the Nibeling saga, etc. The work is titled Könyvek Könive. See:
[6] Francesco Mazzaferro. Jan Verkade, Cennino Cennini and the Quest for Spiritual Art in the Mid of World War I. Available online at http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.it/2013/11/francesco-mazzaferro-jan-verkade.html
[7] See Luciano Chiappari, Liszt musicista universale http://www.ilcorrieremusicale.it/2011/10/22/liszt-musicista-universale/
[8] Magyar Iparművészet 11 évfolyam szám 3 (1908)
[9] Francesco Mazzaferro, Jan Verkade, Cennino Cennini ... quoted.
[10] And, as already mentioned – see note 5 - Körösfói-Kriesch regarded the Divine Comedy as a book essential to their own intellectual formation.
[11] I thank Nóra Mészöly for the information.
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