Lorenzo Ghiberti. The Commentaries. Introduced and edited by Lorenzo Bartoli

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Lorenzo Ghiberti
I commentarii [The Commentaries]
(Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, II, I, 333)

Introduced and edited by Lorenzo Bartoli

Florence, Giunti, 1998

Lorenzo Ghiberti, Self-Portrait (Florence Baptistery, Gates of Paradise)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

See also the review of Ghiberti teorico. Natura, arte e coscienza storica nel Quattrocento, Milan, Officina Libraria, 2019

A hard work to be interpreted

A few texts of Italian art literature are still so difficult to interpret as the Commentaries of Ghiberti. To try to summarize it, it is necessary to retrace the history of the only copy which conveyed them to us. It is the manuscript kept at the National Library in Florence, II, I, 333, which definitely belonged in the mid sixteenth century to Cosimo Bartoli, the scholar who was famous, among other things, for having first translated Albrecht Dürer’s Institutiones geometricae and then Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria from Latin. Vasari consulted the original in Bartoli’s ownership and used it as a source on the fourteenth century, while not giving a positive assessment of it [1].

There is no following quotation after Vasari. Leopoldo Cicognara rediscovered the work; his History of Sculpture (and we are in the second decade of the nineteenth century) contains part thereof. In a climate of increasing interest in the manuscript of the Florentine sculptor, Julius von Schlosser eventually rediscovered the Commentaries in 1912, publishing the first critical edition thereof. The Schlosser edition became the reference one, and Ottavio Morisani also based himself on it when he edited the first full version released in Italy, in 1947. It was Schlosser, for example, to conventionally attribute the title Commentaries to Ghiberti’s manuscript: he did it from an internal reference to the work, where the author tells us "Here we finished the second commentary; we will start the third one." Schlosser also encoded the division of the writing in three commentaries: the first, which deals with the history of ancient art; the second contains the history of modern art; and the third, which presents the discussion of topics related to optics and perspective.

So far everything seems clear. Except that it is clear that the manuscript of the National Library is not from Ghiberti’s hand. Two features prove it: on the one hand, the comparison with the original handwriting of the sculptor in other writings, which reached us; on the other hand, clear examples of errors of interpretation in the text, apparently due to difficulties in the reading of the same transcript. From internal evidence it is clear that at least the semi-autobiographical work was written shortly before the death of the sculptor in 1450. Also the manuscript testifying the work is probably of Mid-1400. This would lead us to think, in a totally hypothetical way, that this was a copy of scattered and not at all well-organized material, which was made immediately after his death. If so, it is far from clear that what is being proposed in the Commentaries had been thought to be part of the same work; or that the project was still organized in the way we know today.

Lorenzo Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise, Florence Baptistery
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Three Commentaries with very different characteristics

This doubt is palpable by noting the deep split that exists in particular between the first two commentaries, historical in nature, and the third one, of scientific discussion. Moreover, the disparity that exists between the three sections, as "coded" by Schlosser, is evident at a very first glance: ancient art covers folios 1r.-8v; the part on modern art (including the autobiography) goes from folio 8v. to folio 12v.; the reasoning on optics and perspective is dealt in folios 12v.-64r. If we decided only on the basis of the material extension of the chapters, we should first of all say that the Commentaries were a book that dwells on issues of optics.

Yet, the Commentaries have been mentioned almost universally because of the historical sections; more particularly, the second is the best known, which deals with issues of art from the fourteenth century until Ghiberti himself. In fact, if there are very few printed editions, as I said, the Second Commentary was instead often published separately in its own right, free from what precedes and what follows it.

The study of the manuscript of the National Library indeed enabled to establish accurately the heterogeneity of the sources used by Ghiberti and the different level of development of each individual part.

The First Commentary draws, in fact, from Pliny the Elder and Vitruvius; we witness here a form of adaptation of the sources, which actually displays the presence of an "editorial" intervention operated by Ghiberti for the preparation of the text; the Second Commentary includes alleged first-hand (or unpublished) information, and without any doubt is the most original part of the writing by the Florentine sculptor; the third one (apart from a couple of initial introductory cards) does not present any character of originality and represents "the merger of three medieval texts on perspectiva: Alhazen’s De aspectibus; Roger Bacon’s Perspectiva; Johannes Peckham’s Perspectiva communis. In these folders (which amount to a total of 45 folios, among the about 48 are dedicated to the subject of perspective), there is virtually nothing by Lorenzo Ghiberti. In other words, the fundamental body of Ghiberti’s prospective discourse... is built according to the logic of a strictly literal compilation"(pages 13-14). It is a merit of this edition to have pointed out in particular the verbatim dependence of the section on optic from medieval writings (the fact is not so trivial, and had escaped earlier exegetes because, in reality, the quotes from the three authors are mixed in an extremely confused order). On the other hand it is not entirely convincing (in our opinion) to reiterate again that the three Commentaries were actually already originally parts of a single work. It is quite possible (but improvable) that actually, after the death of the sculptor, someone committed the copy of the cards which contained the historic section and the personal notes on optics. Of course, this does not affect the overall image of Ghiberti’s interests, who, apparently, studied optics and perspective intensively. This does not imply per se - it is to be repeated – that we are forced to think about a single work.

Lorenzo Ghiberti, Salomon and the Queen of Sheba (detail), Gates of Paradise, Florence Baptistery
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Lorenzo Ghiberti, Story of Joseph (detail), Gates of Heaven, Florence Baptistery
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Lorenzo Ghiberti, Story of Abraham (detail), Gates of Heaven, Florence Baptistery
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The historical interests

Of course, the section of the Commentaries which was cited with absolute pre-eminence is the second one, which is the section devoted to modern history. Ghiberti’s writing is the first one that, although in a fragmentary and unsystematic way, however looks at the themes of art in a historicist perspective. The author is confronted here with the problem of the recovery and the transmission of the memory of the art authors, placed in a logical continuation of classical antiquity through the figure of Giotto, that "brought new art, abandoned the roughness of the Greeks [note of the editor: meaning by this the Byzantines], prevailed in an excellent way in Etruria. And who made very valuable works especially in the city of Florence and in many other places, while several disciples of him were all learned artists like the ancient Greeks" (p. 84). It has been rightly observed that exactly the  historicist aspect, declined under a biographical profile, represents the most tangible result of triumphant humanism; basically, Ghiberti does nothing but "specializing" historical work in the artists world; the biographical genre, however, had already produced Petrarch’s De viribus illustribus, and above all the success of Plutarch's Lives translated by Leonardo Bruni in vernacular; at the end of the fourteenth century, however, Filippo Villani had devoted a section of the Liber de Origine Civitatis Florentiae Et Eiusdem Famosis Civibus (Book on the History of the City of Florence and its Famous Citizens) to the most important artists in town. The corollary which has always been associated to Ghiberti’s text is that the text shows the growth of the role that is recognized to art creators, as long as humanism is affirmed. What we should note is that, in the Second Commentary, even if - as mentioned - in a confused and not always consistent manner [2], a reading of historical facts is also displayed. This reading suggests precisely the rebirth of art by Giotto, after it had remained buried for six hundred years; and sees it mature into Tuscany’s framework, reaching its climax just with the figure of Ghiberti. And from here, not by coincidence, the autobiography, in which Lorenzo certain proves not to be modest and not to have too many doubts, draws the conclusion: "Few things have been done in importance in our land that have not been drawn and ordered by my hand" (p. 97). But one thing is clear: Ghiberti already offers a historical interpretation that will be the same in Vasari (naturally revised, and with the peak touched by Michelangelo) a century later.

Lorenzo Ghiberti, St.John the Baptist, Florence, Orsanmichele
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Ghiberti and Cennino Cennini

This edition also offers an (interesting) comparison between Ghiberti’s Commentaries and Leon Battista Alberti’s De pictura. I do not think, however, that the editor ever dwelled on Lorenzo’s writing in comparison to the Book of the art by Cennino Cennini. And, in fact, the relationship, at first sight, seems remote. The two works are separated by a time span of about 50 years. We do not know if Lorenzo knew Cennino’s work as a painter (and, if any, we have to believe that he included him in the group of the "forgotten" artists: "The city of Siena had many painters and was very abundant of wonderful talents; we will ignore many of them, in order not to exceed in the size of our text."(p. 90)). Even more, we ignore whether he knew that Cennino Cennino had written a treatise. The argument is totally different. It is certain, however, that Cennino wrote about Giotto: "Giotto who changed the art of painting from Greek into Latin and brought it in the modern", which is what also Ghiberti writes. Let me be clear: it is possible that the conversion from "Greek" to "modern" painting was a routine statement in Tuscan art world, exactly like that the rebirth of the arts took place in Etruria; and that this common belief had spread orally, to become almost one of those attributes which normally is recognized to saints, and it is therefore necessary to evoke at every opportunity. However, I see this as a legitimate question.

And, since we agree with the recent interpretation of the Book of the Art made by Lara Broecke (that actually this work, rather than being simply a manual on craftsmanship, is the result of a conscious strategy of the artist to increase the praise he enjoyed), here the relationship between the two texts (obviously, Ghiberti did write it with the clear intention to hand over a magnified image of his merits to posterity) becomes closer, and should lead to a more detailed analysis, which we  hope someone will want to provide sooner or later.

NOTES

[1] See. P. 11: "The same Lorenzo wrote a work in vulgar, which discussed many different things, but nevertheless has not much substance." Curiously, some interpreters (not the case of this edition) have come to believe that the adjective "vulgar" also had a derogatory meaning, while clearly refers to the fact that the work is written in vernacular and not in Latin.

[2] An example is the unusually wide section dedicated to the German sculptor Gusmin, which is not well framed in this discussion, and seems more inspired by legendary aspects that by historical facts.