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Giovanni Mazzaferro
The Book of the Art by Cennino Cennini (1821-1950): An Example of Dissemination of Italian Culture in the World
Part Two
extract from
Zibaldone. Estudios italianos de la Torre del Virrey vol III, numero 1, gennaio 2015
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| Taddeo Gaddi, Last Supper, Tree of Life and Four Miracle Scenes. Florence, Cenacle of the Church of the Holy Cross |
This essay has been published in Italian in the online magazine Zibaldone. Estudios italianos de la Torre del Virrey with the title "Il Libro dell'Arte di Cennino Cennini (1821-1950): un esempio di diffusione della cultura italiana nel mondo" (issue 1/2015). A pdf version (in Italian) is available here.
We're publishing below the English translation, in three parts.
The first German translation (1871). There are many
things to say about the first German translation of the Book of Art, made by Albert Ilg in 1871. [20] Let
us start from the obvious: a) it is the first translation conducted on the Milanesi edition, and therefore is substantially complete; b) with the Ilg edition, Cennino
becomes available (in a relatively short time: 50 years) in all the key
European languages (or, better, in all those languages that could exert a significant
cultural influence on the rest of the continent).
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| Front-cover of the Ilg edition (1871) |
The translation of Ilg is considered in the
following years as being of an excellent quality. However, if one goes beyond
the merely linguistic aspects, and considers instead the commentary that
accompanies it, it should be noted that this is the first version in which certainly
not so benevolent judgments appear on the work of the artist of Colle Val
d'Elsa. [21] The great 'merit' of Cennino - says Ilg -
is to be a man looking backward and not forward; it is to be an obsolete
artist, the last witness of a civilization - that of Giotto - that is dying.
The world is changing: whether in Padua or Florence, Cennino had to have
already made acquaintance with generations of artists, who were already oriented
towards the nascent humanism, but he makes no mention of them, and indeed,
turns nostalgically to the past. Fortunately for us, it is clear. Because in
this way Cennino allows us to know the artistic techniques of the masters of
the fourteenth century. On it, two things are to be said: first of all, Ilg
uses terms that would have been unthinkable just a few years before. Speaking
of a break between the Middle Age and the Renaissance is an aspect that is
directly derived from the works of Burckhardt, [22] which had not yet appeared
until the Milanesi edition. Thus, Ilg re-reads Cennino in the light of a new
periodization, which had been formalized only a few years before. If I may, I
would like then to say that to interpret Cennino as a man of the past is not -
by itself – a sufficient element to characterize Ilg, compared to those who had
provided before, or will provide afterwards, translations of his work. Let me
explain: Cennino is seen by all as a man of the past (if anything Ilg - but
also others before him [23] - sees him as a man of the past who looks
backwards). The problem is figuring out what should be the attitude of the art
critic vis-à-vis that past: is Cennino the expression of an art that we want to
recover? If yes, do we want to recover it only from a technical point of view?
Or even - and more ambitiously - under a spiritual profile? It is here that the
judgment of Ilg is very sharp and dismissive (and he is light years far away,
for example, from all the translations of the first decades of the twentieth
century). The art of Cennino should not
be recovered; the practices that Cennino suggests in his manuscript (for
example, the long apprenticeship of 12 years with a single master) are entirely
destructive and lead to the loss of individuality and artistic stagnation and
then to the death of art. I do not think it is a coincidence that, despite the
undoubted quality of the translation, someone (Jan Verkade) felt the need, in a
completely changed cultural climate (in 1916), to produce a new edition in
German to recalibrate the judgment on the Siena artist.
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| Front-cover of the Herringham edition (1899) |
Thirty years later: The second English edition.
The temptation to draw a parallel between Mary Philadelphia Merrifield (author
of the first English translation) and Christiana Herringham, who bears the
fatigue of the second edition, published in 1899, is very strong. [24]
Both were women and both were able to carve out a
leading role for themselves in a strongly patriarchal society. Having said that
(and having added that, of course, the Herringham edition finds its raison d'être in the fact of being
carried out against the Milanesi edition, i.e. the full text of the
manuscript), I think the similarities terminate here. In examining Cennino’s
Treaty, Merrifield was mainly moved by the interest in fresco; Herringham by
the one in tempera. Merrifield is an 'art patriot'; she carries the translation
in the interests of English art, when there is the problem of Westminster, but she
has - as an aesthetic ideal - the artworks of Italian classicism, in particular
of the Venetian one; to the contrary, Herringham feeds a romantic and spiritual
interest in Cennino. Merrifield feels first of all the need to mark the
distances from the painting of the fourteenth century, the painting of a world
that no longer exists, soaked in an almost idolatrous religiosity, which do not
contain the half-tones and light and dark colouring of the Venetian; she
studies (proto)-scientifically the magnificent pigments for the use and benefit
of modern artists. Herringham feels close to that world: first of all, she
considers as 'modern' the warning by Cennino on the need to embrace love, fear,
obedience and perseverance, and to put oneself under the guidance of one single
teacher to learn painting. Merrifield had Eastlake as its lodestar; Herringham
acts under the influence of Ruskin. She does not believe that the study of pigments
and recipes - which she nevertheless leads with a coherence which will be
widely recognised to her - can lead to improvements, if not understanding that
it is first necessary to change the approach with which the artist lives his
work . We are at the end of the century, and the theme of the spiritual art, and
of artistic priesthood, is exploding loudly throughout Europe. Christiana is
not a professional painter, but an obstinate copyist. For decades, she has to
deal daily with the works of the Old Masters at the National Gallery and studies
the technique of tempera. [25] In 1901, two years after the publication of
Cennino, she is one of the founders (and certainly the main financial sponsor)
of the Society of Painters in Tempera.
The Society's interest is not that of an antiquarian; it is believed that
tempera, because technically more difficult than oil, could lead to a new, more
conscious, higher, and more beautiful way of painting. Cennino is no longer the
last of the Giotto-school painters; he is the first of the moderns.
The myth of Cennino in Art Nouveau Europe. Between 1911 and 1916, three new editions of
the Book of Art are published: the
first, the French one, with a preface by Auguste Renoir (1911), the second, an Italian
one, curated by Renzo Simi (1913), the third one, in German, with a commentary
by Jan Verkade (1914-1916). [26] And we might finish here, if it were not the
case that just these three editions are the clear demonstration (I would dare to
say that they are a mature demonstration, in the sense that they are published
close to or even during the great tragedy of the war) of what had happened in
Europe since the last decade of the nineteenth century onwards. In fact, I
think that there is even a visual proof of what has just been said, preceding the
above mentioned three translations by a few years only. It is located in
Hungary, at the Academy of Music in Budapest, where, in 1907, Aladár
Körösfói-Kriesch, one of the leading artists of the Hungarian Art Nouveau, completes
a magnificent fresco cycle entitled Pilgrimage
to the source of art. Without dwelling too long, the main fresco shows two
rows of approaching characters, marching just to drink at a symbolic fountain,
from which flows the source of art. On the fountain, the artist feels the need
to write: "My gratitude to Cennino
Cennini, my tribute to the Masters of Siena."
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| Aladár Körösfói-Kriesch , Pilgrimage to the source of Art (fresco), Budapest, Franz Liszt Music Academy, 1907 © Nóra Mészöly |
The explosion of Art Nouveau in Europe, the birth of the secessions in their various
national variations, the obsolescence of naturalism, the antipositivism, the attention
to symbolism, syntheticism, the spirituality of art are a universal phenomenon.
A by no means secondary aspect of this is the rediscovery not only of techniques,
but also of the contextual modalities in which medieval artworks are created.
Exactly as in the case of Herringham, Cennino becomes a 'modern' author, with his
call for humility, obedience, and perseverance. If up to Mid-XIX century the
experience of foreign artists in Italy was addressed to Carracci, to Raphael,
the Venetian colourism, now they come on a pilgrimage to see the great cycles
of Giotto's frescoes in Assisi and the other masters of the Tuscan Middle Ages.
All the just mentioned issues are easily to be found
in the new translations of Cennino. Renzo Simi publishes the third Italian
edition in 1913. [28] He is the son of Filadelfo Simi, a liberty
[note of the translator: an Italian Art
Nouveau] artist whose international school, open to Florence as from the
late nineteenth century, should be studied in depth, since it lists among its
students Signorini and Giovanni Fattori on the one hand, but also a number of
foreign artists, especially attentive to the Italian culture of fifteenth Century, on the
other hand (frequent acquaintances are tested, for example, between Filadelfo
Simi and Finnish artists who returned home, to open the local school of fresco
painting). [29]
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| Filadelfo Simi, A reflection, Rome, Museum of Modern Art |
The version of Renzo is simply his university thesis,
then readapted. We have to say, first of all, that the Simi edition is by far
the most successful of all those printed versions, both for the many Italian
reissues as well as because most of the subsequent translations are based on it.
From an editorial point of view, the operation of Simi is very simple: he frees
the work from any excessive apparatus of notes in the comment and tries to offer
a more modern and understandable language to the reader. It is worth quoting some
large excerpts from the three initial pages of the preface, where Simi deals
with the poetic of Cennino:
"If time,
like the sea, destroys many things, it only hides some others; one day, it then
gives them back to us, more precious and valuable: coal became diamond...
The love for
the exotic and for the contrast draws us towards what is most distant from us:
the present generation, with its irreligious and positive criticism, loves any candid
expression as a lost faith, like a woman in a mature age may be seduced by the
inexpert innocence of young boys. One goes as on a pilgrimage to Assisi...
The total
contrast between the art of today and of the past explains this passion. The
art of that time is impersonal, and mainly for this reason, grandiose. With
scant resources, simple by nature and by necessity, it follows formulas, which
are established by usage, and is pleased by them...
Generality shall
of course be added to impersonality. Not portraits, but symbols or types; not a
specific pain, but pain in general; not a particular detail, but construction
lines; not the deep modern research of colour, but a solid tone, with its light
and its dark...
On all these
things, Cennini writes with great precision, detail and very much love. His
book, a valuable document for the history of the art, is above all, for us, a
poetic comment to that spiritual simplicity of primitive painters which many
have in vain tried to imitate; since, in a river, water always runs from source
to mouth, every season has its own character of beauty and human life has one
childhood only." [30]
Cennino in the myth. Cennino like St. Francis. It
never minds that, in the reality of things, one knows already for a while (since
the Milanesi edition) that the artist of Colle Val d'Elsa was not a monk. Here,
we are talking about the priesthood in the art. Art is a religion. Segantini
already wrote in 1891: "Art has to
replace the void left in us by religions; the art of the future will look like a
science of the spirit, since every artwork is a revelation of it...
Literature, music, painting - no longer being a servant or a prostitute, but
powerful and gentle ladies - form the trinity of the spirit: for them the
cosmic evolution will be religion and muse; science will be their guide, the
high and serene feeling of nature will be their source of inspirations."
[31].
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| Cover of the Verkade edition (1916) |
It is just obvious that the transition from the
priesthood in the art to 'priesthood and art' can be very short. This is the
case of the Dutchman Jan Verkade, a Protestant converted to Catholicism,
who embodies these values so deeply to become monk and live at the service of
the monastery of Beuron, one of the great centres of art that, between the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, seek to renew sacred art in a modern sense.
[32] Verkade is the author of the second German translation of Cennino, already
completed in 1914 but published only in the course of the war. [33] If we go back
with the mind to what the author of the first translation in the same language
(Albert Ilg) wrote about Cennino (the last of the Giotto-style artists, a man
who lived out of his time with an eye to the past) we realize the cultural
abyss that separates the two versions. Verkade writes in his preface: "if someone asked me what is the benefit of
this work [note of the editor of the Book
of Art], I would answer that it
consists basically of a better understanding of that art - which today has
become again so dear to us - whose heroes were Giotto, the Memmis, Lorenzetti
and Orcagna. Through the treatise of Cennino - seemingly so dry - flows the
same, wonderful spirit that strikes us in the work of those masters. It is this
spirit of reverence and piety, love and enthusiasm, that - naive, but devout in
the faith - seeks to shape images that are a clear mirror of his strength and
his almost unrecognized delicacy. The book brings us closer to this spirit,
which no longer belongs to our times ... The new direction towards which
painting will move will be of a spiritual nature. And yet, painting to date has
been supported by the techniques of the age of naturalism. Will perhaps the
painters of the fourteenth century and the master of their techniques [note of
the editor: Cennino Cennini] help us developing ways of expression, which are
more appropriate to us?"
Verkade writes after the war has broken out, but
in reality he is an artist whose biography shows how the European culture has
common roots that are then buried under millions of deaths. He was trained in
France, where he joined the Nabis,
and at the Nabis he had met the young
Maurice Denis, one of the most prominent representatives of the French culture
and of Catholicism in the first half of the twentieth century, for the better
or for the worse [34]. It is Maurice Denis, who had probably already read
Cennino before 1909, to plan a new French edition of the work. The treatise is
reprinted in 1911; the edition is somewhat unique, for two reasons: a) differently
from all cases after the Milanesi edition, the basis for the new version is not
the interpolation of the two Florentine manuscripts, but the first French
edition (that of Victor Mottez, based on the Vatican text) completed with the missing
chapters, edited by his son, Henri Mottez, also a painter (from a philological
point of view, the operation is quite debatable; it is true that the gaps are
filled, but the Vatican text, being very late, is full of uncorrected transcription
errors); b) Auguste Renoir is asked – and agrees to - insert a preface in the
form of a letter to Henri. We must say that the presence of the preface by
Renoir makes this edition particularly famous, and not only in France. Not a
few cases of translations will be based on the French version, even if
incorrect, precisely because of the text of Renoir. [35]
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| The cover of the second French edition, with the preface by Auguste Renoir |
As it is known, only the first twenty years of
the career of Renoir are those of Impressionism; then there is a rupture,
caused by a sense of dissatisfaction, and the painting of the French artist
bends sharply towards a more classic style, attentive to the painting of the
Italian Quattrocento. The encounter with the treatise of Cennino Cennini dates
back to 1883, according to an interview between Renoir and Ambroise Vollard.
[36] What is certain is that it was a very intense relationship. This is the
testimony of a visit to Renoir made by Camille Mauclair, a writer and friend of
the artist:
“Since long time, this master – who had
previously signed the most gentle masterpieces of a well-adjusted sensuality –
was not producing anything more but overweight naked women, deformed by
elephantiasis, smeared in red-violet, carrying enormous bodies with small heads
on the top, with mouths à la
femme fatale, flat noses, stupid eyes; those paintings are however sold at very
high prices and appreciated for human respect.(…) I found that suffering old
man fully mesmerised by a reading, of which he spoke with a naive and touching
enthusiasm. ‘An Italian of the XIV century. It is astonishing what those people
knew. Today, people do not know anything more. I am learning things here on
which I had doubts… I know what I still miss, I cannot believe it… I just
borrowed it’. Very moved from this modesty, I looked at the book. It was the
small treatise on painting of the good and mediocre Cennino Cennini.” [37]
But let us go back to the edition of 1911, also born
in the mainstream of European Catholicism. If Verkade seems to search for new
forms of expression for sacred art, Renoir gives voice to the conservative wing
of French Catholicism, veined by a profound pessimism (and, in the following
decades, destined to get tarnished with the transalpine fascist movements): that
of Renoir is a claming up world, which lacks any perspective. If, of course,
the introductory letter praises the work of Cennino, the artist also dwells on
the causes of the decline of painting in his time, and identifies three of them:
a) the loss of any religious feeling (the splendour of the past Catholic
culture was the basis of the flourishing of the arts), replaced by rationalism
and technology; b) the emancipation of the artist from shared traditions, which
had previously preserved the basic cultural background to produce collective works
of art (think of cathedrals); c) the specialization and division of labour in
industrial production, which had greatly reduced the importance of crafts in the
material creation, replacing the creative manual work with alienated mass
production. And, what is worse, Renoir has serious doubts that it will be ever possible
to recover these values and the spirit of the old masters.
End of Part Two
NOTES
[20] C. Cennini, Das
Buch von der Kunst oder Tractat der Malerei des Cennino Cennini da Colle di
Valdelsa, edited by A. Ilg, Vienna, 1871.
[21] Please refer to F. Mazzaferro, Albert Ilg and Julius von Schlosser: Two Different Interpretations of Cennino Cennini in Austria-Hungary of 1871 and1914.
[22] J. Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, Schweighauser publisher,
Basel, 1860.
[23] An example may be that of Lord Lindsay, who
in the second volume of his Sketches of the History of Christian Art (John
Murray publisher, London, 1847) defines the treaty as "this dying legacy
of the man who, in his amiable but blind idolatry of the past, might be fitly
styled the Last of the Giotto followers" (p. 306).
[24] C. Cennini, The Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini. A Contemporary Practical
Treatise on Quattrocento Painting Translated from the Italian, with Notes on
Mediaeval Art Methods, edited by C. Herringham, London, 1899.
[25] See M. Lago, Christiana Herringham and the Edwardian Art Scene, London, 1996.
[26] On this, it is necessary to consult: Margherita
d’Ayala Valva, Gli “scopi pratici
moderni” del Libro dell’arte di Cennino Cennini: le edizioni primonovecentesche
di Herringham, Renoir, Simi e Verkade (The " modern practical purposes
" of the Book of the Art by Cennino Cennini: the early XX century editions
by Herringham, Renoir, Simi and Verkade) in Paragone/Arte
64 November 2005.
[27] On this see G. Mazzaferro, “My Gratitude to Cennino Cennini, my Tribute to the Masters of Siena”: the Myth of CenninoCennini and an Art Nouveau Fresco in Budapest.
[28] C. Cennini, Il
Libro dell’Arte, edited by R. Simi, Lanciano, 1913.
[29] See the PhD thesis by Maria Stella Bottai, “Perché vai in Italia?” – Artisti finlandesi
in Italia e la rinascita della pittura murale in Finlandia tra Otto e Novecento
("Why do you go to Italy?" - Finnish Artists in Italy and the revival
of mural painting in Finland between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries),
La Sapienza University, Department of Art History, academic year 2008-2009.
[30] C. Cennini, Il
Libro dell’Arte, R. Simi edition, quoted, pp. 5-6.
[31] Quote from Fernando Mazzocca, Dai Preraffaelliti ai futuristi. Liberty,
uno stile per l’Italia moderna (From Pre-Raphaelites to the Futurists.
Liberty, a style for modern Italy), in Liberty.
Uno stile per l’Italia moderna (Liberty. A style for modern Italy), edited
by F. Mazzocca, Milan, 2014, p. 33.
[32] Please consult Francesco Mazzaferro, Jan Verkade, Cennino Cennini and the Quest for Spiritual Art in the Mid of World War I.
[33] C. Cennini, Des Cennino Cennini Handbuchlein der Kunst, edited by Willibrord
Verkade, Strasburgo, 1916.
[34] Francesco Mazzaferro, Jan Verkade, Cennino Cennini…, quoted.
[35] C. Cennini, Le
Livre de l’Art ou Traité de la Peinture par Cennino Cennini. Nouvelle édition augmentée de dix-sept chapitres
nouvellement traduits, précédés d’une lettre d’A. Renoir. Edited by
H. Mottez, Paris, 1911.
[36] Quote from Una conversazione con Ambroise Vollard (A conversation with
Ambroise Vollard) in Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Lettere
e scritti (Letters and writings), edited by Elena Pontiggia, Abscondita
publisher, Milano, 2001, p. 73.
[37] F. Mazzaferro, Jan
Verkade, Cennino Cennini…, quoted.
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