Francesco Mazzaferro. Sigurd Möller painter and translator of Cennino Cennini in Swedish

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Francesco Mazzaferro
Sigurd Möller painter and translator of Cennino Cennini in Swedish

[Original Version: January 2016 - New Version: April 2019]

Fig. 1) The three Swedish editions of the Book of the Art edited by Sigurd Möller,
published respectively (from left to right) in 1946, in 1986 and in 2000

Have a look at 'The Cennini Project'

The painter 

Of Sigurd M. Möller (1895-1984), Swedish painter, not many traces are left in the history of art. Some of his paintings are now offered at auctions for a few hundred euro only; those in possession of public collections (such as the Portrait with Palette, 1924, at the Art Museum of Gothenburg [1]) are included in the electronic files which are available to the public, but their images are unfortunately not available online. Möller is now an almost completely forgotten painter, with the exception of the entry on him in the Royal Archive of the Swedes [2], by Brita Linde. She explains that he remained true to his style throughout his long artistic career, lasting at least fifty years. A style that made him a champion of French art in northern Europe.

Möller showed enthusiasm for French painting since the years of his education at the Valand Academy in Gothenburg. His master, Birger Simonsson, who had studied in Paris and was one of the first modernists in Sweden, roused him for Bonnard and Cézanne. It was the beginning of a great love for the French culture (who later also led him to get married to a French woman in 1923). The love for French art was common to an entire generation of Nordic painters. The 'Franco-Swedish Gallery' (Svensk-franska konstgalleriet) was opened in Stockholm in those years (1918); it played an important role of cultural mediation for decades, until it closed in 1973. Möller studied art in Copenhagen in 1919-1920 and then moved to Paris in 1921. The Swedish painter lived in France for ten years, until he returned home in 1931 (after a series of trips around the Mediterranean). Until his death in 1984, he remained in the beloved city of Lidingö. But it is obvious that France was in her heart. His art references continued to be French naturalism and post-impressionism á la Bonnard and Vuillard.

Fig. 2) Sigurd Möller’s Article on Konstrevy 1941, entitled: "A Manual of painting from 1400"..

In the 1940s, Möller began an intensive activity as author of books and articles, after a brief period as teacher at the Real Art Institute in Stockholm (1938-1939). In spring 1941 he published an article on Cennino Cennini in the magazine Konstrevy (Art Magazine), entitled "A Manual of painting of 1400" (En Lärobok i Malning fran 1400 Talet). He translated there the letter by Pierre-Auguste Renoir that had been used as introduction to the 1911 French edition of the Book of the Art, edited by Henri Mottez on the basis provided by his father Victor in 1858 [3]; he also added a few chapters from the work of the Tuscan painter. It may be interesting to note that, in those years, the magazine Konstrevy devoted an overwhelming share of its pages to French art; it is likely that the attention was directed more to Renoir’s writing than to the passages from Cennino. Soon after, for instance (we are in autumn 1941), the art historian Erik Blomberg published an article, always on Konstrevy, on the influence of French art in Sweden since 1910, entitling it "The Franco-Swedish artistic alliance"[4]. Objectively, I think the choice of the title - in the neutral Sweden which was observing with astonishment the military defeat and the occupation of France by the Wehrmacht in those months - was a manifestation of solidarity with France itself. The same purpose may have had the numerous group exhibitions that were held in those years at the Franco-Swedish Art Gallery, for example, in 1944 (Möller participated with eighteen works [5]).

During the same 1940s the Swedish artist published three books: the first on book binding (1944) [6], the second on woodwork (1946) [7] and the third on painting (1947) [8]. And it was exactly 1947 when - in combination with the Practical Manual on Painting for All - Möller released the translation of the Book of Art by Cennino Cennini, like if he wanted to draw a parallel between his teaching activities to the advantage of the contemporary public and the old Italian text. Unfortunately, his manual on painting is not available on the book antiquarian market and I was not able to consult it. I would have loved to check whether it contained references to Cennino, and what parallels or differences could be found. The two texts on binding and woodworking seem addressed to beginners and, in some ways, resemble the modern “Do it yourself” texts. On the other hand, the theme ‘art for all’ was not only at the centre of the aesthetic discussion since the mid-nineteenth century (with the spread of applied arts), but also perfectly in line with the policy of the Swedish social democracy in the postwar period.  

Seemingly, Möller reached the pinnacle of his career in 1950 with a major retrospective held at Stockholm’s Academy of Fine Arts (Konstakademien), whose catalogue - albeit tiny and without any illustration [9] - is one of the few sources available to fix a chronology of his work, at least to recognise some trends in terms of the predominance of genres: paintings on Arab and oriental subjects in the early thirties, portraits in the middle of the decade, landscapes and still lives in the late thirties, again portraits in the early forties, then many different subjects and, finally, mainly landscapes of French subject at the end of the decade. Since the mid-fifties, the traces of Möller seem to get lost, although his works are documented until the end of the sixties.

As Brita Linde writes, Möller was specialized in "landscapes, still lives and interiors, while portraits and religious representations were less frequent." In the works of the 1920s, colours were often muted, and there were references - so frequent in the world of art in those years – to ascetic themes. A trip to North Africa in 1928-1929 led him then to a stronger use of colours, in particular "a hot oriental red, for which he was often praised." His landscapes show ability to play with different tones, while in still lives the same objects (ceramics, porcelain, cups) are often combined differently to reach diverse effects of light and colour. "A common motif of the interiors is a window that reflects the views, like Flowers at the Window (1936 - cf. Fig. 9)."

The interest for Cennino

In Paris in the 1920s, Möller attended the community of Scandinavian artists who lived there, including, in particular, the Danish Georg Jacobsen, slightly older than him (1887-1976). Jacobsen was a great admirer of Cezanne and was particularly influenced by the Cubists, but also developed a deep interest in the Italian primitives, on the occasion of a trip he made to our country in 1920. He started since then to test their techniques, and especially the tempera colours [10]. He developed and theorized also a personal system of perspective. According to Brita Linde, "Jacobsen had great interest in the techniques of the Italian old masters and perhaps he was the one who directed Möller’s attention to the painter of the fourteenth century Cennino Cennini, whose Book of the Art existed in a French translation with a preface by Renoir. Möller translated exactly this French translation in Swedish with the title Boken om målarkonsten (1947), to which he also added a foreword and comments of a great depth."[11]

Brita Linde argues therefore that the interest of Sigurd Möller for Cennino was born in Paris in the twenties, in artistic circles frequented by Scandinavian artists, and therefore well before the 1941 article on Kunstrevy and the translation of 1947. Many elements confirm this hypothesis. The Biographical Dictionary of Norwegians informs us in fact that the Norwegian artist Alf Rolfsen – to whom we devoted another post in this blog [12] – composed a trio precisely with Georg Jacobsen and the Mexican Diego Rivera in Paris. The three shared a common interest for Italian art and the techniques of the Renaissance [13]. Clearly, Cennino was also at the centre of their interests: Rolfsen translated the Book of the Art in Norwegian in the forties, Jacobsen spoke to Möller precisely on Cennino [14], indirectly stimulating the Swedish translation, and it is known that Rivera and his team tried to apply the teachings of the Book of the Art to Mexican murals.

Cennino's Swedish translation

The text of the Swedish Book of the Art experienced a good commercial success. After 1947 [15], it was again published in 1986 [16] and in 2000 [17]. The latest version was partially corrected by Sigurd’s son, to take account of the inevitable transformation of the language. Most likely, the success must be however due to a well-written Swedish text. Moreover, Möller - as mentioned - had just published a trilogy of books on dissemination of arts and applied arts, and he knew how to explain these issues to the general public. In the introduction, he wrote: "By translating Cennini’s treatise into Swedish, I have tried, albeit in a somewhat primitive form, to produce a work that can serve as an inspiring and instructive reference book, that can bring its readers in contact with the great masters of another era, their working methods and their artistic environment. Environments change and disappear, traditions die out, and today it would be impossible and quite wrong to follow all Cennini’s practical advice and rules. But we can enjoy and benefit from the many eternal truths that he articulates about the art of painting."

Yet, the text of Möller was not without questionable aspects: first, it was a translation from French (the aforementioned version of 1911), and not from the original; secondly, the text translated in turn the first modern edition, that of Tambroni of 1821, which used the Ottoboni manuscript and was therefore incomplete compared to the following edition of the Milanesi brothers (1859); and finally the French text by Henri Mottez contained technical misunderstandings and real material errors of translation. In 2011, a recent new translation by Karin Forsberg and Bo Ossian Lindberg (from the Italian edition by Frezzato) allowed the Swedish readers to have access to a full and philologically more accurate text [18].

To better understand the reasons for the translation and identify the main themes of the work of Sigurd Möller, we commissioned Alison Philip - who already had made an English translation for us of the corresponding Norwegian introduction by Alf Rolfsen and whom we are thanking here very warmly - to translate into English the preface and the second cover page of the work. The English translation of the text follows this article. It seems to me that a few aspects deserve our attention.

First, Möller’s approach was by no means philological. He ignored the terms of the discussion on the biography of Cennino, accepting some problematic theses that already in his time were called into question (for example, he seems to agree with the notion that Cennini concluded the drafting of the text in the Florentine Stinche prison, where he would have been imprisoned for debts). The only sources that he used are Tambroni and Victor Mottez. He added only 9 notes to the 62 ones that already existed in the 1911 version by Henri Mottez, despite the enormous progress made in the research on Cennini in the next 35 years. Although he knew the limits of Mottez’s edition, therefore, he did not see any of the modern versions of the Book of art, ignoring those in Italian, English and German and limiting himself exclusively to the French translation. In particular, he neglected the German version of Jan Verkade, painter-monk who had been a follower of Gauguin and a mate of Maurice Denis and Paul Sérusier in the Nabis group. As he proclaimed himself a great admirer of Pierre Bonnard, himself member of the Nabis, Möller would probably have been greatly interested in Verkade’s thesis, who considered Cennino a truly predecessor of syncretistic painting.

Second: the preface contains no statement on religious and ideological aspects in Cennino’s text, that were major themes in other commentaries. Nothing on the idea of ​​religious devotion and moral obligations of the artist; nothing on the idea of ​​the priesthood of the art; nothing even on the 'conservative' interpretation of Cennino’s writings as a witness of an untouched art world, which is characteristic of the letter of Renoir. Interestingly the letter by Renoir and the few chapters by Cennino on moral and religious aspects were all included in the article on Konstrevy of 1941. However, in the introduction to his 1947 translation, Möller ignored any non-technical interpretation of the writings of the Tuscan artist. Brita Linde also informs us that during the early years, the painter had been sensitive to issues of ascetic religiosity in art, very common at the time. Evidently he no longer had much interest in those issues in 1947.

Third, contrary to what the majority of commentators of Cennino, for Möller the strength of his text for the modern reader was that it offered important insights for the expression of artistic effects, "Cennini explains how to paint carnations, draperies of different colors and shades, mountains, trees, plants, buildings, water and rivers with and without fish, and much more. And all of these techniques and methods are presented in a simple, clear and methodical way. It is notable that the artists of this period were able to achieve such a remarkably rich variety of tones and shades with simple means and with a limited number of colours available to them." Möller read Cennino from a painter to a painter, and drew insights from him on an Arcadian and genuine art.

Fourth: to Möller, the accent fell particularly on what Cennini had said on colours (their preparation, their use in the paintings, the best colours to produce special effects, the contribution that colours can make the painting of faces) and in particular on their variations, which he called "simple but extremely rich."

In short, there is a basic coherence between what we have learned about the art of Möller and the reading which he gave of Cennino: the centre of attention is the ability of the artist to evoke emotions through a variation of colours and lights, even within the framework of compositions which must remain simple. These are concepts that can be learned by all, multiplying the area of ​​dissemination of art. And the intentions of Möller and Cennino are, from this point of view, among them homogeneous in the desire to make all of us potential painters.

------------------

English translation by Alison Philip

Text of the second cover page

15th-century book translated into Swedish

Cennino Cennini

A TREATISE ON THE ART OF PAINTING

The fact that a book like this has been translated into Swedish is highly unusual. The original work, completed in 1437, was written while its author was in prison in Florence, and for the next 400 years it lay forgotten in an archive. It was not rediscovered until the beginning of the 19th century. It was then translated into modern Italian and French, and is now, 510 years after it first appeared, being introduced to Sweden by the artist Sigurd Möller, who is also responsible for the translation.

Cennino Cennini was a painter, and was taught by a pupil of Giotto. Thus his treatise on the art of painting brings the reader in direct contact with the medieval Italian masters, the way they worked, and the artistic atmosphere of the period. Cennini gives us an exhaustive review of the subject. He provides all the necessary information on for example how to produce painting materials, the properties of colours, their grinding and preparation, and how to prepare walls and panels. He also gives detailed explanations of how to paint carnations, drapery of different colours and shades, mountains, trees, plants, buildings, water and rivers, with and without fish in them, and much more. The third section is undoubtedly of particular interest to us today, with its descriptions of painting in fresco, where he deals with pigments, priming, saturation and how to plot the composition. He then describes painting techniques and their simple but rich colours. This little book is a unique and almost magical experience for all art lovers, and not least for artists themselves.

Preface by Sigurd Möller

 

Original Italian title:

Il Libro Dell' Arte, O Trattato Della Pittura

Translated from V. Mottez’s French edition by

SIGURD MÜLLER

Stockholm

Alb. Bonniers boktryckeri

1947

 

PREFACE

For four centuries Cennino Cennini’s Libro Dell'Arte, O Trattato Della Pittura was a forgotten and more or less unknown document. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that it was discovered in its entirety by the Italian Giuseppe Tambroni, who discovered a copy among the Vatican’s infinitely large store of manuscripts. The manuscript was apparently in very poor condition and disorganised, but after close study Tambroni managed to decipher it. For the first time a clear, complete edition of Cennini’s treatise was available.

According to Tambroni, the first recorded mention of Cennini is to be found in Vasari: ‘Son of Andrea Cennini, born in Colle di Valdelsa, painter and pupil of Agnolo Gaddi, son of Taddeo and pupil of Giotto.’ Tambroni estimates that Cennini was born in 1360 or a little before, and the treatise was completed as late as 31 July 1437. However, Vasari paid little attention to Cennino’s text, which according to Tambroni he does not appear to have read; nor have later art historians, who have generally used Vasari as their main source, shown much interest in acquiring more than a sketchy picture of this remarkable work. Thus many generations have been deprived of a work that reverently and meticulously documents the working methods of the old masters, including their materials, the preparation of their colours and their use of colour in paintings. And yet these methods were common knowledge among generations of Italian artists, even before Giotto’s time.

Cennini wrote his book in the Stinche prison in Florence when he was 80 years old, destitute and in debt. While his teachers left their sons wealthy legacies after their death, their unfortunate pupil was left begging for his living in his old age and ended up in a debtors’ prison. A harsh fate, which continued to dog him even after his death: his work remained in oblivion for the next four hundred years. Yet nowhere in his text do we find any trace of self-pity; it is imbued with an absolute reverence for art. The reader is convinced of the artist’s delight in fully mastering his craft and, as Tambroni put it, he communicates this with humility, gratitude, generosity, devotion and honesty.

We know little about Cennini’s own paintings, and Tambroni does not say whether any of his works were still in existence. However, according to Vasari, ‘in addition to the work he did in Florence together with his master, there is a Madonna surrounded by saints in the loggia of Bonifazio Lapi, which is so perfectly painted that it has remained quite unchanged to this day.’ Tambroni maintains that Vasari considered Cennini a great colourist, but he also criticises Vasari for the arrogant way he treats Cennini’s treatise. Tambroni believes that Italy was thereby deprived of a wealth of valuable information, especially about painting in fresco. The treatise provides an all-embracing description of the working methods of the artists of Cennini’s time. It specifies the path the apprentice had to follow, the materials used by the school, the best colours for producing particular effects and which schools should be avoided.

Cennini starts his book with a meticulous description of the techniques of draughtsmanship – he even tells the reader how to prepare a goose quill pen and how to use breadcrumbs to erase drawing errors. Fresco techniques and working in tempera on panels are explained in equally minute detail; nothing is left to chance. He goes further – he gives the apprentice advice on how to regulate his life: ‘Your life should always be arranged just as if you were studying theology or philosophy or other theories, that is to say, choosing digestible and wholesome dishes and light wines… .’ He advises him to choose as his companions those who have progressed further than he has, and to continually follow in the steps of his master, although without letting this stand in the way of his own talent.

Cennini’s descriptions are amazingly detailed. Today the most interesting section of the book is undoubtedly the third, which instructs the apprentice how to paint in fresco on walls and discusses colours, priming, saturation and how to plot the composition. He goes on to describe the actual technique of painting, and how to achieve simple but extremely rich colour variations – the same skill that Giotto taught Taddeo Gaddi, who in his turn taught his son Agnolo, Cennini’s master. A skill that has been lost but is not dead.

Practical craftsmanship went hand in hand with the quest for artistic expression. After explaining how to produce all the necessary materials, the properties of colours, their grinding and treatment, and how to prepare walls and panels, Cennini goes on to explain how to paint carnations, drapery of different colours and shades, mountains, trees, plants, buildings, water and rivers with and without fish, and much more. And all these techniques and methods are presented simply, clearly and methodically. It is remarkable that the artists of this period managed to achieve such an extraordinarily rich variety of colour tones and shades by the simple means and limited number of colours at their disposal. With infinite patience they learned to handle gold, both for artistic purposes and as a craft. The gold in the paintings of these old masters has the same undiminished glow and luminous intensity as it did then, and Cennini devotes many chapters to gilding.

All these practical instructions are interspersed with the most extraordinary ideas and advice, which give us a strong impression of the artistic milieu of the Middle Ages. Not everyone knows that painters in Cennini’s time were sometimes also commissioned to paint the faces of Tuscan beauties. In Chapter 179 Cennini describes how to do this, and tells us that tempera, oil and varnish were all used for this purpose.

In order not to encumber the text with too many comments, this short introduction must suffice. The information I have provided is derived from Tambroni, whose edition was published in 1821. A later and more comprehensive edition, by the Milanesi brothers, was published in Florence in 1859. In 1858 Victor Mottez, a pupil of Ingres, translated Tambroni’s work into French, but he naturally had no access to the Milanesi edition. The first translation into modern Italian was based on the Codex Ottoboniano in the Vatican, and contains a number of gaps that do not appear in the other two known copies: the Codex Laurentinus in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence and the Codex Riccardi. Mottez’s translation was completed by his son Henry Mottez after the former’s death. Nothing is known about Cennini’s own manuscript. All the existing manuscripts are copies made by others.

The Swedish translation is based on the French edition, including the notes.

By translating Cennini’s treatise into Swedish, I have tried, albeit in a somewhat primitive form, to produce a work that can serve as an inspiring and instructive reference book, that can bring its readers in contact with the great masters of another era, their working methods and their artistic environment. Environments change and disappear, traditions die out, and today it would be impossible and quite wrong to follow all Cennini’s practical advice and rules. But we can enjoy and benefit from the many eternal truths that he articulates about the art of painting.

S.M.

NOTES

[1] See here.

[2] See the entry Sigurd Möller

[3] For the various editions of the Book of the Art mentioned in this article, see in this blog Giovanni Mazzaferro. Cennino Cennini and the "Book of the Art": a Check-list of the Printed Editions.

[4] Blomberg, Erik - Fransk-svensk konstallians. Reflexioner kring utstâllningen "Frankrike genom konstnärsögon" i Nationalmuseum 1911 (The Franco-Swedish artistic alliance. Reflections on the exhibition "France through the eyes of the artist" at the National Museum in 1911), in: Konstrevy, Year 17 (1941), No. 4, p. 132.

[5] Svenks-Franska Konstgalleriet, Catalogue Nr. 191, Exhibition of Rudolf Abrahamsson, Curt Clemens, Eddie Figge, Bengt Kristenson, Sigurd Möller, Eva Rundlöf, Åke Winnberg, 29th November-22nd December 1944.

[6] Möller, Sigurd – Vi binda Böcker (We are binding books), Stockholm, Albert Bonniers Publishers, 1944, p. 42

[7] Möller, Sigurd - Praktisk snickarbok för alla (The practical woodwork book for everybody), Stockholm, Forum, 1946, p. 116

[8] Möller, Sigurd, Praktisk målarhandbok för alla (Practical Handbook of Painting for Everybody), Stockholm, Forum Publishers, 1947, p. 213

[9] Konstakademien. Sigurd Möller, 4-28 February 1950

[10] See

http://www.denstoredanske.dk/Kunst_og_kultur/Billedkunst/Danmark_1910-55/Georg_Jacobsen

[11] Again: https://sok.riksarkivet.se/SBL/Presentation.aspx?id=8676

[12] See in this blog: Francesco Mazzaferro. Cennino Cennini, Alf Rolfsen and the art ofthe fresco in Norway of the twentieth century.

[13] See the entry Alf Rolfsen in the Biographic Dictionary of Norwegians: https://nbl.snl.no/Alf_Rolfsen   

[14] Interestingly, the first Danish edition of Cennino’s treatise appeared much later, in 1964. Without exaggerating at all costs, it should be nevertheless remembered that the link between the Book of the Art and Denmark dated back to 1821: in fact, the first edition, edited by Giuseppe Tambroni, was dedicated to Prince Christian Frederik of Denmark.

[15] Boken om Målarkosten av Cennino Cennini, Översätting från V. Mottez’ franska version av Sigurd Möller, Stockholm, Alb. Bonniers boktryckeri, 1947, p. 337.

[16] Boken om Målarkosten av Cennino Cennini, Översätting från V. Mottez’ franska version av Sigurd Möller, Göteborg, Viga Press, 1986. This 1986 edition is an exact facsimile copy of the 1946 edition.

[17] Boken om Målarkosten av Cennino Cennini, Översätting från V. Mottez’ franska version av Sigurd Möller, Stockholm, Till & Från, Stockholm, 2000.

[18] Cennino Cennini Boken om målarkonsten : "Il libro dell’arte", edited by Karin Forsberg e Bo Ossian Lindberg, Lund, Sekel Bokförlag/Isell & Jinert, 2011, p. 217.

[19] See in this blog: Francesco Mazzaferro, Jan Verkade, Cennino Cennini and the Quest for Spiritual Art in the Mid of World War I.