Luigi Lanzi. Letters to Mauro Boni 1791-1809. Edited by Paolo Pastres. Forum Publishers, 2009

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro

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Luigi Lanzi

Lettere a Mauro Boni [Letters to Mauro Boni] 1791-1809

Edited by Paolo Pastres

Udine, Forum Publishers, 2009

Luigi Lanzi
Source: http://www.memofonte.it/autori/luigi-lanzi-1732-1810.html

[N.B. On Luigi Lanzi see in this blog also: Luigi Lanzi, The i783 journey through Upper Tuscany, Umbria and Marche. Edited by Costanza Costanzi. Marsilio editore, 2003] 

[1] Text of back cover:

"For nearly twenty years, between 1791 and 1809, Abbot Luigi Lanzi held a correspondence with his confrère, friend and collaborator Mauro Boni. These letters - two hundred sixty-nine of which have been identified - are documents of great importance for the study of Lanzi’s work. In fact, in that time the Abbot Luigi finalised for publication the two Bassano-based editions of the Storia pittorica (History of painting) (in 1795-1796 and in 1809), a seminal text for art history, as well as numerous works on antiquarian and spiritual topics.

Of those studies, along with ample personal news, Lanzi gave account in the correspondence which he entertained with Boni. Through which one can follow - almost every day - the enthusiast evolution of his research and the many difficulties related to its publication.

Moreover, in Lanzi’s correspondences are included references to major representatives from the world of scholarship at the turn of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, belonging mainly to circles in Veneto and Friuli, among whom are to be remembered the names of Stefano Borgia, Giovanni de Lazara, Bartolomeo Gamba, Giovanni Maria Sasso, Pietro Zani, Antonio Armano, Saverio Bettinelli, Tommaso Puccini, Jean Potocki, Domenico Maria Federici, Matteo Luigi Canonici, Angelo Maria Cortenovis and Antonio Bartolini.

The letters of Lanzi have been collected and presented for the first time here, along with some introductory essays, dedicated to the fortune of Lanzi’s epistolary, the biography of Boni and the discussions about the art of the "primitives". A rich critical comment helps clarify the most significant passages and deepen the topics, especially related to medieval art."

Anonymous, Portrait of Luigi Lanzi

[2] That between Lanzi and Boni is primarily the story of a friendship. Mauro Boni met Lanzi in Rome in 1763; Boni (born in 1746, he was 15-year younger than Abbot Luigi) had him as a teacher during his novitiate at the local Jesuit college. We do not know much of the Roman years, except that Boni became passionately interested in the study of the history of engraving (particularly that of the so-called niello) and became curator of the collections of antiquities and design of the Count Gian Giacomo Durazzo. The interest for engraving and antiquarian goods was undoubtedly one of the reasons that he shared with Lanzi and that allowed the birth of a solid friendship, destined to last even after the dissolution of the Society of Jesus (in 1773) and despite the physical distance between the two: Lanzi moved, as well known, to Florence in 1775, where he was hired as an "aid antiquarian" at the Uffizi (and where his troubled relationship with Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni began). Boni returned to the Bergamo area (where he came from) until 1792, when he was appointed as tutor to the noble Venetian family Giustinian and then moved to the lagoon. After the arrival in Venice he was in contact with a scholar world of which he eventually became - and will long remain - one of the most valued members, but also one of the most discussed ones. This certainly marks the beginning of an extensive correspondence with Lanzi, correspondence which in practice will continue until the death of Abbot Luigi. All in all, Boni had a sedentary life, except for a period of three years (1795-1797) which he spent in Friuli, Udine, where Angelo I Giustinian (of which he was the preceptor) held the job of Lieutenant of Friuli, and where Boni himself made sure Lanzi would settle (1796-1801), as the latter was trying to escape the notorious Napoleonic turmoil. Back in Venice, Mauro remained there until 1815, when, once the Society of Jesus had been established again at the court of the Este family, he moved to Reggio Emilia. There he was a municipal librarian and director of novices, until his death, which took him in the early days of 1817. Let us say it now: what is most striking in the correspondence is that Lanzi has had as his privileged partner, over years, a man like Boni, who certainly did not represent the best of what the local Italian erudition could offer in those years. It is almost certain that Lanzi was conscious of it; so much so that, when it comes to edit the second Bassano-based edition of the History of Painting (1809), Luigi relies on the much more authoritative and well-prepared Giovanni de Lazara. Nevertheless, Lanzi always shows empathy and patience towards Mauro, even when he is confronted with clearly improbable attributions, or with commercial behaviours absolutely devoid of the necessary clarity, and even when Boni tries to intervene on drafts of the History of Painting in 1809, to turn a footnote in his favour. All of this suggests this was a friendly relationship which, even for those days, was out of the ordinary.

[3] As already mentioned, the critical edition contains the 269 letters that Lanzi wrote to Boni between 1791 and 1809. Contrary to what is suggested in the first epistolary letter by Lanzi (who invited him to burn them), Boni kept all (or almost all) the letters sent to him by Abbot Luigi. At his death, these documents became part of the Municipal Library of Reggio Emilia. In mid-1800 or so, the Bishop of Modena Celeste Cavedoni withdrew 147 of them, which he delivered to the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, while the other 122 are still in Reggio Emilia. You can not say that Lanzi behaved in the same way as to the letters of Boni; still over a hundred of them remain; when necessary for a better understanding of the letters of Lanzi, Pastres proposes their text in a note. This raises the far from simple problem of a reconstruction of Lanzi’s epistolary; we are certainly not claiming to disentangle it in a few lines, but are rather referring to the first of the three essays by Pastres, entitled «Sinceramente io non gradisco tener carteggi»: un breve regesto degli epistolari del Lanzi ("Honestly, I do not like to retain my correspondence”: a short registry of the letters by Lanzi) (pp. 19-34). Briefly: a) Lanzi did not keep any copies of the letters sent to him (or his letter-book has been lost); b) there are thirty-eight archival locations, where letters sent by or to Lanzi are preserved; c) at the Public Library of Macerata, however, a fund is kept in which 1146 letters sent to Lanzi are available, from as many as 273 different senders. Boni makes the lion's share with over a hundred letters (which, as we said, is only a part). Also in Macerata are located 53 letters sent to family members by Abbot Luigi (recently printed by David Frapiccini, Ivano Palmucci and Giuseppe Trivellini). In addition to the precious notebooks that served to Lanzi for the preparation of the History of painting (Storia pittorica), are also located in Florence, in the Archives of the Library of the Uffizi, one hundred other letters from different senders. In short, a rather intricate situation. This is only partially compensated by the fact that the letters sent to Lanzi, both preserved in Macerata and in Florence, are now available online at the site www.memofonte.it. Moreover, we must not forget that, albeit in a non-systematic way, the letters were partially published in the correspondence of some of the counterparts of Lanzi; the last case, in chronological order (and no doubt one of the best) is Settecento di carta. L’epistolario di Innocenzo Ansaldi (Eighteenth century on paper. The correspondence of Innocenzo Ansaldi), edited by Emanuele Pellegrini.

[4] Paolo Pastres has dedicated many years to the study of Luigi Lanzi. He edited the critical edition of the Taccuino lombardo (Lombard Notebook) by the Abbot (Udine, Forum, 2000) and has published a series of essays among which we can remember Accademie, accademici, incisori e didattica nella Storia Pittorica e nei carteggi di Luigi Lanzi (Academies, academics, engravers and didactics in the History of Painting and in the correspondence of Luigi Lanzi) in Annali di critica d’arte, 4, 2008 and «Un occhio pregiudicato è in continuo pericolo d’illusione»: tre lettere inedite di Luigi Lanzi sul proprio metodo di lavoro e sulla Storia Pittorica ("An affected eye is in constant danger of illusion": three unpublished letters of Luigi Lanzi on his method of work and on the History of Painting) in Annali di critica d'arte, 2, 2006. In the latter essay, three letters are proposed which Lanzi addressed to Boni as anticipation of this correspondence.