Antonio Francesco Albuzzi, [Memoirs for the History of Milan Painters, Sculptors and Architects]. Edited by Stefano Bruzzese

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION


Antonio Francesco Albuzzi
Memorie per servire alla storia de’ pittori, scultori e architetti milanesi
[Memoirs for the History of Milan Painters, Sculptors and Architects]

Edited by Stefano Bruzzese

Milan, Officina Libraria, 2015 (but released on January 21, 2016)

Finally, the first critical edition of the Memorie per servire alla storia de’ pittori, scultori e architetti milanesi has been released. The Memoirs for the history of Milan painters, sculptors and architects are based on three manuscript volumes kept at the Veneranda Fabbrica of the Duomo of Milan. The first volume is - so to speak - the basic work; the second contains updates and new materials, to be included in the papers of the first manuscript. The third one collects 43 portraits of artists which, in the plans of the author and according to a tradition dating back to Vasari, were owed to accompany the biographical medallions of each artist; this last dossier has the title of Museo Milanese ossia raccolta di ritratti di Pittori Scultori e Architetti della Scuola Milanese (Milan Museum, i.e. Collection of portraits of Painters, Sculptors and Architects of the Milanese School). Albuzzi’s Memoirs were never published. However, Giorgio Nicodemi had already provided a first transcript of them, published in the magazine L’Arte between 1948 and 1956, albeit with some inaccuracies. Albuzzi worked at the Memoirs between 1772 and 1778, but he left them largely incomplete with respect to the initial project: to trace a history of Milan art (or, rather, of the artists born in Milan and surroundings) until the years of the author, excluding however living artists. Stefano Bruzzese provided an impeccable annotated edition, with a rich research toolbox allowing full accessibility to the text. 

Paolo Petter, Portrait of Antonio Francesco Albuzzi, 1802
Source: http://www.artevarese.com/museofondazionemacchi/benefattori/49

Methodological Issues

First of all, I fell useful to preliminary clarify that this edition was not the extemporaneous result of a single scholar’s efforts, but part of a much larger project, aimed at reconstructing all stages of art historiography in Milan. This historiography - as known – did not experience any equivalent of Vasari's Lives, nor other writings with a blatantly regional footprint, intended to refute Vasari’s thesis (just think of the Bolognese work by Malvasia). However, Milan art inspired many less ambitious historiography attempts, which, while being sometimes in mutual contradiction, nevertheless always added knowledge and judgment that the contemporary scholar cannot afford to neglect. Giovanni Agosti offered a résumé of this project; and from Agosti’s school came the curators of the modern editions [1] that, more and more over the last years, allowed us to contextualize those texts that today we could indeed easily see on the internet, however without any adequate review. Again, I am referring to what Giovanni Previtali wrote in 1976, for the introduction to Bellori’s Lives by Evelina Borea; at the time, Previtali made a clear distinction between critical editions and facsimile reprints, approving the former and rejecting the latter, because they were essentially useless. Sources - claimed Previtali - must be read and reread, not consulted.

Forty years have passed and, in the age of electronic networks, the technology revolution fortunately allows access to those texts we never thought to consult so easily. Yet the method continues - and will always continue - to prevail over the means. So, I believe appropriate to clarify the spirit that animated Stefano Bruzzese, by displaying a few lines from the introductory essay by Giovanni Agosti: "Stefano’s comment, which precedes the paragraphs, aims at [...] reconstructing the work tools which materially Albuzzi had at his disposal. Each quote has been verified, to identify which edition of a text the author has made use of where a document is maintained today. This originated a geographic map of Albuzzi’s scholarship, that [...] ranges from Muratori to the Encyclopédie, from Félibien to Mariette, but does not neglect foreign (especially French) travellers, browses incunabula and sixteenth century book editions in search of quotations of artists and materialises in search campaigns among the papers of the archive of the Fabbrica del Duomo [...]. The notes of the edition curated by Stefano are not a ‘copy and paste’ from bibliography, pulled down from specialized sites, but they are the fruits of checks and inspections, underpinning a better understanding of the text and the culture of his author." 

Vincenzo Foppa, Crucifixion, Bergamo, Accademia Carrara. Quoted at p. 47

An Atypical Source

Having taken note of all of this, let us try to highlight the peculiarities of Albuzzi’s Memoirs. The first, and perhaps most obvious, feature is that his work was not triggered as part of the initiative of a local scholar belonging to a specific cultural milieu. In our case, nobody stood up in defence of the superiority of the Milan painting school against the Tuscan one; that kind of literary production run out (in fact) with the "fraudulent" endeavour of the Neapolitan De Dominici, who, in the mid-eighteenth century, invented some names of artists from Campania, completely out of the blue, to support the primacy of the Neapolitan school [2]. Here, the credit for the endeavour of a history of Milanese artists is owed to the Austrian Government, as part of a series of initiatives designed to enhance the (even cultural) wealth of the possessions in Lombardy. The most significant act of Empress Maria Theresia’s policy was, without doubt, the foundation of the Academy of Brera in 1776. Also Albuzzi’s Memoirs are part of this project. Actually, the first Austrian choice was not for Albuzzi, but for the dominican monk Giuseppe Allegranza, a member of the Milan erudite world, who was directly requested to draw up the work in 1771. At that time Mr Allegranza was (or claimed to be) overworked, and therefore suggested to turn the proposal to Antonio Francesco Albuzzi (1738-1802), in many ways a completely unknown person at that time. About Albuzzi, Allegranza said that, for his private interest, he had already collected portraits of different painters from Milan and that was certainly fit for purpose. In reality, however, we know very little about this ex-Jesuit, coming from a family of minor nobility of Varese. In the end, Albuzzi turned to be chosen. The sponsors of this scholar from Varese were the consul Carlo di Firmian and, above all, the powerful Chancellor of the Empire, as well as foreign minister, Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz.

Von Kaunitz was well equipped to judge on artistic matters. Besides his passion for collecting, he was, for example, the one who established the Academies of Fine Arts in Vienna and in Brussels. The directions that he provided in his letters (presented by Bruzzese in the section entitled Journal of Memoirs) document the idea behind his initial project. First of all, a history of art in Milan from its foundation up to 1760, with a request to add a final part on the foundation of the Academy by Maria Theresa. Second, a work written "with a healthy criticism, to separate the superfluous from the essential and useful" (a merit which the Chancellor recognized to Albuzzi, on the basis of pilot biographies which he examined). Third, a work where he should avoid imitating the Italian biographers, "particularly the most modern and bombastic ones, and those excessively magnifying their Patriots", but should look at foreign historiography, and, in particular (in the "philosophical century") at the experience of French Enlightenment. In short, it should be a work where one can experience "the happy truth, accompanied by those qualifications that intellect, knowledge, and the healthy common sense of a wise man can suggest". His guidelines include the use of terminology: better not to mention the term “Elogio/Praise" because it should not seem a too partisan work; and, on the other hand, rather than writing of "biographies", it would be better to adopt the wording "memoirs", because often, with regard to chronologically distant authors, it is impossible to establish a true biographical profile. A division into "periods" (which then assumes a stylistic analysis) is better than in "centuries". Von Kaunitz did not stop short of proposing the modalities of promoting the work commercially, whose editorial format should be "sumptuous", and recommended to make use of subscriptions, in a manner which was very much in vogue at the time [3].

Cesare da Sesto, Polyptych of San Rocco, Milan, Sforza Castle Gallery. Quoted at pages 148-9
Source: http://urbanfilemilano.blogspot.it/2015/01/zona-porta-romana-la-chiesa-di.html

In the Age of the Academies

As already stated, Albuzzi’s Memoirs are largely incomplete, reaching in fact only the early sixteenth century. However, the Preliminary speech that the author wrote, and that was to precede the list of the artists, allows us to understand that the scholar implemented von Kaunitz’s requests. It is so true that, while the usual introductory wording on the antiquity of the Milan school is not missing (invariably, we find such a preamble in any writing of the time, of course declined on different geographical realities depending on where authors wrote), however, the reading of the developments of Milanese art is not based on an examination by centuries, but by periods. And each period is marked by the opening of an academy of drawing. The Speech starts then with the creation of a legendary fourteenth century Academy under the auspices of Gian Galeazzo Visconti to range until the Academy of Leonardo; from Leonardo, he describes a parable that brings art in Milan to reach its peak in the second half of the sixteenth century and then to decline, until the establishment of Borromeo’s Academy; and then again, he mentions the second Academy, opened in 1670, followed by a new decline addressed to be counterbalanced, at the end of the work, with the creation of the Academy of Brera by Maria Theresia in 1776. The historiographic structure, then, is that of a neoclassicism that reconsiders a highly diversified story according to rigid models. There is however no reason to be scandalized. It is a common practice for all the writers (not only on art) of that time.

Butinone and Zenale, Polyptych of San Martino, Treviglio, Church of San Martino and S. Maria Assunta. Quoted at p. 154
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The judgment on artworks: a missed opportunity

The reading of the Memoirs immediately shows the difficulties Albuzzi encountered when he faced the need to produce a stylistic analysis. The former Jesuit was a man of great erudition, and had access to the precious materials of the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo (von Kaunitz - insatiable – wanted him to extend his research also to the archives of the Ospedale Maggiore and the Opere Pie, i.e. the main hospital and charitable organization of Milan); hence the possibility of extrapolating precious and unknown documents. But he hardly gave any personal judgements on the works he saw, (and when he did, they often included misjudgements). Sometimes he even did not watch them in person, blindly trusting the previous literature. Definitely, he did not feel the need to travel to carry out an eye inspection of the works. Bruzzese believes that Albuzzi’s difficulties to "analyse" a work of art were among the main reasons that prompted him to interrupt the endeavour (the latest inputs, according to today available records and an examination of the sources cited in the manuscripts preserved in the Veneranda Fabbrica would be dated 1778). There would be some evidence of them in letters published in the Journal of the Memoirs. Albuzzi, on the one hand, did not hesitate to write that he had always feared the judgment of the public (in May 1784). He also stressed: “I made enough to appease the Public in what concerns history, chronology, and criticism. And nevertheless, I should perhaps confess that I lack other elements of knowledge, which would be necessary even to establish a perfect history, if one wants to detect the character [note of the editor: the style] of the Professors, criticize their weaknesses or give merit and value to them and their most important art works' (letter of Apr. 21, 1778). It is an element not to be overlooked, though perhaps not the only one [4]. If things are like this, Albuzzi marked the transition between on the one hand the erudite and the historian according to Muratori’s concepts (where predominates the document, removed from the oblivion of the centuries) and on the other hand the culture of the connoisseurs, which in Milan will be incarnated by the figure of Giuseppe Bossi.

Bernardo Zenale, Madonna and Child with Saints, Denver Art Museum, Quoted at p. 158
Fonte: http://creativity.denverartmuseum.org/1961_173/

Highlight on architecture

I should like to stress the predominant role (in terms of space in the writing) which Albuzzi assigned to architects and sculptors rather than painters. Probably, there was a specific reason: the former Jesuit drew liberally - as mentioned - from the registers of the Fabbrica del Duomo, and it is therefore evident that documents located there contained, in a greater number, information especially about architects. It should also be taken into account, with references to long gone centuries, that buildings are better preserved than altarpieces (by the way, Albuzzi never distinguished between canvases and panels), and therefore offer a more lasting evidence of an artistic presence. However, there is a predilection of the author towards the subject, which led him to include in the work plan, besides the portraits of the artists contained in the third manuscript, also architectural surveys of buildings. Some element of originality in his comments should also not be neglected.

Certainly not original was the rather negative judgment on the Gothic. Albuzzi wrote in his Preliminary Discourse, speaking of the first architects of the Cathedral: "However, the misfortune of these men was to have acted at a time when the Gothic corruption had altered any idea of ​​simplicity and proportion. Everything was quick and slight, completely drilled and profusely adorned with lace, columns, drops, and other capricious ornate of meshed oeuvre. Such was the manner of manufacture cultivated here until the year 1481, marked by the death of Boniforte Solari, last among the followers of this bizarre architecture"(p. 6) [5].

More strange that, concerning the time of Ludovico il Moro, he failed to recognize in Bramante the apex of the history of Milan architecture (which, of course, he assessed according to classical criteria). A judgment of this kind was expressed, for example, by Venanzio de Pagave, another scholar of the time, that consecrated most of his studies to Bramante [6]. Albuzzi praised instead a style that he defined with unusual expression "semi-Gothic, which although only a little less bad than the first for the grit and the excessive minuteness of the parties, was based however on the standard of good ancient orders, or needed anything else but time to reach the summit of perfection"(p. 7). Again, according to Albuzzi, it is at the end of the sixteenth century that architecture reached more sublime levels: "But if these architects [note of the editor: Galeazzo Alessi and Vincenzo Seregni] had revived the magnificence and splendour of ancient Roman buildings, Pellegrino Tibaldi and his pupil Martin Bassi afterwards had the glory of having successfully imitated their majestic elegant simplicity."(p. 8).

Agostino Busti called Bambaja, Funerary monument to Gastone de Foix, Milan, Sforza Castle Museum, quoted at. p. 179
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Illustrious Absences

The manuscript covers art developments until the beginning of the Sixteenth century. If we consider that the work was planned to reach up to 1760, we have an exact measure of how far Albuzzi was from his plans. However, the order in which the Memoirs related to the artists are presented is not at all clear, as it does not always follow a chronological order. And - to be further taken into account - even the discussion until the early sixteenth century can hardly be said to be completed: the absence of three names as Bramantino, Bernardino Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari is indicative (two of them - Luini and Gaudenzio - appear in the list of the 43 artists whose portrait Albuzzi did draw, a sign that a biography was still envisaged; a similar circumstance was mentioned in a 1778 letter to Giacomo Carrara regarding Bramantino).

View of the façade of the Certosa di Pavia
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Fortune of the Memoirs

Bruzzese devotes twenty pages of his initial comment to chart the fortunes of Albuzzi’s Memoirs. This is particularly valuable information. Although far from complete, the manuscript of the former Jesuit was considered of particular interest by scholars such as Calvi, who in 1859 published the first work devoted to the history of Milan, i.e. the Notizie sulla vita e sulle opere dei principali architetti, scultori e pittori che fiorirono in Milano durante il governo dei Visconti e degli Sforza (News about the life and works of the leading architects, sculptors and painters who flourished in Milan during the government of the Viscontis and Sforzas). Here Gerolamo Calvi cited the notes by Albuzzi: while not granting them any great importance, in fact he arrogated them completely.

Let us make a step back, however. There was, and it is traced punctiliously by Bruzzese, a path from the early nineteenth century until the 1840s ca, which marked the hand to hand transition of Albuzzi’s Memoirs between many experts and scholars. They all tried, after the failure by the former Jesuit, to advance the project of a history of Milan art. We thus learn that the manuscripts first of all passed into the ownership of Pietro Custodi; from him to Giuseppe Bossi; from Bossi to Gaetano Cattaneo (1816); from Cattaneo to Ignazio Fumagalli (1841); from the Fumagalli heirs to the library of Count Gaetano Melzi (1842). Since the time of Bossi, the materials were not only restricted to the Memoirs; there were other manuscripts (of which was author, for example, Venanzio de Pagave) that constituted a precious historiographical core on art in Milan. This core was most likely lost during the Second World War, under the bombings that destroyed Palazzo Melzi. There is perhaps a faint hope that it was not so, but it has never been checked.

The Albuzzi manuscript was consulted by several foreign experts on the occasion of their Italian travels. It is certain, for example, that Johann David Passavant made use of it in the preparatory work to the nine articles published in 1838 in the journal Kunst-Blatt, recently published in Italian by Alfonso Litta with the title Contributi alla storia delle antiche scuole di pittura in Lombardia (1838) (Contributions to the History of the Ancient Schools of Painting in Lombardy - 1838) [7]. At that time, they were still with Cattaneo. By 1851 at the latest they were seen and consulted by the French Alexis-François Rio, who used them to draw unedited news for his Leonard da Vinci et son école (Leonardo da Vinci and his school) of 1855. But the most important visit was the one that occurred in 1845 by Mary Philadelphia Merrifield, the extraordinary figure of researcher, sent by the British government in Northern Italy to search archives to investigate on the techniques of old Italian masters [8]. Merrifield used the consulted materials (at Melzi’s) only marginally for her Original Treatises on the Art on Painting (1849); however, to be able to read it more comfortably, she made (or let produce) a copy, now preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum with signature ms 86 FF 74. This is a partial copy, but allows us to conclude that the Melzi Code (lost with the bombing) contained a less complete list of artists than the copy kept today at the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo. Bruzzese believes that the version copied by Merrifield was dated 1776 and the one on which he conducted this critical edition was update, approximately finalised in 1778.

The editor does not only point out the deficiencies in the copy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, but also gives an account of the (few) lines appearing there, and lacking instead in the Nicodemi exemplar. As a result, he created an agile but useful philological apparatus (pp. 306-310), which, together with the transcript of twelve loose sheets that are inside the third volume of the Memoirs (the one of the portraits, to be more precise) and the correspondence between Albuzzi and the Bergamo Count Giacomo Carrara confirms - if ever there were even doubts - the quality of this critical edition.

NOTES

[1] I am mentioning only two volumes that have been recently reviewed by the blog Letteratura Artistica: Chiara Battezzati, Carl Friedrich von Rumohrand Art in Northern Italy in Concorso. Arti e lettere, 2009, no. III; and Johann David Passavant, Contributions to the History of the Ancient Schools of Painting in Lombardy (1838), edited by Alfonso Litta, Cinisello Balsamo, Silvana Editoriale, 2014 (but 2015).

[2] I would like to apologize in advance for some over-simplification. It remains a historical fact that De Dominici was called "Neapolitan forger" by Benedetto Croce. That said, the recent critical edition by Fiorella Sricchia Santoro and Andrea Zezza made justice of these too drastic judgments.

[3] All quotations are taken from the letters G10 (pp. LXVIII-IX) and G41 (p. LXXXIII) of the Giornale delle Memorie.

[4] In a letter of July 1779, Mr Allegranza (who apparently continued to follow the progress of Memoirs, perhaps with a bit embarrassment, because the work did not proceed and the name of the Albuzzi had been advocated by him) wrote that the former Jesuit was ‘disgusted’ and did not want to have anything to do anymore with the work. That might suggest that he was worried for a wrong he had suffered, rather than the concerned because of the consciousness of his personal inadequacies. In this regard, it should be recalled that Albuzzi was appointed "Temporary Secretary" of the newly formed Academy of Brera in 1776 and was gradually ousted from office in favour of the Bologna scholar Carlo Bianconi in 1778. I am sure Stefano Bruzzese he is fully aware of this. Once again, I am quoting the words in the introduction by Giovanni Agosti, where he noted that the real risk of the book was "to transform this comment in a biblical ark of wonders, where to amass findings or assumptions of all kinds, with varying degrees of plausibility".

[5] It should however be mentioned that, later, in the lines dedicated to the Memoirs of Boniforte, Albuzzi acknowledged: "In the form of his buildings, this architect has followed the Gothic way, a flaw of the age in which he lived. However, he had enough discernment to avoid the most monstrous ones."(p. 65).

[6] The two wrote essentially simultaneously, but there is no evidence of direct relations. Nor should there have been too much appreciation, if de Pagave defined Albuzzi, in a letter of 1777: "person of much learning, but who understands nothing on painting" (p. LXXVIII).

[7] Johann David Passavant, Contributions ... cit.

[8] On the Italian journey of Mary Philadelphia Merrifield, I am referring to Giovanni Mazzaferro, Mary Philadelphia Merrifieldin Italy. Part I: Piedmont and Lombardy and Part II: Emilia andVeneto, published in the Blog Letteratura Artistica respectively on 23 and 25 June 2014.