Francesco Mazzaferro
Cennino Cennini in Berlin
Book Review of:
Fantasy and manual skill: Cennino Cennini and the tradition of Tuscan painting from Giotto to Lorenzo Monaco
Munich,
Hirmer Verlag and State Museums in Berlin, 2008
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| Fig 1) The catalogue of the exhibition, 2008 |
Background
We already dwelled on the
fortune of Cennino Cennini in the German-speaking world. We had virtually
travelled to Vienna in 1871, where for the first time a young Albert Ilg translated the Libro dell’Arte (Book of the Art) into German [1], inaugurating
the first series dedicated to sources of art history (the History sources for the history of art and technology of the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance, or Quellenschriften
für Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance).
About forty years later, in 1914, opening the university lectures on the
sources of art history in Vienna, Julius von Schlosser - another member of the
Viennese school of art history - returned to the subject, devoting a chapter to
him at the end of his first essay on art sources, the one about the Middle Ages
[2].
In another article, we then visited the Benedictine Monastery of Beuron, in the Black Forest, where the Dutch
monk-painter Jan Verkade, a disciple of Gauguin and a member of the Nabis, drafted in 1914, during the First
World War, a second German translation published in Strasbourg (belonging to the
German Empire for only further two years) in 1916 [3].
Taking a leap forward in
time, we reached – as third stage – Munich in the late eighties and early
nineties. In those years, at the local university, Rudolf Kuhn devoted to Cennino Cennini and Leon Battista Alberti a rich set of comparative studies,
all published on the internet [4].
The language is the same, but
the three contributions could not be more different among each other. In an era
characterized by a positivist sense of progress, Albert Ilg has no indulgence
for Cennino, to whom he attributes the failure to learn the lesson of the new
humanistic streams of Florence and Padua, and in particular the new style of
early Renaissance art. According to Ilg, Cennino is not only a man of the past,
but actually his only merit is teaching us the technical secrets of a then
already dead world, that of Giotto, of which - without Cennino - we would have otherwise
lost any memory. Following the theories of literary criticism of Vossler, von
Schlosser corrects him: Cennino is indeed a man of the past, but he has the
merit of having invented the modern vocabulary of art criticism, both the
technical and the aesthetic one. For Verkade, instead (a follower of the
aesthetic theories of the painter and writer Maurice Denis, inspired by Gauguin
and Renoir, and at the same time a member of the Beuronese school of art),
Cennino is even a modern man in every sense, a distant predecessor of
post-impressionist synthetism, one of the last painters of a religious art
world that is not exclusively dedicated to beauty, but also to the truth (even intended
in the religious sense) and can therefore pave the way for a new modern
spiritual art. With Kuhn - a great lover of Renaissance and a scholar of
pictorial composition - we return to a restricting reading of Cennino, whose
concept of composition is absolutely not - neither could ever have been in his view – equivalent
to the one by Alberti, the true inventor of the concept of composition, who however
followed him by a single generation only: therefore, Cennino lacks any
systematic capacity in aesthetic terms and belongs to an ancient world.
What is common to these three
stages is the interest for Cennino as a point of transition between two ages,
and what is more important is precisely either the art which had preceded him
(the legacy of Giotto), or the art that would follow him (the anticipation of
the Renaissance or even of modern art). The interest to place Cennino precisely
in his own time, in the decades between the late fourteenth and early fifteenth
century, seems to be rather limited.
This post - the last
dedicated to the fortune of Cennino Cennini in the German world - takes us to
Berlin, where an exhibition dedicated to him was held in 2008 [51].
The first part of the title
(of both the exhibition and the catalogues), or "Fantasy and manual skill"
is a famous quote from the Book of Art
on the two components of any artistic activity. The second one ("Cennino
Cennini and the tradition of Tuscan painting from Giotto to Lorenzo
Monaco") links Cennino to the Tuscan pictorial tradition of the decades
ranging from the mid-fourteenth century to the first quarter of the fifteenth
century. Therefore, the exhibition places Cennino precisely in his own era. Unfortunately,
I could not visit the exhibition; however, the catalogue (edited by
Wolf-Dietrich Löhr and Stefan Weppelmann) is really a very thorough polyphonic
monograph. And it is a shame that no English version, dedicated to the public
outside Germany, has been produced.
It must be said that this
fourth stage of Cennino’s German fortune ignores the three previous ones,
because its origins are neither Ilg nor Schlosser nor Verkade nor Kuhn, but the
Hungarian (and Florentine by adoption) scholar Miklós Boskovits, and his essay
on “Cennino Cennini as a nonconformist painter”, dated 1973 [6]. Not
surprisingly, the Berlin exhibition was preceded by a conference on Cennino Cennino and the art of painting,
held in Berlin on 12 January 2007, in which also Boskovits participated [7].
Let me therefore first make a digression on Boskovits between Budapest and
Florence, before returning to Berlin.
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| Fig 2) Cennino Cennini, Holy Bishop (left) and Holy Pope (right) © SMB, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
Miklós Boskivits and his “Cennino Cennini as a nonconformist painter” (1973)
Miklós Boskovits, great
connoisseur of Tuscan painting from the late fourteenth to the early fifteenth
century, had already published several works on that period when, in 1970, he decided
to leave clandestinely Hungary, at 35, to settle in Italy. In Italy he had already
stayed for a study period in 1967-1968, thanks to the prestigious scholarship
"I Tatti Fellowship" of the Harvard University [8]. From 1970 to 1973
he obtained the same scholarship for three consecutive years, allowing him to continue
and deepen his studies on Florentine painting in the period between 1370 and
the first four decades of the fifteenth century. Later on he became an associated professor and then a professor of
art history in Italy, where he devoted himself particularly to the Florentine
art (Corpus of Florentine Painting).
He passed away in 2011.
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| Fig. 3) Cennino Cennini – Holy Bishop (detail) Source: Catalogue of the Exhibition in Berlin |
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Fig 4) Cennino Cennini, St. Augustine, Poggibonsi, Convent of San Lucchese (detail)
Source: Zeri Foundation (http://www.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/40000/17600/17475.jpg) |
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After the three years of
scholarship, Boskovits published in 1973 an essay on "Cennino Cennini as a
nonconformist painter". On the previous year, he had already held a
conference on the theme: "Who was Cennino Cennini?" [9]. Nor is it really surprising that a Hungarian scholar choose
to deal with the identification of the works of Cennino, as one of his first main
interests, just after having arrived in Italy. Cennino Cennini - as we know -
was certainly a landmark for the Hungarian art of the first half of the twentieth century. And it is indeed probably over the years 1960-1970 – i.e.
the height of the Cold War - that an anonymous typewritten samizdat is produced, containing the translation into Hungarian of the Book of the Art of Cennino. That
typewritten text was a transcript of a previous manuscript text, drafted with
the Hungarian spelling in use before 1954. Although we are not yet able to
identify the exact background, researching on Cennino and perhaps the entire Florentine
painting of the fourteenth-century must have been somehow tied, in 1960-1970 Hungary,
to the political dissent against the regime of Kádár. Boskovits might possibly
come from that world.
The text of the essay by Boskovits
on Cennino begins with the story of an encounter he had had "some years
ago" with the late art historian Klara Steinweg (active for decades in
Florence, and passed way in 1972), and then, perhaps during his first stay in
Florence in 1967-1968: Ms Steinweg shows him the two side panels in Berlin (Fig. 2) of a altarpiece then attributed to Spinello Aretino, depicting two religious
figures (in 1973 Boskovits wrote they were perhaps St. Augustine and Pope St. Gregory; in 2008, the Berlin catalogue mentioned them as a ‘holy bishop’ and a ‘holy pope’). According to Ms Steinweg, the two panels could have been in origin part of an
altarpiece, of which another panel, depicting St. Ursula, is preserved in the
United States and is attributed with certainty to Agnolo Gaddi, the master of Cennino (Fig. 5). Various reasons (the same cusp; the same height of the figures compared to
the cusp, the same technical characteristics of the back) led Ms Steinweg to
think that this altarpiece was a joined art work carried out by two different artists:
Spinello and Agnolo.
Here I would like now to
anticipate certain aspects of the ascription of the altarpiece to Cennino and
Agnolo. First, Boskovits - in his work of 1973 - agrees that the three panels
are from the same altarpiece, but believes that the two male figures are a work
of Cennino Cennini, and not of Spinello Aretino. Second, Boskovits repeats this
judgment in his catalogue of the Trecento paintings in the Berlin art
collections in 1987 [10]. Also Federico Zeri shares this view. Third, Laurence
Kanter (curator of the Yale University Art Gallery) identifies a fourth table
of the same altarpiece, which he attributes to Agnolo Gaddi [11]. Misfortune
wants that this fourth table cannot be traced anymore (and thus cannot be
examined technically), and that of it only pictures in black and white remain in
a Sotheby Old Master Paintings Catalogue for a New York auction in 1982 (no
picture is available on the internet) [12]. Fourth, Stefan Weppelmann, in an
essay entirely dedicated to the reconstruction of the altarpiece [13] confirms that
the four tables belong to the same altarpiece and assigns the two male figures to
Cennino and the two female figures to Agnolo.
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Fig. 5) Agnolo Gaddi, St. Ursula, Santa Barbara Museum of ArtSource: http://www.artfixdaily.com/images/pr/1946_6745x1200.jpg
|
The 1973 attribution to Cennino of the two panels of the holy bishop and the holy pope held in Berlin is very important. It is from here that Boskovits departed in a fascinating search for Cennino’s pictorial production that - with the Libro dell’Arte in hand, like a new Schliemann searching for Troy on the basis of the text of the Iliad - leads him to discuss the attribution of dozens of paintings and frescoes, in some cases assigning them to Cennino Cennini and in some cases rejecting that attribution.
Boskovits approaches the two religious figures in Berlin (see the comparison of Figures 2 and 3) to what remains of a fresco cycle in the Convent of San Lucchese in Poggibonsi (Figures 6, 7, 8 and 9).
Boskovits approaches the two religious figures in Berlin (see the comparison of Figures 2 and 3) to what remains of a fresco cycle in the Convent of San Lucchese in Poggibonsi (Figures 6, 7, 8 and 9).
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| Fig. 6) Cennino Cennini, Demon exchanges Saint Stephen in bands with another baby, Discovery and blessing of St. Stephen, Fresco of a pillar in the nave, the Convent of San Lucchese. Source http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/40000/17600/17482.jpg |
From the reading of the Book
of Art, Boskovits derived elements to identify the painting style of
Cennino, that in his opinion was far from the one of Giotto, but certainly similar
to the one of Agnolo. Yet, it contained important stylistic elements of
innovation. In fact, as the title says, he was a nonconformist painter (we are in
the seventies: to be revolutionary was fashionable!) [14].
Reading the Book of Art,
Boskovits observes for example that "while in many writings of the fourteenth
century the surprising truth of the images is considered the most valuable aspect
of the painting of Giotto and his disciples, Cennino appears to be relatively
indifferent to the problem of pictorial illusionism" [15].
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Fig. 7) Cennino Cennini, Saint Catherine of Alexandria (detail with the mandant lady)
Fresco of a pillar in the nave of the Convent of San Lucchese Source: Picture Alinari, Zeri Foundation,, http://www.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/40000/17600/17480.jpg |
And he adds: '' However,
(...) the one of Cennino is not a realistic belief. The encouragement to draw
from life or works of great masters, it is true, is not lacking in the text ,
but the fact remains that he saw especially the source of art in creative
imagination, the means by which one could attain perfection and form an
independent style." [16] He further adds: "Our master, instead of imposing
an abstract idea of beauty on the reader, urges him to entertain the audience:
and so, you will obtain a vague design, which
will let every man fall in love of your deeds, he writes in conclusion to
the chapter dedicated to the design on panel, and in part on the use of colour he
indicates as an example Agnolo Gaddi, who – in his view - painted in a much
more vague and fresh way than his father Taddeo, that is a direct student of
Giotto. To the criteria of dignity and balance, prevailing in the aesthetics of
the early fourteenth century, his book opposes the idea of varied, enjoyable,
imaginative painting, and it is indicative that the word 'simple' is used in the
text with a completely negative sense" [17].
Thus, for Boskovits Cennino
Cennini is the painter of bizarre, curious, grotesque, in other words, the
painter of fantasy. More linked to the International Gothic art movement than to
Giotto. So, a painter of his time: neither a late copier of the art of the
previous decades, nor a precursor to the next.
And so concludes Boskovits,
masterfully: "Assuming that the so recomposed catalogue is homogeneous and
belongs, as it seems virtually certain, to Cennino Cennini, it remains to be
said about the historical position of the artist in the art of his time. Maybe,
if questioned at this point, many readers would give an essentially negative
judgment on the paintings presented so far and there would be no wonder if any
of those colleagues who reserve to study exclusively masterpieces, would judge
our painter as unworthy to enter the ranks of the elected to be remember from
art history. I would, however, take the defence of the master from Colle Val
d’Elsa and remind the too severe critics about the authoritative words of
Benedetto Croce: ‘Those who, when aim at narrating history, are scrambling to
do justice by condemning and absolving... are lacking of historical sense.’
(...) Turning now back to Cennini, the case of a painter who - while declaring
the spiritual heir of Giotto - painted without showing any respect to stylistic
standards and formal rules of the early fourteenth century seems too strange not
to be carefully considered."
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Fig. 8) Cennino Cennini, San
Giovanni Battista, Poggibonsi, Convent of San Lucchese (detail)
Source: Foundation Zeri, http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/40000/17600/17479.jpg |
"Cennino Cennini can be
considered, if any, as a Giotto disciple only in as much as he was a Florentine
painter or as the depositary of a very broad knowledge on materials and methods
of work, ultimately deriving from Giotto's workshop. However, apart from the
technical issues, our painter did not imitate, nor do I believe he ever proposed
to imitate the art of his great predecessor. His paintings are inserted between
those creative, sometimes even expressionistic facts, which spread in
Florentine painting towards the penultimate decade, forming the extreme wing of
the late Gothic tendencies. The attitude of these painters, who exactly on the
eve of the Renaissance seem to forget the principles of perspective, drawing spatially
inconsistent building sets and creating completely arbitrary relations between
things, might appear reactionary; it should not escape us, however, that the
refusal of certain patterns of representation could facilitate the search for
some truth in detail. Remember the advice of Cennino (which was often
misunderstood by modern commentators) to use a rough stone as a template to
paint mountains, and not a few testimonies in his works of a naive but very
careful naturalistic research: the detailed description of the interior of a
middle-class house in the Nativity of the Pinacoteca di Siena for example, or
the beautiful portrait of the mandant lady in a fresco of the Basilica of San
Lucchese. These are the moments of truth in which the instinctive, fantastic
and often rough art of Cennino shows us his innovative aspect, where among the
disordered fragments of an artistic vision you can glimpse the formation of
something new." [18]
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| Fig. 9) Cennino Cennini, St. Francis of Assisi (detail) Fresco of a pillar in the nave, the Convent of San Lucchese Source: Picture Alinari, Zeri Foundation,, http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/40000/17600/17477.jpg |
Thus, Cennino is read by
Boskovits as an experimental painter with an expressionist style. An aesthetic
stream, linked to the International Gothic art movement, which perhaps was not
very successful in the Tuscany of the early Renaissance – more anchored to the
classical tradition - but that left traces in the art north of the Alps. It is
interesting to note that the interrelationship between primitives and
expressionism seems today to be a very fashionable subject for study, especially
in Northern Europe. Think of the exhibition at the Städel in Frankfurt that, in
these days, focuses on "Albrecht Altdorfer and the expressivity of art
around 1500" [19] and think above all of Matthias Grünewald, of course.
Perhaps one of the reasons
why Cennino was not appreciated (Vasari considered him a failed painter) was
just his experimentalism, going in a very different direction from the
Renaissance.
The Berlin exhibition and its catalogue
This is exactly the cultural
background of the Berlin exhibition, prepared by a number of scholars who are
familiar with Florence, thanks to the German Art History Institute (Kunsthistorisches Institut) there [20].
The exhibition is an opportunity to expose the two panels by Cennini in Berlin,
along with the works of Tuscan Gothic now based in the German capital. The
panels are the only two paintings by Cennino in the exhibition. Moreover, we do
not know anymore the location of many works attributed to him. They were
purchased from private galleries during antiquarian auctions, and did not longer
reappear since.
The exhibition of 2008 was
however also the occasion to present the results of the aforementioned German-Italian
conference of 2007 and thus to take stock of the studies on Cennino Cennini and
his time, particularly to allow for a comparison between the German and the
Italian school. And - one can tell right away - it almost seems that Cennino has
been given more credit in Germany than in Italy, as an artist and intellectual
of his time. The catalogue is edited by Wolf-Dietrich Löhr (professor at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence)
and Stefan Weppelmann (now Director of the Kunsthistorisches
Museum in Vienna after a career as a curator for Italian art in Berlin).
From reading the catalogue,
information can be retrieved on four aspects: (i) the biography and the
artistic work of Cennino, (ii) his position in the art of his time; (iii) the Book of Art, its origin and its fortune,
and (iv) the specific topic of the interaction between fantasy and manual skill.
(i) The biography and the artistic work
One can perhaps identify four
phases of the life of Cennino Cennini. To them devoted an essay the Norwegian art
historian Erling Skaug (who created and directed the Nordic Centre of
Restoration in Florence between 1967 and 1970, to recover at least part of the
assets damaged by the Arno flood in 1966) [21].
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Fig 10) Cennino Cennini, Birth of Mary, Town Museum, Colle Val d'Elsa
Source: Museum Bozar, Brussels, http://www.bozar.be/dbfiles/pfile/201410/pfile254528_activity14090.jpg |
The first is that of the long
apprenticeship (twelve years) in the workshop of Agnolo Gaddi in Florence, one
of the most successful art studios of the last years of the fourteenth century.
Since the artists began their practicum at around twelve years, Cennino may
have left the shop being about twenty-four years old. To this juvenile stage Skaug
attributes the panel on the Birth of Mary
(picture 10), preserved in the museum town of Colle Val d'Elsa (a really
nice and curious work, which is on display these weeks in Brussels in an
exhibition on the Sienese art [22]). For a number of considerations, Skaug
suggests that the apprenticeship time of Cennino ended in 1388, when it was
replaced by Lorenzo Monaco in the workshop of Agnolo Gaddi. If the reasoning of
Skaug were true, Cennino would be born around 1364, would have entered the
workshop of Agnolo as an apprentice in 1376 and would have signed the first
work as an independent painter at age 24 in 1388.
The second phase is when
Cennino - which is now out of the workshop - operates as an independent painter
in Tuscany, although he continues to have current relationships with Agnolo
(who died in 1396). It is exactly dated 1388 the cycle of frescoes in the San
Lucchese Convent of Poggibonsi (Pictures 6-9), containing an inscription which
documents that the author was a not better documented painter of Colle Val
d'Elsa. It would belong to the last years of the 1380s also the Madonna and Child in a tabernacle of
Colle Val Elsa (Picture 11), where the child's face, however, was completely
repainted at a later stage. Moreover, it would be of this phase the already
mentioned altarpiece, consisting of two Berlin panels of Cennino (Picture 2-3)
and two panels of Agnolo, and a central panel which went lost.
The third phase is that of
Padua, documented since 1398 and probably ending sometime before 1405.
According to a majority of scholars, it is in these first few years of the new
century – at the court of Francesco Novello da Carrara – that Cennino wrote his
Book of the Art, married a noblewoman
from Padua, had a son and was most likely part of the cultural entourage of the
city, strongly influenced by the teaching of Petrarch. Skaug notes that some
methods described in the book (for example, the techniques to give a first-hand
in plaster) are documented in Florence only in the second decade of the 1400s,
and speculates that perhaps these techniques had been first introduced in
Padua, and only later on in Tuscany [23]. Despite the attempts of several
historians, no works have yet been found which can be assigned to the Paduan age
of the artist of Colle Val d'Elsa.
The Paduan period is
interrupted by the invasion of the city by the Venetians in 1405 and the execution
in captivity of Francesco Novello da Carrara in 1406. It is unlikely that
Cennino remained in Padua, and indeed it is likely that he went back to
Tuscany, probably in his hometown, Colle Val d'Elsa, then part of the area
controlled by Florence. It would belong to this time, also for technical
reasons, the Madonna with Child between
cherubim and seraphim in the art collection of the Monte Paschi di Siena (Fig. 12), the Madonna with Child at the
Florence Baroni Gallery Fig. 13) and Madonna
with Child in Milan, already part of the Algranti collection and whose
location is now no longer known (Fig. 14).
 |
Fig. 11), Cennino Cennini, Madonna with Child, Colle Val d'Elsa, the tabernacle in the Episcopal Palace
Source: Foundation Zeri, http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/40000/17600/17476.jpg |
 |
| Fig. 12), Cennino Cennini, Madonna with the Child between the cherubins and seraphins, Collection of Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Source: Monte dei Paschi di Siena, https://www.mps.it/NR/rdonlyres/6206A441-AAAB-4294-9658-80F83C90AF38/3804/XIV06.jpg |
 |
Fig. 13), Cennino Cennini, Madonna with Child, (previously in the Baroni Collection)
Source: Foundation Zeri, http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/40000/17600/17486.jpg |
 |
Fig. 14, Cennino Cennini, Madonna with child, Milan, Collections Algranti
Source: Foundation Zeri,, http://www.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/40000/33200/32856.jpg |
Skaug assumed that the career
of Cennino took place along three decades, perhaps from 1388 to 1418, and that
he developed various stylistic models during his career, which are not anymore documented
now. The last trace of the artist is a document which probably refers to his son
Andrea and notifies that, in 1427, his father Cennino was already dead.
As already mentioned, a rich
essay by Steffan Weppelmann is dedicated to the altarpiece in Berlin, of which
only four tables in the front remained (the back was decorated, but it is very
difficult to ascertain how) [24]. Babette Hartwieg - director of restorations
for public art collections in Berlin - analyses in a completely rigorous way the
two panels with the holy bishop and the holy pope, and can evidence, using
scientific methods, that they reflect with great accuracy exactly the
techniques of the Book of the Art
[25].
(ii) Placing Cennino in the art of his time
The
first essay in the catalogue [26], written by the two curators of the catalogue
(Lohr and Weppelmann), poses the problem of how Cennino himself understood his
artistic identity in relation to the art of his time. The Book of the Art contains, in fact, just in the first pages, an
explicit declaration of belonging to the school of Agnolo and – going backward,
from generation to generation – Taddeo Gaddi and Giotto, the latter seen as the
ultimate source of the renewal of art (the famous ‘translation’ of art from a Greek-Byzantine
into Latin-Tuscan style). Here, the genealogy has therefore a rationale of
legitimacy. The statement of belonging to the school of painting of
Giotto-Taddeo-Agnolo is then repeated in the text, in chapter 67, this time
giving it a more developmental role (painting by Agnolo is described as much
more beautiful and fresh than the one of his father Taddeo). The essay raises therefore
the question of genealogy as a tool of identity (in arts, any genealogy
distinguishes eras and styles over time), which on one hand serves to find
legitimacy in the past and the other one provides an evolutionary key to
discuss painting modernization.
One
of the central theses of the catalogue is that the use of genealogy by Cennini does
not have at all the task of decreeing any fixity of style among the three
generations, but on the contrary to state the inevitability of their evolution
in terms of style, however in the context of a system of universal values that
is preserved by religion (the genealogy has its ultimate origin in St. Luke the
Evangelist, according to tradition the first painter of history). The authors
believe that the focal point of the genealogy is not at all Giotto (we are not
in the presence of a 'revival' of Giotto; Cennino is not a Giottesque painter),
but rather Agnolo – a personality of great success in his time - in an attempt
to create in the reader the impression that Cennino had as a reference point a contemporary
artist, the most modern painter of the last generation [27]. Erling Skaug dares
the hypothesis that the Book was
written immediately after the disappearance of Agnolo (1396), almost to grab
his legacy and offer it to the public [28].
(iii) The reasons of the Book of Art and its fortune
The
catalogue reflects the different interpretations about the ultimate reasons of
the writing of the Book of Art. There
are at least three interpretations: the first is that it was a manual for
learning art, written for an audience that includes both the disciples in the master
workshops as well as an elite interested in artistic things; the second one is
that it was a propaganda work, written to legitimize the medieval system (arte) that regimented painters in the
framework of the corporations, even on pain of severe penalties; the third one is
that it was a treatise on art commissioned by the court in Padua.
If Lohr and Weppelmann, in the introduction to the catalogue, share the first view, which is historically the most widespread [29], the various contributions discuss all the hypotheses.
- Hannah Baader of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence [30] emphasizes the value of the Book of Art as a technical text conceived as systematic manual, based on the concept of art as a "deformation of nature", therefore focusing on the use of raw materials. According to Ms Baader, we are therefore far beyond a simple collection of recipes, at least for two reasons: the invention of a specialized technical vocabulary (an aspect already noted by Julius von Schlosser in 1914); the preference for efficient and effective technological processes, compared to procedures leading to doubtful results (Cennino himself openly criticizes the activity of collecting recipes by monks, and recommends in some cases the direct acquisition of the colours on the market, instead of their manual production, when the time of their preparation is so long and complex that it could threaten the gains of the painter, as in the case of cinnabar). It is a practical and technical text, intended for learning art, which is defined as a superior form of knowledge, or even a real science. The author traces comparisons with many technical treatises of the time, all dedicated to translate into writing the oral knowledge of previous decades.
- Fabio Frezzato - author of the Italian edition of the Book of Art in 2003, which was reprinted several times until 2009 - instead rules out that the Book can be simply regarded as a text intended to artists and the public of those are interested in art. His Berlin essay [31] still represents an evolution of the original position, as defined in the introduction to the Italian version of 2003. On that occasion Frezzato had suggested an interpretation of the Book as a kind of manifesto of a political-institutional nature, written at the request of the Paduan corporation (the Arte) to convince its members to follow the administrative rules of the association: thus a book of propaganda, in defence of the Arte as a mandatory association between artists, and not on art as a creative manifestation of the spirit. In the Berlin text Frezzato resizes this thesis. He proposes to interpret the text as an encyclopaedic treatise on art, written at the request of the house Carrara of Padua, and therefore a work of prevailing artistic and aesthetic interest, but not for practical use by artists or art lovers.
- The Paduan historian Giovanna Baldissin Molli aims to describe the environment of the court of Padua in those years. She proposes in particular to consider the relationships between Cennino and the Paduan painter Francesco Squarcione (1397-1468), certainly younger than Cennino by one generation: he was the teacher of Mantegna. Squarcione could be considered, for the techniques he used and for his pedagogical intent, as the true heir of Cennino, and perhaps one of the few painters to have really put into practice the teaching of the Book.
- Victor M. Schmidt – of the University of Utrecht – discusses functions and public of the Book, rejects the 2003 hypothesis of Frezzato and considers the amateur painter as the obvious recipient to which Cennino addresses it [32]. The amateur art lover is well recognized in the culture of the time (Dante, Vergerio, Petrarch, Boccaccio).
 |
| Fig. 15) Francesco Squarcione, Polyptych De Lazara, Padova, Museo Civico Source: Wikimedia Commons |
- The art historians Alexandra Fingas and Katharina Christa Schüppel propose a structured reading of the research work on Cennini in Italy and abroad, from Tambroni until recent years [33].
As to the fortune of the Book of the Art in the Nineteenth and Twelfth Century, Erling Skaug
interprets it not so much as a result of the neo-gothic fascination for
medieval art, but rather as a result of the industrialization of the production
of the colours in the mid-nineteenth century (colours were for the first time
sold in tubes) and the consequent decline of craft production. The new products
revealed however soon to be unreliable (they were drying up too soon on the
canvas). Furthermore, "the painters had lost control over the materials
they used and the traditional knowledge on even the most successful painting
techniques were gone into oblivion. This created precisely the desire to return
to trusted and lasting methods. The Book
of Art corresponded perfectly to this desire, since it was a practical tool
for the discovery of the secrets of the past" [34]. Today, adds Skaug, the interest for the Book is mainly that of art restorers.
(iv) Fantasy and manual skill
One
of the central theses of the catalogue - totally opposite to that of Rudolf
Kuhn, is that 'fantasy' and 'manual skill'
are both considered by Cennino as integral component of ‘art’: they can (and
must) be both taught and are therefore included in the Book of the art [35]. Kuhn had instead theorized a clear dichotomy
between the two elements, attributing to Cennini only the intention of dealing
with the manual part of the art and declaring that the creative aspect of
artistic activity was outside of the manual, because his teaching from teacher
to student was considered impossible.
If
for Kuhn the work of Cennino was essentially a recipe book, for the Berlin catalogue
it is rather a systematic discussion of (almost) all aspects of the art workshop
at the turn of the century. In the Book
are missing, if anything, the commercial aspects: for example, nowhere is spoken
of the relationship with the mandants [36]. Yet, the authors write, it was prominently
in the interest of the mandants that the works had the highest standards of
professional quality (for example, that they would not deteriorate over time), as
described by Cennini [37]. The explanation is that in those years the figure of
the mandant changes. Traders are evolving; they are no longer simply family
businesses. Economic centres are being founded that have complex decision mechanisms
at their heart and are widespread in the territory through branches: the art
workshops are not visited any more by the rich merchants or nobles in person,
but by middle management (fidecommissari)
and most of the orders are repetitive, as evidenced by the use in the contracts
of specific clauses in that time (the so-called clauses forma et modo: “in the form of and according to the manner of”)
[38].
Also
the emphasis in Cennino’s Book for
some aspects that were considered as a symbol of cultural conservatism (for
example, the recommendation to copy the models of the master) is explained
mainly by the fact that - to the rising of the new century - the shops are
starting to gear up industrially, in order to respond to the increased demand
and thus to the increased production needs (thus, a sort of forerunner of the
specialization of labour, like theorised some centuries later by Adam Smith).
The boys have to specialize and perform the same works consecutively so that the workshop can
speed up production [39]. In short: to them happens what craftsmen would experiment
with the industrial revolution later on. This would mean, in the last instance,
that Cennino is able to keep pace with his times: economy is changing, and
Cennino adapts to it.
If
anything, in this age of standardization of pictorial activity, Cennino would
be the lover of not only a manual culture, but also of fantasy: an innovator
who is fully part of the humanistic culture of his time and who does not
hesitate to enter into uncharted waters.
The
dichotomy between manual skill - hand work (Handwerk)
and intellectual activity (Denkwerk) is
at the centre of a masterly essay by Wolf-Dietrich Löhr, who shows a profound
knowledge of the culture of those decades [40]. He places Cennino within those
circles of the humanistic era (Biagio Pelacani and Coluccio Salutati) which are normally
associated with Leon Battista Alberti, and not to Cennino [41]. He explains
that the two poles within which Cennino puts artistic creation (manual skill
and fantasy) are ultimately derived from St. Augustine ("contemplatio" and "actio"),
are present in Petrarch (“manus” and “ingenium”) and have in Cennino a much broader
definition than it is often thought: "manual skill" does not only
refer to the use of the hands when painting, but to the whole activity of the
body, including the respect of ethical rules [42]. Löhr lists (and it is really
an amazing read) all the passages of the Book
in which Cennino refers, for example, to rules of good sexual behaviour, that
the painter must adopt: part of that "vivere
manualmente” (manually living) that the contemporary Giovanni Gherardi describes as the foundation of the diversity of man from animals [43]. In this
sense, the “manual skill” is not an expression of simple craft work, but of
science and religion [44]. Hand and brush are not mere tools of hand dexterity,
but tools to enable the quality of the artwork (“peritia, experiential”),
in line with a superior conception of art [45].
The
declaration of art as a science is the ultimate motivation of the progressive
teaching of techniques and knowledge. It is central, in this sense, the concept
of the importance of daily practice of drawing, a continuous practice that on
the one hand must be based on love for art and on the other one aims at creating
pleasure and delight. The moral value of art translates itself, on the other
hand, in a number of requirements that tend to temper not only the colours and the brush, but also the artist’s behaviour:
do not drink and eat in excess; not strain your hands disproportionately (also
to avoid any tremor); refrain from sexual practices before operations of
particular difficulty (like gilding of the glass), so that the hand can remain
lightweight and draw in a safe and fast way [46]. Many of these requirements have
very ample parallels - as Löhr explains - in the medical and philosophical
culture of that time. Therefore, not only the traditional criticism would have
underestimated the role of the fantasy (the power to 'draw in the mind'), but it
would also not really realized that the expression ‘manual skill' has a much
broader meaning than it is often understood.
Conclusions
Three
basic ideas can be derived from the reading of the catalogue.
First,
Cennino was not a conservative painter, linked exclusively to outdated patterns
of the past, but was indeed a man of his time, fully integrated in the reflections of
humanism and capable of experimental forms in techniques and style. The
reference to fantasy in the Book of the
art is not a mere rhetorical formula; and the other pole of Cennini’s reflection
(manual skill) goes far beyond the simple craftsmanship. Cennino‘s stylistic
innovation has however evolved in different directions from those of the
Italian art of those years, and perhaps some experimental aspects of his
pictorial language – leaning towards the expressionism of the International
Gothic art movement - led to his progressive marginalization in style terms in
Italy, at the time of the great success of the first generation of the Tuscan
Renaissance. Of Cennino almost nothing is left because the art environment of his time did not
consider his paintings as sufficiently valuable to ensure their conservation.
Second,
some of the characteristics of the described techniques - often considered as a
consequence of a lack of creativity (repetitive work, the importance of the manner,
the obligation to adapt to the models of the workshop) - are a direct
consequence of the evolution of the practices of workshops in a world that
evolved at a great speed: the pictorial production acquired some industrial
characteristics, also linked to the broadening of demand. Just the 'technology-led'
nature of artistic production requires Cennino to take into account the
consequences of changes in the operating model of the society as a whole.
Finally,
Cennino is not an uneducated and isolated painter. Writing the Book was by no means a work of an old
age painter forced to make some money, or - even worse - performed in the Stinche prison in Florence to redeem
some debts, but took shape in one of the most cultured courts of Italian
humanism, that of Padua. Even the reference to ethical and religious issues is
not a simple manifestation of ingenuity, but it confirms the interpretation -
by Cennino – of artistic activity as a complex phenomenon that involves both
the intellect as well as the body, and requires consistency between behaviours
and ideals.
In conclusion, the German world remains a fertile ground for a reflection on Cennino Cennini. It reveals today - as in the past – how much that world is able to analyse the basic themes of Italian art and culture with great love and skill.
NOTES
[1] Cennini, Cenninio - Das Buch von
der Kunst oder Tractat der Malerei des Cennino Cennini da Colle di Valdelsa
(The Book of the Art or the Treatise on Painting), edited by Albert Ilg,
Vienna, Braumüller, 1871, p. 188
[2] Schlosser, Julius von - Materialien zur
Quellenkunde der Kunstgeschichte (Heft 1): Mittelalter (Materials on the Study
of Sources of Art History – Middle Age), Wien, Alfred Hölder, 1914
[3] Des Cennino Cennini Handbüchlein der Kunst (The
Hand Booklet of Art), edited by Willibrord Verkade, Strasburgo, Heitz and Mündel, 1916
[4] See for instance: Rudolf Kuhn - Cennino
Cennini - Sein Verständnis dessen, was
die Kunst in der Malerei sei, und seine Lehre - vom Entwurfs- und vom
Werkprozeß (Cennino Cennini – His Interpretation of what is Art in Painting, and
his Doctrine of Planning and Implementation of Art), published in “Zeitschrift
für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft“, Vol. 36, 1991, pages 104 – 153
[5] The
catalogue is entitled: “Fantasie und Handwerk” – Cennino Cennini und die
Tradition der toskanischen Malerei von Giotto bis Lorenzo Monaco” i.e. "Fantasy
and Manual Skill. Cennino Cennini and the tradition of
Tuscan painting from Giotto to Lorenzo Monaco”. It has been co-published by
Hirmer Publishers in Munich and the Public Museus of Berlin. The catalogue has
334 pages, a size of 22 x 28 cm, and includes an excellent bibliography
(pp.305-325).
[6] Boskovits Miklós - Cennino Cennini
- pittore nonconformista, in: Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in
Florenz, 17. volume, N. 2/3 (1973), pp. 201-222, published by the
Kunsthistorisches Institut di Firenze. See: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27652330
[10] Boskovits, Miklós, Gemäldegalerie Berlin,
Katalog der Gemälde, Frühe italienische Malerei, 1987, pp.22-23
[11] Kanter, Laurence B., Barbara
Drake Boehm, Carl Brandon Strehlke, Gaudenz Freuler, Christa C. Mayer Thurman,
and Pia Palladino, Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence,
1300–1450, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994, pp. 220-222
[12] Old Master Paintings, Sotheby
Parke Berner (New York, 25.3.1982), New York, 1982, lotto 78
[13] Weppelmann, Stefan – “Storia o
ffighura”Obiektstatus und Kontext der Berliner Tafeln Cenninis und Überlegungen
zur Werkstatt des Agnolo Gaddi, (History or figure. Objective
state and context of the Berlin panels of Cennini and considerations on the
workshop of Agnolo Gaddi), pp. 57-79
[14] Some of the paintings assigned to
Cennino are here displayed in the historical back and white version of the Alinari
photo company, published on the Internet by the Zeri Foundation. Federico Zeri
was also convinced of the authorship by Cennino of several of these works. http://www.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/catalogo/ricerca.jsp?apply=true&ordine_F=rilevanza&galleria=true&decorator=layout_S2&mod_AUTN_F=esatto&tipo_ricerca=avanzata&AUTN_F=Cennini+Cennino&componi_F=AND&percorso_ricerca=F&pagina=1
[15] Boskovits Miklós - Cennino
Cennini (quoted) … pp. 205-206
[16] Boskovits Miklós - Cennino
Cennini (quoted) … p. 206
[17] Boskovits Miklós - Cennino
Cennini (quoted) … p. 206
[18] Boskovits Miklós - Cennino
Cennini (quoted) … p. 218-222
[21] Skaug, Erling – Eine Einführung in das Leben und
die Kunst Cennino Cenninis (An introduction to the life and art of Cennino
Cennini), pp. 45-55.
[23] Skaug, Erling – Eine Einführung in das Leben … (quoted), pp. 47-48
[24] Weppelmann,
Stefan – “Storia o ffighura”..., quoted
[25] Hartwieg, Babette – Spurensuche. Technologische
Beobachtungen, Untersuchungen und Schlussfolgerungen zu den Berliner Tafeln
Cenninis (At the research of traces. Technological
Observations, Researches and Conclusions on the Berlin Panels by Cennino), pp.
81-101
[26] Lohr, Wolf-Dietrich and Weppelmann, Stefan -
“Glieder in der Kunst der Malerei”.Cennino Cenninis Genealogie und die Suche
nach Kontinuität zwischen Handwerkstradition, Werkstattpraxis und
Historiographie, (“A Member of the Art of Painting”. Cennino
Cennini and the Search for Continuity between Craft Tradition, Workshop Praxis
and Historiography), pp. 13- 43
[27] Lohr Wolf-Dietrich e Weppelmann, Stefan
-“Glieder in der Kunst der Malerei” … (quoted),
p.23
[28] Skaug, Erling – Eine Einführung in das Leben … (quoted),
p. 47
[29] Lohr Wolf-Dietrich e Weppelmann, Stefan
- “Glieder in der Kunst der Malerei” … (quoted),
p.22
[30] Baader, Hannah – Sündenfall und Wissenschaft. Zur
Verschriftlichung künstlerischer Techniken durch Cennino Cennini (Original Sin
and Science. On the Writing on Art Techniques by
Cennino Cennini), pp. 121-131
[31] Frezzato, Fabio – Wege der
Forschung zu Cennino Cennini: Von den biographischen Daten zur Bestimmung des
Libro dell’Arte (Research Paths on Cennino Cennini: From the Biographic Data to
the Function of the Book of the Art), pp. 133-146
[32] Schmidt, Victor M. – Hypothesen
zu Funktion und Publikum von Cenninis Libro
dell’Arte (Hypotheses on the Function and the Public of the Book of the Art
by Cennini), p. 147
[33] Fingas,
Alexandra e Schüppel, Katharina Christa – Cennino Cenninis Libro dell’Arte. Editionen und Literatur zum Buch von
der Kunst und zum künstlerischen Œuvre Cenninis (The Book of the Art by Cennino
Cennini. Editions and Literature on the Book o the Art
and the Art Work by Cennini), pp. 225-235
[34] Skaug, Erling – Eine Einführung in das Leben …
(quoted), p. 45
[35] Lohr Wolf-Dietrich and Weppelmann, Stefan
- “Glieder in der Kunst der Malerei” … (quoted),
p. 14
[36] Lohr
Wolf-Dietrich and Weppelmann, Stefan - “Glieder
in der Kunst der Malerei” … (quoted), p. 24
[37] Lohr
Wolf-Dietrich and Weppelmann, Stefan - “Glieder
in der Kunst der Malerei” … (quoted), p. 26
[38] Lohr
Wolf-Dietrich and Weppelmann, Stefan - “Glieder
in der Kunst der Malerei” … (quoted), p. 29
[39] Lohr
Wolf-Dietrich and Weppelmann, Stefan - “Glieder
in der Kunst der Malerei” … (quoted), p. 28
[40] Löhr Wolf-Dietrich – Handwerk und Denkwerk des
Malers. Kontexte für Cenninis Theorie der Praxis (Hand
work and intellectual Work of the Painter. Contexts for the Theory of Praxis by
Cennini), pp. 153-176.
[41] Löhr Wolf-Dietrich – Handwerk … (quoted), p. 153
[42] Löhr Wolf-Dietrich – Handwerk … (quoted), p. 154
[43] Löhr Wolf-Dietrich – Handwerk … (quoted), p. 155
[44] Löhr Wolf-Dietrich – Handwerk … (quoted), p.
157-159
[45] Löhr Wolf-Dietrich – Handwerk … (quoted), p.
160-163
[46] Löhr
Wolf-Dietrich – Handwerk … (citato), p. 166-167
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