Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Chiara Battezzati
Carl Friedrich von Rumohr e l’arte nell’Italia settentrionale
[Carl Friedrich von Rumohr and Art in Northern Italy]
Published in
Concorso. Arti e lettere, 2009, n. III
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| Giulio Romano, Fall of the Giants (detail), Mantova, Palazzo The. See p. 30 Source: http://www.arteworld.it/analisi-iconografica-sala-dei-giganti-di-giulio-romano/ |
Since I unfortunately
do not master German, I am always delighted of any translation of the writings
of art historians from that language. Of course, it is not me who discovered
the importance of how the German scholarship decisively reinterpreted the
history of Italian art, since the works of Johann Dominicus Fiorillo, encompassing
connoisseurs like Rumohr, Passavant, Waagen, Otto Mündler; they helped to set
forth the coherent vision which was ultimately encoded by Jacob Burckhardt. In
Italy, translation of German works are, in fact, so rare, that they do not
permit scholars to carry out the necessary anamnesis work on the art pieces that
so clearly Giovanni Agosti defines as necessary in his introduction to Alfonso Litta’s work on Passavant [1].
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| Bernardino Luini, The Marriage of the Virgin, Saronno, Santuario della Beata Vergine dei Miracoli. See p. 38 Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Of
particular interest is, therefore, this special issue of the journal Concorso. Arti e lettere in which Chiara
Battezzati presents an anthology of the writings of Baron Carl Friedrich von
Rumohr (1785-1843) on art in northern Italy. Rumohr, in fact, was a key figure
in the history of art criticism. It is no coincidence that Schlosser considered
him a true master: the attention that the Baron devoted to documentary sources
and archival research were milestones originating from the teachings of
Fiorillo. In turn, they not only affected the German school, but even the world
of Italian scholars. It is well plausible, for example, that Rumohr had a
direct influence on the archival researches by Gaetano and Carlo Milanesi [2];
and it is even easier to assume that he inspired the Florentine circles of the Viesseux Cabinet, where Gaetano Milanesi worked and where some of Rumohr’s writings had
been translated by Antonio Benci to be published on the journal Antologia. The German Baron combined
archival work with a not common expertise as connoisseur. This combination of
skills led him to not trivial duties, which are often underrated by Italian critics
because his texts are not available in our language. One example, in Chiara Battezzati’s
work, is the attribution to Figino which the scholar made of the Madonna with Veil of the chapel of St.
George in the Milanese church of St. Ambrose: that attribution was literally forgotten,
but finally checked and recently confirmed (only) in 1997. By virtue of his skills as
a connoisseur, Rumohr made acquaintance with and became a reference point for
Giovanni Morelli. Therefore, sticking to a widely abused dichotomy, we can say
that, with respect to the nineteenth century Italian art criticism, the Saxon was
decisive for both workstreams of archival research (Mr Milanesi) and attributionism
(Mr Morelli).
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| Gaudenzio Ferrari, Last Supper, Milan, Santa Maria della Passione. See p. 39 Source: Maurizio Ongaro via Wikimedia Commons |
In Italy
In fact,
Carl Friedrich von Rumohr never wrote a comprehensive text on the art of
northern Italy. Let us recall events: the scholar visited Italy on several
occasions. The first lasted from 1805 to 1806. This was the usual training trip
in our country, where Carl Friedrich inevitably attended the circle of the
Nazarenes. The second was not a journey, but a veritable lifestyle choice.
Rumohr lived in Italy, between Siena and Florence, nearly five years, between
1816 and 1821. He was fully dedicated to archival research and the study of
primitives: "thanks to the documentary research, Rumohr was the first
scholar to apply a rigorous, less naive and not subjective, method to the study
and rediscovery of Italian painting between the fourteenth and fifteenth
century" (p. 15). The conversion to Catholicism seemed almost a necessary
step in the path of understanding of Italian painting of the old masters. The
third trip began in 1828. At the end of the year Rumohr moved (reluctantly) to
Milan because Frederick William of Prussia, Crown Prince - who had visited
Italy a few months before - was interested in buying a painting attributed to
Raphael, and instructed Carl Friedrich to verify whether the attribution was
correct. The scholar did not hesitate to judge it as a worthless painting,
certainly of Lombard school, but also took the opportunity to view and purchase
some other works on behalf of the Berlin Museum. Although he was not part of
the organization, Rumohr collaborated with Gustav Waagen, director of the
museum, for the completion of the collection of the art gallery. The last
journey, of which we know very little, was in 1841.
The best
known results of Rumohr’s studies are without any doubt the Italienischen Forschungen (Italian Investigations) published in three
volumes between 1827 and 1831, and still unpublished in both Italian and
English. The scholar gathered there the sum of his archival research, with
particular reference to the art of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in
central Italy until Raphael. Of particular interest, for the purpose of this
work, are the Drey Reisen nach Italien
(Three Journeys to Italy) published in 1832. It is made of a volume of memoirs
covering the Italian travels in 1805-6, 1816-21 and 1828-29.
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| Andrea Previtali, Polyptych, Bergamo, Chiesa di Santo Spirito. See p. 42 Source: Wikimedia Commons |
In this volume
Chiara
Battizzati’s work benefits first and foremost of a brilliant initial
introduction and then is actually structured around two ‘hubs’. The first core (pp.
25-50) consists of the selection of the writings of Rumohr. The passages are
taken from Drey Reisen nach Italien,
and are the only pages where the scholar speaks of his presence especially in
Lombardy. To clarify: the Drey Reisen
describe Rumohr’s interaction with the art of northern Italy only during the
first (1805-1806) and the third voyage (1828-1829). Especially on this last occasion,
his judgments became more articulated thanks to the stay of a few months in
Milan, in early '29, with the purpose to determine whether the alleged Raphael
offered to Frederick William was authentic or not. But nothing is said on it during
the five years between 1816 and 1821, simply because the Baron was not
interested in the subject. Being the most fruitful period, as regards Italian studies,
it is really baffling (see below) that he is in fact unknown in Italy. The last
pages of the anthology display instead an article which Rumohr published in
1837 with the title Gemälde von Moretto
(Paintings from Moretto) in the July issue of the German magazine Echo; they are part of the process of
rediscovery of the artist from Brescia in the Nineteenth century.
The second core
of the work is represented by the endnotes (pp. 50-98) because there Ms
Battezzati did not only include the critical success of each work cited in the
text, sometimes with assumptions on the current location and sometimes (as she
was not being able to do so) providing input for a future identification; but
also because there are presented texts of letters taken from Rumohr’s epistolary
(mainly with Christian Bunsen, Prussian ambassador to the Holy See). To those who
want to see for himself the richness of the material offered in this second core
of the work, I would recommend reading the note 45, in which the authoress takes
stock of the state of the art on what is known about the pseudo-Raphael viewed
by the scholar and now lost. It would have been easy to get away by simply
saying that, to date, that painting is lost. Instead, Ms Battezzati went to the
Brera Historical Archives and searched among the requests for preliminary
authorisation of art exports by Milanese collectors. This allowed her to
identify in some papers of 1850 the likely trace of a planned imminent export
by the owners. It is certainly not an information that allowed her to discover
the current location of the work; however this shows that the basic idea behind
her fatigue is that either you are like Bernard Berenson or the recovery work
of the attributions must increasingly depend upon the work of recovery of the
archival documents, and then the history of a painting in its various passages
of ownership. The history of sources is increasingly the history of collecting,
and the authoress knows it well.
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| Giovanni Battista Moroni, Portrait of a man (Gian Girolamo Grumelli?), Bergamo, Moroni Collection. See p. 42 Source: http://www.artribune.com/ |
In the Republic of Connoisseurs
One of the
most striking aspects of Rumohr’s pages is the ease with which this man became
part of the cultural and collector circles in Milan, succeeding in a few days
to have access to all the most important salons of the upper class and nobility
in Milan on the one hand and getting in touch with local scholars on the other
one. Of course, we can assume that a (albeit informal) presentation by the
Prince of Prussia was a good pass; but it is clear that the scholar was part of
what now was not anymore simply a Republic
of Letters, but had become a Republic
of Connoisseurs. Here stood out some figures of European stature, very
often acting to complete the collections of the nascent European museums.
Rumohr is one of the most precocious one. To determine which the
characteristics of this Republic were certainly goes beyond my task today. The
biggest mistake one can make, after all, is to think that connoisseurs were all
equal. Nevertheless, I would like to make some basic considerations. Their
education started with the relationship (often as youngsters) with the world of
the Nazarenes (which did not always mean membership, but certainly involved the
appreciation of art before Raphael, just from a technical point of view) and
included a deep knowledge of the rules of the art market (and often acquaintance
with controversial figures who frequent and pollute it) and an attention to the
issues related to how display paintings in one of the newly-created museums. Of
course, the element that all experts had in common was the ocular inspection of
the works, and the definition of an attribution based on stylistic comparisons;
the previous comparison with literary sources was also felt needed, but not to
the same extent and not always (equally,
not always signatures on canvas are trusted).
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| Moretto da Brescia, Saint Justina with a donor, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum. See p. 48. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Rumohr and Eastlake
Having said
that, this does not exclude that, as a matter of personal taste, artists
considered of little value by some are instead thoroughly re-evaluated by
others. I reflected on these aspects when I was reading the pages of Rumohr and
ideally comparing them with the opinions expressed by Eastlake in his Italian notebooks
[3]. I am citing below a few examples in this regard: Rumohr’s assessment on
Lombard painting of the fifteenth and sixteenth century was very severe:
"In general, it seems that in Milan Leonardo’s attention for observation
and research did not create any decisive nor important enhancement to the art
of the local painters... I also examined all the really miserable masters of
the ancient Lombard school in Pavia, Milan and elsewhere, wherever they were
... Since several decades, they are making our life quite bitter, to us
connoisseurs, because of this very large number of similar and weak artists, without
any character. In fact, they were brought to fame by local patriotism and, on
this basis, by Lanzi"(p. 41). Eastlake did not make such a generic judgment
and, if anything, proved to be more attentive to execution techniques. There is
no doubt, however, that the purpose of their travel was the same: to determine
which paintings were "eligible" or "ineligible" for a
possible purchase by the respective museums (Berlin and London). The fact
remains that, when the judgment is declined on individual works, consonance or
diversity of judgments can be recorded. Rumohr judged Carlo Crivelli acid and awkward,
while thirty years later Eastlake bought all he could of him for his National
Gallery; on the other hand, the two thought the same way on Lorenzo Lotto, rejecting
him without appeal: "A far more unpleasant painter of this school - writes
Rumohr – is Lorenzo Lotto; he is so mannered that you do not understand how one
could simply endure a guy like him 1510-25 [editor's note: his presence in
Bergamo] without stoning him."(pp. 43-44). Moroni was clearly considered
belonging to the Venetian world. The German baron called him "the most
extraordinary of all portraitists ... His historical paintings are weak and
already mannered. Instead, his portraits are always good, and sometimes
unmatched"(p. 42). Similarly Venetian was considered Moretto, for whom he
only had praises: "one of the most outstanding designers of his time and,
in the Venetian school, absolutely the best" (p. 47). In all the expressed
judgements, nevertheless, it appears quite clear that attributions, praise,
criticism were moved in good faith. Rumohr (and in this, a comparison with
Eastlake is suitable) was above all an honest operator, who tried to fulfil
with sincere devotion the task that has been entrusted him. If anything, he
always proved extremely suspicious of his Italian counterparts, knowing - in
his say - how they behaved in order to force deals.
NOTES
[1] See, in
this blog: Johann David Passavant, Contributions to the History of the Ancient Schools of Painting in Lombardy (1838),
edited by Alfonso Litta. Cinisello Balsamo, Silvana Editoriale
Publishers, 2015.
[2] See, in this blog: Piergiacomo
Petrioli. Gaetano Milanesi. Erudition and History of Art in Italy in the Nineteenth Century. Profile and Artistic Correspondence. Siena, Siena Academy of the
Intronati, 2004 [but summer 2005].
[3] See in
this blog Susanna Avery Quash. The Travel Notebooks of Sir Charles Lock Eastlake. The Walpole Society, 2011.
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