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Francesco Mazzaferro
The Strange Story of Cennino Cennini in Prague.
The Mysteries of the Czech Translation
of the 'Book of the Art' in 1946
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| Fig. 1) The paperback edition of the Book of the Art by Cennino Cennini, released by the publisher Vladimír Žikeš on November 20, 1946 |
THE CENNINI PROJECT
This post is a part of the "Cennini Project", dedicated to the international reception of the Book of the Art since the first printed edition in 1821. Click here to see the list of all the posts.
The first Czech translation of Cennino Cennini’s Book of the Art appears in Prague in 1946,
as part of a collection of sources of art history, published by the publisher
Vladimír Žikeš (1906-1980). It will also be the only translation in Czech
language. It is an elegant paperback with an “octavo” size.
The edition of Cennino is the third volume of the
"Section A" of the series called Žikešův
špalíček o umění (Žikeš’ Volumes on Art). The series consists of a Section
A (Výtvarné umění, or "graphic
arts"), and a Section B (Divadlo -
Tanec - Hudba: theatre, dance and music). In the Section B, however, only
one title will appear, in 1941: "The
Philharmonic orchestra laughs: comic stories from behind the scenes of the
Czech Philharmonic." The author was Bedrich Dobrodinský.
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| Fig. 2) The colophon of the Book of the Art |
The colophon of the Czech edition of the Book of the Art explains that the translator
from Italian is František Topinka. He is also the author of the notes, the introductory
essay and the selection of illustrations that enrich the work. The introduction
(Předmluva) is 42 pages long. The translation
(pages 43-233) is followed by: a gloss “on translation” (K překladu) (pp. 234-235), a note on “Cennino and his time” (Cennino Cennini a jeho doba) (pp.
236-254), and further notes on the introduction (pp. 255-257) and the text (pp.
258-315). In short, Topinka’s critical apparatus is very important, overall surpassing
one hundred pages.
The book, printed in 5000 copies (altogether, a relevant
circulation), is in Bodoni fonts. Of the volume exist both a paperback edition
(which I own) and one with hardcover (reproduced in some websites of
antiquarians). The colophon indicates that the layout of the cover page (the
same used for all volumes of the series) is by R. Beneš.
It was really important to succeed having the book at
hand. In fact, the simple use of the information appearing on the Internet does
not offer many certainties. For example, Topinka is most often mentioned in
them as a mere translator, while it is clear that his role was much greater. In
some circumstances, however, it is even R. Benes to be cited as author of the surveys:
an unquestionable mistake.
The text does not offer unfortunately any information
about who František Topinka was. With certainty, we only know that he took care,
in the same series, of the publication in Czech of the Treaty on painting by Leonardo (1941) and the Treaties on painting and Treaty
on statue of Leon Battista Alberti (1947). For both, he did not only provide
the translation, but the very rich commenting documentation, always with an
important series of notes. We must therefore assume that Topinka must have had
an excellent knowledge of the Italian language and culture.
As for the graphic design by R. Benes, reference is often made
to Rudolf Beneš, but we face a problem of homonyms. We tracked two Rudolf Beneš
as potentially eligible candidates. The youngest (1896-1971), besides being artist
was a professor at the Státní grafické
škole (State School of Graphic) in Prague [1]. About the second we really
know very little (1890-1947); anyway, he was also a professor of graphics in
Brno [2]. The texts do not offer any possibility of identifying which of the
two has designed the lay-out of the collection. So we rely on third party
sources. According to Pavlina Jirásková, our scholar is, without any doubt, the
youngest, or the painter, graphic artist and teacher who was born in 1896 and
died in 1971. It should also be said that there was a third Rudolf Beneš
(1881-1945) who devoted his life to the study of the biology of mushrooms: many
fiches of antiquarians [3] in Prague identify in the latter the author of the
cover: it seems very unlikely. In addition, the same sources, as mentioned
above, attribute to him even the authorship of the critical apparatus. A
particularly curious misunderstanding.
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| Fig. 3) The edition in hardcover of Cennino Cennini, in the websites of Prague book antiquarians |
A
consolidated pair: Vladimír Žikeš and František Topinka in Prague in the 40s
The translations of the Book of the Art by Cennino, of the Treatise on Painting by Leonardo and the writings of L.B. Alberti
show that - in a space of just six years - the couple Žikeš-Topinka produces
three monographs on Italian art literature for a not limited audience (5000
copies for Cennino, 3000 copies for Leon Battista Alberti; unfortunately the
colophon of Leonardo’s Treaty does not include any information on the circulation).
It is really amazing, when you consider that these were terrible years for the
world and for Czechoslovakia in particular.
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| Fig. 4) Cover of the Treatise on Painting by Leonardo, by František Topinka, in the version published by Vladimír Žikeš on September 15, 1941 |
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| Fig. 5) Colophon of the Treatise on Painting by Leonardo, by František Topinka, in the version published by Vladimír Žikeš on September 15, 1941 |
Vladimír Žikeš
Vladimír Žikeš was a well-known public figure in
Czechoslovakia of those years, although today he is in fact forgotten. His
memoirs in wartime, written clandestinely in the 1970s, are published
posthumously in 1990, with the title Slovenské
povstání bez mýtů to legend (The
Slovak revolt without myths and legends) [4] In 2006, the young historian
Tomáš Síbek graduated with a thesis on him, on the centenary of his birth. He
wrote that important archival material is kept in the museum holdings of the
National Library in Prague (Knihovna
Národního muzea), including his entire correspondence until 1945 [5].
After the phase of his youth (1925-1937) in which he
devoted himself to private editions for bibliophiles in a direction that seems
geared to the interest for French culture and the age of decadence (poetry,
eroticism, occultism), in 1937 Žikeš obtained a license as publisher and
between 1937 and 1942 run his own publishing house in Prague, specializing in
literature, Czech history and art monographs (he had a degree in art history).
Tomáš Síbek writes [6] that
his elegant art books on Prague often served as representative gifts for
illustrious foreign guests. The colophon on Leonardo mentions that the 1941 book
is his seventy-fifth one.
An example of the elegant taste of the publisher (and, at
the same time, of the attention for Italian art literature) was the publication,
already in 1939, of thirty etchings from the Life of Benvenuto Cellini, authored by Cyril Bouda (1901-1984), an
illustrator of evident classic taste.
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| Fig. 6) Cyril Bouda,Engraving from the series "Life of Benvenuto Cellini", published in 1939 by Vladimír Žikeš |
Even the collection of sources of the history of art is
elegant. As already mentioned, they are octavo volumes, with a gold cover
designed by a quality graphic, R. Benes. The typeface is Bodoni. The first
volume, that of Leonardo, is illustrated by the Czech graphic and designer
Josef Solar (1899-1977), who had just won the Grand Prix in Paris in 1937. The
taste is classical.
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| Fig. 7) The edition of the Treatise on Painting by Leonardo illustrated by Josef Solar |
Soon after the publishing activity had been initiated, the
political situation, however, became very precarious. In 1938 - after the Munich
conference - Czechoslovakia was dismembered in 1939 and Prague became the
capital of the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, a vassal state of
the Nazis, after the military occupation by Hitler.
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| Fig. 8) The bookstore of Žikeš |
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| Fig. 9) The printer's mark of Žikeš |
The back cover of the book of Leonardo of 1941 contains a
list of the titles scheduled for future publications: they are the translation
of the monograph that Rainer Maria Rilke (who was born in Prague) wrote on
Rodin in 1903, the correspondence of the Czech painter Hugo Boettinger
(1880-1934), the memories of the Croatian painter Vlaho Bukovac (1855-1922,
known in Italy as Biagio Faggioni, who died in Prague), and an anthology of
writings by Albrecht Dürer entitled "Over himself and on painting."
But historical events upset the publishing plans. After
the repressive activities of the Gestapo, following the deadly attack of Czechs
partisans against the Deputy Reichsprotektor
Reinhard Heydrich, Žikeš went into clandestinity in May 1942 (with Jan Mrozek
and Jan Kostia as names of battle) [7]. He hid in Slovakia, working in a mining
company and in reality dealing with the printing needs of the resistance in
Slovakia, in preparation and during the uprising of August 1944. He also had direct
links with the exile government of Edvard Benes, the future President, in
London.
At the end of the war, his prestige as editor-partisan was
huge. He published the first book in the free Czechoslovakia, in the just
released town of Kosice. He restarted from zero the publishing business in
Prague (all his properties had been seized) in 1945, and re-opened his
antiquarian bookshop, where he also held art exhibitions in the new "Hall
of Prague Vladimir Žikeš". Žikeš exposed Hložník Vincent (1919-1997),
Peter Matejka (1913-1972) and other avant-garde painters prohibited in the
Protectorate.
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| Fig. 10) Vincent Hložník, First perfomance, 1947 |
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| Fig. 11) Peter Matejka, Girl, 1940-1944 |
The publications in the series on the sources of art history were resumed with the same previous editorial format. However the volumes on Dürer, Boettinger and Bukovac were cancelled. The second book of the series was the volume of Rilke on Rodin, published in 1946, followed in the same year, by our Book of the Art by Cennino Cennini, who was released as third in the series. In 1947 are published - in a single volume, the fourth of the series - the treaties on painting and on statue of Leon Battista Alberti.
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| Fig. 12) At the centre, the President Edvard Beneš visiting an art exhibition organized by Vladimír Žikeš in his library on Aug. 29, 1945, exactly one year after the Slovak insurgency against the Nazis (Žikeš is the person to the left) |
The publishing house became one of the cultural centres of
the country. During the "Third Republic" (1945-1948) President Beneš
tried in vain to limit the Soviet influence. Žikeš published for example in
1947 a text of the Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, significantly entitled "Ani opona, ani most " (Neither
curtain nor bridge), which proposed to position Czechoslovakia in a state of complete
neutrality (the government even applied to participate in the Marshall Plan,
but Stalin forced them to withdraw the application). His publishing house also
edited in 1948 the writings of the philosopher and theologian Jan Blahoslav
Kozák. The publishing house’s activity was re-centred from art history to the
promotion of national culture, hosting among others the newly created
Czechoslovak PEN club.
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| Fig. 13) The colophon of the Treaties of painting and sculpture by Leon Battista Alberti in the Czech version of the August 20, 1947 (picture taken from an antiquarian’s web site) |
The attempt of equidistance is also revealed in the
collection of sources of the history of art. The penultimate volume, published
in 1947, is an essay by the Czech painter Otakar Mrkvička (1898-1957), titled
"Commitment. Soviet painting and
contemporary art." The last book in the series of sources of histories
of art - the sixth - is instead a text by Antonin Novotny, former director of
the Museum of the City of Prague, on the "Infant of Prague", a story of the cult dedicated to childhood of
Jesus in the Baroque age in Bohemia. Novotny had already published many books
on local art history for Žikeš, who included this title in the collection of
sources of art history for reasons which are not very clear indeed, at least at
a first glance. Maybe the motivation is equidistance policy: he wants to gives
a signal to the Soviets and another one to the local church.
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| Fig. 14) Otakar Mrkvicka, Commitment, Painting and Soviet contemporary art, 1947 |
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| Fig. 15) Otakar Mrkvicka, A face on the pavement, 1943 |
Masaryk and Beneš did not have any real chance to succeed
in pursuing a policy of neutrality. The coup
d'etat of the communist Prime Minister Klement Gottwald in 1948 also
coincided with the end of the publishing activity of Žikeš. The publishing
house was closed, and the publisher was deported outside Prague to work as a
miner in the Tatra Mountains [8]. Then he was employed as a porter in a
slaughterhouse for cattle. In 1967 Žikeš retired in Slovakia, where he carried
a secluded life, devoted to mountain hiking, his second passion after
publishing.
František Topinka
None of the texts published between 1941 and 1947 allows
us to find out who was the curator of the three classics of Italian art
literature, i.e. František Topinka. We do know for certain neither the date of
birth nor the one of death. Certainly, we cannot treat him as a simple
'freelance' translator, since he produced three major critical apparatuses for
the texts in Czech of Leonardo, Cennino and Leon Battista Alberti. I contacted,
through acquaintances, some historians in Prague to look for some information
on him, hoping for example to find archival recordings at universities or in book
reviews of the time, but - despite their kind efforts - nothing new has
emerged. One counterpart has even wondered whether his name is really the authentic
one.
In the total absence of information, we can say only the
following: František Topinka is a very common name in the Czech Republic (even
today). It probably was a scholar who was formed under the strong cultural ties
between Italy and Czechoslovakia in the years 1920-1930: in 1920, the Czech-Italian
league was created, which aimed to support the study and the permanence of Czechs students in Italy, and the Institute of Italian culture was established
in 1923. The latter had around 1000 students in 1937-1938 [9] [10]. There is no
information concerning an activity of translation by Topinka prior to the
forties. Nothing is also known about him after 1947.
The only certainty is that in addition to the texts of
Leonardo (1941), Cennino Cennini (1946) and Leon Battista Alberti (1947), he
translated in 1943, always from Italian, an essay by the historian of science
Gino Loria on Galileo Galilei (released by another publisher in Prague, i.e.
Orbis). He produced a series of notes also for this text.
Topinka seems to have an interest in the history of
science and technology. In addition to the book of Galilei, his specialization
is evident from the fact that, in the volume of Cennino and Leonardo (we did not
consult the one on Alberti), many notes have a clear scientific basis, as
witnessed by many engineering drawings he produced in text.
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| Figures 16 e 17) Some notes of scientific nature in the critical apparatus of Leonardo’s translation |
The translation of Galileo and the scientific notes to the
texts of Cennino and Leonardo can suggest a possible solution on his identity. Perhaps,
is he the same František Topinka who (between the mid-twenties and the second
half of the thirties, i.e. until 1937) had published a number of manuals, texts
and articles on hydraulic engineering? Is it possible that, in the years of
retirement, the scientist devoted time and energy to a new passion for
technology in art, starting with the translation of the text by Leonardo? By
birth, the hydraulic engineer might have been still alive in 1947, the last of
the translations from Italian (he would have been 67 years old). About him, it
is known (from the data contained in the website of the Czech National Library [11]) that he was born in 1880 in Lánech,
but we could not find any indications on the year of death. It should be said
that scientific writings by the hydraulic engineer were published in German and
English, but not in Italian.
The other possibility is that Topinka was either a
translator or a local scholar - without any academic affiliation and previous
publications – who owed everything to Vladimír Žikeš: the latter discovered him
out of nowhere, gave him work assignments in the most difficult times and it was
with the end of his publishing house that Topinka disappeared back again into complete
darkness. He could have been any of the local Italian teachers among those who assisted
the thousand students in Prague in the late thirties.
Finally, it is not impossible that František Topinka is a
pseudonym used to conceal the identity of a scholar active in the Protectorate
and later on in the Third Republic: it was common at that time of great
uncertainty, where people were exposed to personal risk. Maybe he was an
important personality of the Prague cultural life who - for opposite reasons -
had something to fear from both German and Russian occupants; or someone who
was concerned not to reveal his identity under the protectorate and that, after
having survived the war, did not want to be recognised because his previous
activities.
Vladimír
Žikeš - Shadows and lights
Kenneth D. Alford has written numerous essays on art
thefts, both by the Nazis as well as the Allies in World War II. The theft of
rare books allowed huge profits, because the originals could be sold page by
page. One of the studies of Alford explains that Žikeš had no qualms about
buying on the black market an original copy of the Book of Psalms of Mainz 1457, in the hand of Russian soldiers in
1945 – the original had to be transported from Dresden to Moscow and went
instead lost on the way to the Soviet Union – and about trying to sell it to
American traders [12]. The Book of Psalms
is the second title ever printed in movable characters in history, after the Gutenberg Bible. There are only ten
copies of the original. The market value is a colossal figure: another copy was
officially bought by the Library of Congress in Washington in 1945 at a price
of $ 300,000. Žikeš must have been well aware of the commercial value of the
property he had acquired, certainly at a much lower price, from some criminals
among Soviet troops.
Žikeš took the enormous risk to contact a counterpart in
the United States: the Austrian publisher and antiquarian Herbert Reichner
(1899-1971), active in Vienna, Leipzig and Zurich, editor of Canetti, Heine and
Zweig, and director of the magazine Philobiblon, the most important journal in
German language for bibliophiles. Reichner had managed to escape from Austria
in 1938, before the German occupation, taking with him a reserve of rare books
to New York. Obviously Žikeš and Reichner must have known each other rather well.
Between the two there must have been a communion of interest and business before
the war, since they were among the main book antiquarians and bibliophiles of
Vienna and Prague.
Reichner, when contacted by Žikeš from Europe, may have thought
- at least it seems – to have been offered to market in the US a faithful
reproduction only of the original. He believed therefore that it was not a
criminal act, and agreed to work as an agent of Žikeš in the United States,
signing a regular contract in order to sell single pages to the private
American market. He requested however, of course, that the book would be delivered
to him to the United States. Fortunately, the Book of Psalms was sent to him intact. When the text (via the
Netherlands) came into his hands in the United States in 1947, he realized he
was holding an original of one of the most expensive books in the world. He immediately
contacted the director of the Harvard University Library, who also involved the
Library of Congress and that of the Morgan Bank. The three institutions, in
turn, contacted the State Department, with the proposal that the US government would
pay a modest compensation to Žikeš to terminate the contract between Reichner and
him, and retain the volume in the country for study. The book was instead immediately
seized by the police in 1948, which showed a certain disappointment at the fact
that important US institutions were involved in such a striking case of receiving
stolen goods.
Paradoxically Žikeš, already disgraced politically in
Prague, was saved by the Cold War: in 1950 the Book of Psalms was in fact handed over by the Americans to the West
German (and not to the East German) authorities. There was an implicit
agreement that Germany would receive back the precious book intact, without
asking however too many questions. The US authorities did not specify what had
happened (they did not want people to think that the major universities and
libraries in the US were involved in the smuggling of goods of such value).
Fortunately for Žikeš, Washington authorities did not even disclose his attempt
to smuggle to those of Moscow and Prague, now in the enemy political camp;
otherwise, Žikeš would have ended probably his days being hanged or in front of
a firing squad.
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| Fig. 18) From the Book of Psalms of Mainz, 1457. |
There are other reasons for concern on the figure of the
publisher. In fact, it is clear that Žikeš built his economic success during
the era of the Protectorate, so practically under the Nazis, and may not have
been insensitive to the will of the collaborationist government before going
into clandestinity in 1942. One could wonder, for example, whether it is only
by chance that the titles planned in his series in 1941 (the ones mentioned on
the back cover of the book of Leonardo and never published later on) were all either
by German authors or at least from the cultural area of the Axis (Italy and
Croatia). Perhaps Žikeš’ publishing policy was aligned, before 1942, with the
collaboration policy of the Czech authorities. These were very hard times and,
no doubt, it is too easy to judge today. Yet, it is clear that the entire personal
history of Žikeš is not without question marks and doubts. However, perhaps also
his decision to publish in 1947 and in 1948 an essay on Soviet Union and one on
the history of religious relics in the Czech Republic was in full line with the
opportunism of his character.
What
does Topinka tell us on Cennino Cennini?
Topinka’s critical apparatus commenting the Czech edition
of the Book of art extends beyond the
hundred pages. Dozens of pages are reserved to Cennino and his time, the
relationship with the school of Gaddi, Cennino’s reception in the Renaissance
(Vasari, Borghini, Baldinucci, Armenini), the methods of discovery by Tambroni,
the opinions of Italian critics and philologists at the time of the discovery
of the manuscript (Girolamo Amati and Salvatore Betti), the description of the
characteristics of the different manuscripts, the previous translations (all
listed and commented on), the opinions of Lionello Venturi in his article on
Cennini of 1925. In the introduction, there are pages commenting selected
paragraphs considered fundamental by Topinka: it is here to be noted that - while
in other translations (think - although with different goals – of the German
texts produced by Albert Ilg and Jan Verkade) the emphasis is on moral and
religious, and therefore ideological, aspects of the text - Topinka choose the
chapters that discuss technological issues: Chapters 12-14 (techniques to learn
drawing); 34 (the use of charcoal to draw); 38 (sinopia); 39-40 (cinnabar); 44
(the red lacquer); 46 (the giallorino); 47 (orpiment); 62 (ultramarine blue);
89-94 (the techniques of fresco); 96 (browning); 122 (on drawing on canvas);
131 (tempera); 143 (painting on cloth); 157 (miniature); 161 (painting on
paper). In all these cases, the attention is never on the reproducibility of
the method in modern times, but on its historicisation. Then, there is no
discussion in the notes on the paragraphs 2 and 3, those concerning the
religious and moral aspects of painting.
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| Fig. 19) The note on chapter 62, with reference to the chemical composition of lapis lazuli and references to the history of chemistry |
In other words: this is not a text written by a painter
for other painters; there is no ambition to bring contemporary artists to adopt
pictorial techniques of the past. Nor is it a text that emphasizes the merits
of the past art world, i.e. its genuine and full of religious devotion, in the
sense of the priesthood of the art. It is a scientific text on the history of
artistic techniques. In fact, this is the way in which the translator presents
the merits of the text and justifies the translation, on page 234 (thanks to
Tomas Konecny for the translation):
On the
translation
If we
had translated the treatise on painting by Cennino Cennini twenty years ago, it
would have been premature, because then we did not have at our disposal any
suitable guide to painting techniques, and the translation of a treatise on
painting in the old way would have created the temptation for inexperienced
readers to ever believe that it would be possible to bring back to life those
old techniques and use them in the same form in which they were used hundreds
of years ago. Today, however, we indeed have at our disposal the great volume
of František Petr [13] (unfortunately sold out) and more recently the excellent book by Milan
Egr [14], and then the time has come
when a translation can be made as a contribution to the clarification of the artistic
techniques of the past, always welcome to those who believe in and love art. In
essence, this translation is therefore a document on culture and history, which
intends today to allow observers of the works of art of the past to make
themselves a view of how the hand of a painter could then fight with the
complex properties of materials, without any help of science, with the support
of only a very limited choice of instruments, under the guidance of the visionary
soul of the artist, and often thanks to the inspiration of religious
convictions."
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| Fig. 20) The note on Chapters 175-176, with a drawing that explains the difference between the techniques of insulation against moisture used by Cennino and by modern fresco painters. |
The apparatus of notes, placed at the end of the book, is
really impressive. Some aspects are interesting. First: Topinka includes
several tables on the chemical composition of the colours indicating the exact percentages
to be used (a way of presenting information that is typical of those who have a
technical know-how). Second: he presents illustrations on technical aspects
(for example, the use of the plumb bob to start the design for the fresco on
the wall). Third, some notes are several pages long (e.g. the footnote to
paragraph 67 on the fresco, from page 274 to page 289), contain extensive
quotes from historians and authors of technical manuals (the aforementioned
Petr and Egr), include real and very large anthological reviews from the
Italian and German critical worlds, and finally also quote recent works of the
early forties. Is this sufficient to demonstrate that the Topinka hydraulic
engineer and the Topinka scholar of Cennino, Leonardo and Alberti (and Galileo)
were the same person? Alas, it is not enough. Whoever Topinka may have been, he
is however not a simple translator, or a painter, or a conventional scholar of
art history, but a scholar with multiple qualities.
If he cites all Cennino’s translations published until his
day, it must indeed be said, on page 316, that Topinka recognizes the personal debt
that he has towards the Italian edition curated by Renzo Simi. His text is the
basis of the translation, and from him come many elements of information on the
Book of the Art.
Conclusion:
why to translate Cennino in Czech?
The activity of Vladimír Žikeš in Prague between 1941 and
1947 has many similarities with other translations of Cennino in the same
years.
1. With
Samuel Tyszkiewicz, who published two versions of Cennino in Polish between
Florence and Warsaw in 1933 and 1934, Žikeš shares the love for typography and
commercial interests above all towards bibliophiles. Moreover, both raise the
problem of the relationship between the culture of their respective countries
and that of the Italian Renaissance; to offer their public a beautiful and
valuable edition of Cennino’s Book of Art
(and in the Czech case, a whole collection of classic sources of art history)
means anchoring the culture of their young countries (emerging from the
dissolution of the Central Powers after World War I) to deep roots. Cennino’s translation
has a reason of cultural legitimacy also in the Soviet case in 1933. We are in the
Pan-Slavic Prague where Alphonse Mucha painted, in 1927, the Apotheosis of the Slavs. With the Czech,
Polish and Russian editions, the Slavs no longer had the need to use German to
read one of the founding texts of the painting.
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| Fig. 21) Alphonse Mucha, Apotheosis of the Slavs, 1927 |
2. The ambition of creating a national collection of
sources of art history draws, on the other hand, from the experience of the
series of the Vienna school, whose first series also contains a medieval text
source of the Czech history of art, (Das Buch der Malerzeche in Prag - Kniha
bratrstva malirskeho v Praze) 1348- 1527, edited by Matthias
Pangerl, published in 1878 [15]. It is the Book
of the Art of Painters of Prague. That text - written in Old High German -
also had a legitimizing function of Vienna’s cultural ambition, as testimony to
the Germanic roots of the culture of medieval Bohemia (the first German
university was founded in Prague).
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| Fig. 22) The first page of the Book of the Art of Painters in Prague, in the edition of 1878 |
3. The interest in the scientific aspects that seems to
characterize the work of František Topinka (who showed the same interest when
translating and commenting Leonardo and obviously Galileo) was common to the
historian of science Mieli as well as to the American Daniel V. Thompson jr. (with
his editions in Italian in 1932 and in English in 1933). At any rate, Topinka’s
scepticism about the background of those who (think of the Nazarene French
painter Victor Mottez, in nineteenth-century France) adopted the techniques of Cennino,
and then found out a few decades later that all his frescoes were no longer
legible, is clearly evident. Even Alf Rolfsen in Norway (1942) and the same
anonymous Hungarian advise the readers not to use Cennino’s recipes, except in
a very selective manner.
4. The weight of history is felt in the case of the Czech
translation as well as in the Spanish and Hungarian ones. The curator of the
first Spanish version Aldo Mieli was an anti-fascist political dissident
fleeing Europe. The Hungarian translator is still unknown; still it has direct
relationships with the leading figures of the school of Gödöllõ. Perhaps he was
György Leszkovszky, one of the founders of the Cennini Society. However, the
translator is so compromised with the pro-fascist Hungarian regime of Admiral Horthy that he does not want to reveal either his name or the date of the
translation, which circulates only as a clandestine edition (zamisdat).
5. In the Czech case the events that mark the short life
of Vladimír Žikeš’ series of sources of art history are really incredibly
complex and traumatic. In fact, we have to do with a probably very enterprising
man, who starts its success in the independent Czechoslovakia, consolidates it
under the pro-Nazi protectorate, then participates actively in the resistance,
buys illegaly a book of an incredible artistic and economic value from
disbanded Russian soldiers and (undiscovered, luckily for him) tries to sell it
for only material purposes in the United States, practices the difficult policy
of impartiality of the third republic of Beneš between conservatives and
communists, and, in the end, is deported to work as a miner or as a porter in a
slaughterhouse.
We could not solve all the questions that we set when we
found this book (i.e. who really was František Topinka?), but one element is
clear. It was an ambitious edition, enriched by a significant critical
apparatus, well published in 5000 copies, and with an accurate layout. Most
likely, if the events had been less adverse, there would have been new editions,
and perhaps Prague would be one of the capitals of research on Cennini. But
history is not made with the hypothetical sentences. Today it is almost
impossible to find a copy of the volume in the market, and perhaps the Czech
public will read Cennino in the coming years using the new English translation of Lara Broecke, which was just released in recent weeks.
NOTES
[2] See: http://aleph.vkol.cz/rego/rg0122.htm
[3] See for instance:
[4] See:
[9] Medici, Lorenzo
- Dalla propaganda alla cooperazione: la
diplomazia culturale italiana nel secondo dopoguerra (From propaganda to
cooperation: Italy‘s cultural diplomacy in the secod after-war period,
1944-1950), Milano, CEDAM Publishers, 2009, 322 pages. Quotation at p. 35
[10] Santoro,
Stefano - L'Italia e l'Europa orientale: diplomazia culturale e propaganda
1918-1943 (Italy and Eastern Europe 1918-1943: cultural diplomacy and
propaganda), Milano, Franco Angeli Publishers, 2005, 432 pages. See pages 71 and following.
[11] See: http://www.nkp.cz/
[12] Alford, Kenneth D. - Allied
Looting in World War II: Thefts of Art, Manuscripts, Stamps and Jewelry in
Europe, Jefferson, North Carolina, Mcfarland and Co Inc, 2011, 278 pages. See
in particular See Chapter 24: The Priceless Mainz Psalter
[13] František Petr, Malířské techniky: fresko, sgrafito, malba
klihová, kaseinová, temperová, nátěry zdí, polychromie, zlacení, stucco lustro
a imitace mramorů (Painting techniques: fresco, graffiti, painting with
glue, casein, gouache, painting of walls, polychrome painting, gilding,
chandeliers and stucco, faux marble), Jan Štenc Publishers, Praga, 1926.
[14] Miloslav Hégr, Technika malířského umění: Poznámky o materiálu a technice malby pastelem, akvarelem, gouachí, temperou, olejem a
nástěnné (The technique of artistic painting: Notes
on materials and techniques of painting with pastel, watercolor, gouache,
tempera, oil and mural). Beseda Art Edition, Praga, 1941.
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