Diego Martelli. [Art Writings]. Edited by Antonio Boschetto with a review by Anna Maria Brizio and Emilio Cecchi

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Diego Martelli

Scritti d'arte
[Art Writings]

Edited by Antonio Boschetto 

Firenze, Sansoni, 1952

Federico Zandomeneghi, Portrait of Diego Martelli, 1870, Florence, National Gallery of Modern Art
Source: http://www.giovannifattori.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/ZandomeneghiDiegoMartelli.jpg

[1] "The pages gathered here want to testify... the amplitude of Martelli’s acquaintances, of his many interests in matters of art even in "very low-profile" times, as he eventually wrote (p. 14).

Edgar Degas, Portrait of Diego Martelli, 1879, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
Source: Wikimedia Commons

[2] The complete correspondance of Diego Martelli is now available free on the website of the Fondazione Memofonte

[3] We display two reviews of the work appeared respectively on 6 and 4 March 1953. The first was signed by Anna Maria Brizio in the newspaper La Stampa. The second was written by Emilio Cecchi in the Corriere della Sera. The originals of the items are kept in the “Luciano Mazzaferro collection of articles and other clippings”, preserved at the Public Library Giulio Cesare Croce di San Giovanni in Persiceto, Italy.

LA STAMPA

Fra macchiaioli e impressionisti
[Between Macchiaioli and Impressionists]

by Anna Maria Brizio

It is remarkable that, however large the scholar production on the Macchiaioli may be, Diego Martelli was almost always mentioned only in passing. Indeed, his name was always quoted, but in a bundle with all the others, and seldom being the subject of careful consideration and detail.

It was difficult to trace the source, so far as Martelli’s writings had not had the fortune of being reprinted, like those of Messrs Signorini and Cecioni. Signorini’s writings had immediately become well-known for his polemical tone, the Tuscan verve and the fluency of language, while those by Cecioni were lovingly assembled and commented by Gustavo Uzielli in 1905 and published again by Mr Somaré in 1932. But whoever wanted to read those of Martelli, should have tried to cross-check the old sheets on which they were originally published, or searched among his papers filed at Marucelliana Library in Florence.

Telemaco Signori, The towpath, 1864, Private Collection
Source: http://www.zabarella.it/mostre/una-visita-con-carlo-sisi tramite Wikimedia Commons

This is not anymore the case: knowing well their high critical value, Antonio Boschetto has just edited a wide choice of them, published by Sansoni (Scritti d’arte di Diego Martelli – Art Writings by Diego Martelli, Florence, 1952, Library of " Paragone", IV); and henceforth it will be easy for anyone from now on to gain direct knowledge, and see with what acumen and rightness of judgment he looked at contemporary facts and people.

Telemaco Signorini, The ill women's room in S. Bonifacio Hospital in Florence, 1865,
Venice, Modern Art Gallery Ca' Pesaro
Source: Wikimedia Commons

To recall, Martelli was not locked up in a limited circle of interests, but always attempted to expand the field of his culture; he had the gift to position himself immediately, to recognize the value of an artist, the vitality of a movement instantly at its birth, before any official consecration. In addition to his rapid accession to the developing Macchiaioli movement, his early understanding of the Impressionist movement is significant. He had been at the World Fair in Paris in 1878. He had "found himself to experience again the artist's life in that great centre of human thought, coming closer to a company of painters who were in the midst of hardship and struggle, driven by the need for new forms that were imposed by modern thought”. And – while coming from the outside and being stranger – without any uncertainty he had identified the new forms with those of the Impressionists.

The reader will find confirmation and documentation of these words, which I wrote as early as 1939, in the beautiful book edited by Mr Boschetto.

The core element is precisely the Conference on Impressionism, held at the Philological Circle of Livorno in 1879, after he had returned from the journey to Paris. If one takes an eye to the dates of the development of Impressionism and those of its earliest acknowledgment in France, the very timely recognition by Martelli looks amazing. And his judgment was born from an intimate understanding, from a direct and personal knowledge of works and artists, and from his participation, I would say, in their research and their efforts: Manet, whose moving obituary he later dictated; Degas, who portrayed him several times; Monet "one of the greatest landscape painters of France"; and Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, the "wild" Cézanne, and all other exhibitors of the group in 1878. That which is delightful is the freshness of Diego Martelli’s judgment: alien from abstract patterns and categories, he captures the characteristic features of the style and typical accent of the personality. For example, he writes on Monet and Pissarro in the notes on the subsequent Impressionist exhibition of 1879: "Monet is modern; we can see (I mean, those of us who have a good view) the country that he displays with our own eyes... Pissarro, is a little more ‘rêveur’ [dreamer], perhaps due to a bit advanced age; however, he is equally strong as the above mentioned artist, if not on the whole but certainly in some of his paintings. One would say that he, always harsh and monotonous in art making, fills all his paintings with the full of his anger as well as his honesty... His pictures, while revealing the supreme qualities of his character, make the same effect on you as someone who wants to always tell you the novel of his life. However, while you find it true and worthy of admiration, it ends up being tiring. Instead, Monet is still young, he cannot care less about many details of life and his painting is consequently young and joyful...". It seems to see Martelli in the thick of his impressions, reacting with all the immediacy of his sensitivity, and not just as abstract assessor; - but for this all the more acute assessor!

This inclination to revive art in all its human complexity had developed in him by assiduously frequenting the artists, since that distant 1855 when, just seventeen, he had made his first entrance to the Caffè Michelangelo.

And even if his intelligence and critical spirit were much higher than those of the fellow Macchiaioli, who is familiar with the writings by Signorini or by Cecioni will well find something as an air of family in his pages. Something common, which originates perhaps from the same witty way in which people speak in Florence, or perhaps from the most constant presence of a high moral conscience of art production’s value. Such conscience could only take root in people who had made the sense of their daily lives in the rebellion against academies and usual happenings, in struggles without deviations, in laborious and disinterested research. These were also Cecioni’s qualities, and make the keenest note of his writings. Cecioni however had remained locked in his own limited world; and when, urged by De Nittis, he had also decided to go to Paris and to exhibit his Putto con gallo [cherub with rooster] at the Salon (which was indeed so successful), his morality, at the first touch with luxury and corruption of "modern Babylon", had grumpily contracted in an acrimonious hypochondriac moralism; and locked in his exasperation, he had not been able to see anything of the great artistic events that were materialising, even in the midst of that efflorescence of pleasure and corruption.

But Mr Martelli, in his subsequent stays in Paris - he was there the first time in 1862-63 and returned in 1869-70 and in 1878-79 -  surprises us on how he had been able to see immediately clear and fair. In his writings, the process of advancement of his judgment is captured very well; and roughly in the decade after 1878, when his best writings are produced, the sublimation of the Macchiaioli’s flair in a European style reveals conscious and very clear, beyond any nationalism and particularism; nor you would know any other critic in Italy in those years, who had so much openness of intellect.

After 1880, Mr Martelli took part briskly to the controversy raised by local artistic questions that then struggled in Florence: the erection of the facade of the cathedral, the competition for the doors of the cathedral, the restoration of Holy Trinity and Orsanmichele. And always in him, the setting of these issues is of exemplary clarity, while judgment remains biting and relevant.

Perhaps of all his pages the least vivid are those dedicated to ancient art: where, even if subtle notations and a feeling for art are always awake, it is lacking what appears to be the most favourable condition to ensure that his genius is animated and gets sharp and penetrating: the stimulus of current events, the direct participation in the life of the artists as a well definite and concrete matter, and as an action in implementation. His thought is less incline to pure speculation, to solitary meditation. With the same mild, benevolent irony that he affectionately also used vis-à-vis close friends who he felt to be less open intellectually (vis-à-vis Adriano Cecioni, for example), here we discover him to turn pointing critically to himself, when, surprised to passionately explain what Impressionism and its theories are (and he does so excellently!), he stops for a moment and smiles saying, "I am surprised of myself, when I find I have been brought by the argument in such different areas... and that this makes me think how all holds together in the whole universe, and that the poorest and misfits apostles can sometimes happen to be the first one proclaiming abstract truths. So pity me; ... and guided by the truth that brings us together and unites us in the same search, let us enter resolutely into the labyrinth." And in this labyrinth, which is the painting of the nineteenth century, the reader can confidently rely on his guide: he will find the proper orientation and a number of judgments on the Impressionists and the Macchiaioli and of so many other painters and sculptors, like Daumier and Corot, Courbet, Fontanesi, Morelli, De Nittis, Nino Costa, Zandomeneghi, and so on, with admirable rightness and topicality.

Giovanni Fattori, The Roundabout of Palmieri, 1866, Florence, National Modern Art Gallery
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Giovanni Fattori, The look-out post, 1872, Private collection
Source: Wikimedia Commons

CORRIERE DELLA SERA

Editi e inediti di Diego Martelli
[Published and Unpublished Writings by Diego Martelli]

by Emilio Cecchi

The critical literature that accompanied and supported the Tuscan artistic movement of the "Macchiaioli" hinges on the two names of Diego Martelli and Adriano Cecioni. But it would be difficult to imagine two more different performers and patrons. Mr Cecioni, sometimes admirable sculptor, sometimes thankless, never insignificant, and painter of an acute and a bit weird grace. Violent and with a suspicious character; and along his entire life, with the exception of rare flashes of luck, darkly oppressed by poverty and other troubles. Mr Martelli, originally wealthy, with properties in the countryside. While he was not exactly swamming in gold, at least for some time he was able to afford travelling and stays abroad, and to offer hospitality and aid to those "Macchiaioli" who were most in need. Typical figure of cultured Florentine bourgeoisie, eccentric but basically balanced; with a lively sense of patriotism, which did not preclude brightened international curiosity.

The writings and memories of Cecioni, which were printed twice, are very well known. But those by Martelli, scattered in newspapers and magazines, touched an uncertain fate. And only today Antonio Boschetto has produced an excellent selection of them, including a good number of unpublished art writings by Diego Martelli (Library of "Paragone", no. 4, Sansoni Publishers, Florence); at the same time, Baccio M. Bacci published a successful biography: Diego Martelli, l’amico dei «macchiaioli» (Diego Martelli, the friend of the "Macchiaioli"), Mazza Publishing House, Florence.

For truth, in the period between 1855 and 1890, during which their course can be considered substantially completed, the art of "Macchiaioli" did not benefit from great fortune. Thereafter, after long neglect, and rather close to the age of our present days, people seemed to re-think, showing a change of opinion. The history of that artistic movement was dusted off. Some retrospective exhibitions were suddenly organised. Step by step, the paintings emerged out of the old collections and the family lounges, where they had slumbered for several decades. They were disclosed in magazines, catalogues and monographs; they went under the hammer of auction directors, since they ended up also finding their market. No need to add that, in sales, they were soon accompanied by inevitable falsifications: this is always the surest proof (so are the things of the world) that a given commodity is really most welcome. Unfortunately, in the course of these operations, a regrettable misunderstanding developed, of which some germ one can find, if he looks closely, in the same writings of Cecioni and Martelli.

What had happened was that, in the heat of their belated rediscovery of the "Macchiaioli", some new critics, at times acting merely as sale persons, had put around even this argument: that if France was legitimately pride of the 'Impressionists', then it was proven that, at the same time as France, Italy had its Nineteenth century revolutionary painters as well. And who knows (they added), while the latter had been beaten by fate, deep down they were perhaps even better than the former.

Silvestro Lega, The Arbor, 1868, Milan, Brera Gallery
Source: Wikimedia Commons

In other words, unfortunately among certain circles the recent rediscovery of the "Macchiaioli", took a revanchist tone from the very beginning, inevitably resulting in a no less punctilious retaliation. And instead of taking place spontaneously, and as it was more useful, on the basis of a new, patient and sincere reading of the works of art, a confused controversy erupted from which the "Macchiaioli" had nothing to gain. It would have been easy to see that, while the two movements, "Impressionists" and "Macchiaioli", generically both fell into the mainstream European naturalism of the second half of the last century, they were intrinsically strangers to each other, and originated from different and formal independent traditions. It was preferred, instead, to put them into competition; to chalk completely outlandish aesthetic quotes on the blackboard of the totalizer. Instead, the concrete thing would have been to define the two schools or trends, each in its own character (and, as regards the 'impressionist' style, Mr Martelli, at a conference in 1879 and in his commemoration of Manet, had definitely started in the right direction). And above all it would have been necessary apply to focus on the interpretation of individual artists and works, in what had been their small or great originality.

Especially in the second half of the century, in matters of art and literature, France played a hegemonic function. Painters of the same strength as Delacroix, Ingres, Courbet could have not even been dreamed of in contemporary Italy. It was natural that Manet, Degas, Pissarro, Renoir and minors, who were freely formed on those examples after 1850, drew a more robust substance from their predecessors than what the "Macchiaioli" could reap, as the latter were lost and groping in an antediluvian, mainly provincial, academic figurative culture. And both for the strength of their genius as well as for the fertility of the soil where they had cultural roots: Manet, Degas, Renoir, reached results which, despite the purity of their intentions and their dedication, certainly could not be reached by Abbati, Sernesi, Lega, Signorini and even Fattori.

With his mischievous temperament, Cecioni in Paris appeared to even not notice the 'Impressionists'. He deservedly vented to speak ill of the emigrant De Nittis, who (as later on Boldini) had deftly adapted to the tastes of the rich bourgeoisie and had found the formula of a perhaps brilliant painting, but especially effective for trade. Mr Martelli, friend of Manet, and even more of Degas and Pissarro, tried instead to animate exchanges of ideas and works between the two schools. It was a useless effort, since as we said painters in Paris and Florence talked an entirely different pictorial language. And yet had not spread (nor the Martelli wanted to intentionally promote that) that imitative cynicism, that impudent mimetic, whereby today artists and writers grab whatever they find, and change flag overnight; like if they lived outside of any ethnic responsibility, and of any tradition and intellectual coherence.

But it is curious that even in a book like the one which Mr Boschetto edited on Martelli’s art writings, the echoes of the busted controversy on “Impressionists” and "Macchiaioli" continue to be felt, though vaguely. Mind that the book is still very timely and commendable. At least in theory, Martelli was always well known among those who dealt with Tuscan painting in the nineteenth century. In fact, his articles and his lectures were difficult to find, and are now available to everyone; they document a critical wit and a grace as a writer that we must certainly not overestimate, but which were certainly out of the ordinary.

And when the Art writings are completed with the affectionate biography by Bacci, Martelli’s work becomes increasingly decisive and convincing. His passion for truth, his scientific curiosity, a sense of modern poetry with which he anticipated the results of new discoveries and their applications to industry and agriculture; his humanitarian socialism, the generosity with friends, the sympathy for the humble and the afflicted, testified among other things by his happy marriage with a poor girl that he had taken from a place of shame; the love for freedom, which led him on two battlefields, and a third time with Garibaldi in Dijon: all these things may seem foreign and negligible to the moral callousness and the aesthetic preciousness of some, and instead make him more and more dear to us.

Rightly, Mr Boschetto is full of scruples to ensure that nothing in his anthology would support the misunderstandings created by those who equated or even preferred the art of the "Macchiaioli" to that of "Impressionists." Never (he says) Mr Martelli, treating of "Macchiaioli", developed such a critical enthusiasm as in his obituary of Manet. This is obvious. But Martelli’s writings abound of precise and warm acclaims for the "Macchiaioli"; and I would not like that, not at all intentionally, Mr Boschetto, in a certain way, ended up giving the impression that Martelli had great critical skills when he praised Manet, but was less great as an art critic when he found something remarkable in Messrs Abbati, Lega or Cecioni.

And again. Cecioni happened to write: "Among the Macchiaioli there was full and absolute ignorance of the tradition of the old school, not for lack of artistic culture, but by the will of the authors." And Mr Boschetto uses this sentence. But he could also take account of other, more detailed, statements by Cecioni himself. For example: "The young Borrani went to study with Bianchi, who, having been commissioned to restore the Green Cloister, where the frescos by Paolo Uccello are, indicated to the pupil that those pictures were the only works on which he could do healthy and helpful studies, and excited him to copy them in the drawing. Borrani set to work with ardour. Later on he passed to the frescoes of the Chapel of the Spaniards, then to Ghirlandaio ... He made drawings in Santa Croce from the frescoes by Giotto ... ". Drawings of Borrani from the Adoration of the Magi by Botticelli, etc...; and so, the designs by Fattori from Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi have been very often published. Boschetto knows it better than me.

These lazy shades of toxic gunpowder fumes from the old controversy, this venial and larval reticence can be even less approved by an expert reader; actually, they do not remove much from the quality of the book of Art Writings, finally consecrating the acumen and the righteousness criticism of Diego Martelli.