Francesco Susinno, [The Lives of Painters in Messina]. Edited by Valentino Martinelli. Part Two

Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro
Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Francesco Susinno
Le Vite de’ Pittori Messinesi
[The Lives of Painters in Messina]. Part Two

Text, introduction and bibliographical notes by Valentino Martinelli

Florence, Le Monnier, 1960

Alonzo Rodriquez, The Doubting of St. Thomas, Regional Museum of Messina
Source: Wikimedia Commons

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Between method and arbitrariness

Susinno was like the classic half-filled glass: you can see it as half full or half empty. The beginning of the work proves it in a clear manner. The author expressed the intention - as mentioned - to be a "pure, sincere and truthful narrator" (p. 15). For this reason, while taking the view that Messina has nothing to envy Florence or Venice with reference to the rebirth of painting from the Greek manner, admitted he was incapable of reconstructing the history of ancient painters and decided to begin with the biography of Antonello da Messina (in essence, therefore, with the second half of 1400). It was not a trivial choice: Susinno did not invent anything, did not give birth to fancy names and catalogues of works as other had done before and would do afterwards. The most sensational case was obviously the Neapolitan De Dominici, but it is worth remembering that even in the late eighteenth century Venetian art history fantasized on Theophanes’ legendary tablets, the alleged counterpart in the lagoon city of Cimabue and Giotto (see in particular Zanetti the Younger). This was therefore a positive feature for Susinno’s work, marking a point in favour of the "truthfulness" of his history. But when he started Antonello‘s biography, here the painter from Messina distorted the passage from the Greek to the "modern" manner. In essence, he postponed the whole development of Italian art by more than a century, to let it coincide with Antonello and with the discovery of oil painting: "He was the one that lifted the decayed painting to so a high point, whereas before him it was not painted if not shamefully, and according to the clumsy use of the Greeks prevailing in all the cities of Italy. With his light, all those phantasm of Graecism vanished, and he also invented the so significant way of oil painting in the same provinces."(p. 17)

Alonzo Rodriquez, The Meeting of St. Peter and St. Paul, Regional Museum of Messina
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The theoretical framework

The fact that Susinno claimed his intention to be truthful does not imply, obviously, that he did not have a theoretical framework. Quite obviously for the times, and considering his Roman academic acquaintances, that framework was classicism, linked to ideal beauty and interpreted according to the taste of the late seventeenth century. Thus, his reference artist was Carlo Maratta, which he mentioned on several occasions as "Apelles", "Raphael" and "prince" of all painters. Francesco also owned an icon picture, which he cited in at least a dozen occasions as the quintessence of absolute perfection: it was Raphael's Transfiguration, preserved at that time in the Roman church of San Pietro in Montorio. Susinno’s taste was evident from the very first lines: "Normally, the wise nature seems to be lagging behind in some of its features. Art, however, corrects the roughness of nature and enhances it to complete fulfilment. The former one gives the principle, and the latter provides the end." Of course, to correct and overcome nature, it was necessary to study the ancient statues of the Greeks and Romans; and then the reference city was undoubtedly Rome, although he did not miss to emphasize the ancient Greek origins of Messina; this explained why a particular predisposition to the study of nature had always existed in the town. The first thing that comes to mind - for this reason - is to tie immediately Susinno’s Lives to those of Bellori (the theorist of "ideal beauty" par excellence), if only because Bellori too wrote a biography of Maratta. The connection is undoubted (we do not know, however, whether the Messina scholar was able to read the pages which Bellori devoted to Maratta; in fact, these pages were handwritten. However, it is also true that Susinno personally knew Maratta and it is not impossible that the Roman artist told him about Bellori’s text). The interpretation of classicism as the privileged art form, moreover, characterised all biographies included in the work, following a sequencing that started from Polidoro da Caravaggio in the sixteenth century, reached Antonino Barbalonga in the early seventeenth century and ended finally with Agostino Scilla in the latter seventeenth century. In contrast to this path, Susinno also outlined a different one, which is of course that of Caravaggio and his followers, like Mario Minnitti, Alonzo Rodriquez and Domenico Marolì.

Antonino Barbalonga Alberti, Madonna and Child with Carmelite Saints, Taormina, Church of Santa Caterina d'Alessandra
Source: Giovanni Dall'Orto tramite Wikimedia Commons

Susinno, Bellori and the Life of Caravaggio

It has been said on several occasions that, with regard to Caravaggio, the interpretation given by Susinno was basically the one of Bellori. I do not agree. Obviously, the Messina scholar referred entirely to Bellori’s version (even risking a plagiarism in the first pages), when he spoke of him as an artist who merely imitated nature, without any attention to the "ideals" of beauty, the study of ancient statues, etc. But this is not the crucial issue. Comparing with some accuracy Bellori’s and Susinno’s biographies of Caravaggio, one realizes that the former, while denouncing the style, mentioned the "force of light" twelve occasions; Susinno did it only once and in a derogatory sense: "In his large canvases one never sees clear air, but an all-black field, which narrows the strength of the light in a few shades only" (p. 108). It is sufficient to mention in this connection Bellori’s following passage: "...Caravaggio... became every day more famous for the colour he was introducing..., all characterised by powerful dark colours, using much of the black to give relief to the bodies. And he made such progress in this way of operating... that he found the means of placing the figures in a dark room, putting at the top a light enlightening perpendicularly the main part of the body, and leaving the rest in a shade, in order to give strength to the figures with a vehement contrast of light and obscure "[4 ]. Admittedly, none ever wanted to argue that Susinno was a new Bellori, but I find there is really a cliff between the two interpretations. They both expressed an essentially negative opinion on Michelangelo Merisi arguing he was too naturalistic, but Bellori understood his artworks by describing the light effects, while Susinno completely missed the point. I am apologizing for the digression, but it is really mandatory to recall here a few points that Giovanni Previtali highlighted, when talking about Bellori in his introduction to the Lives of the Roman scholar: first, his greatness was linked to the attention he paid to the light arrangements; second, this attention stemmed from the privileged relationship with Poussin, earnest student of these issues by reading Leonardo's manuscripts; third, a possible interpretation of Bellori’s work consisted in the attempt to bring the strength of the Caravaggesque light treatment within the framework of a classical rules system.

Not only in the life of Caravaggio, but also in all other biographies, Susinno however showed a really limited interest in the light treatment. Susinno's focus is on his colour: "Caravaggio made use of various blacks to give relief to his figures, and particularly to naked bodies, in order to make them more round: he never used light cinnabar, any very beautiful blue and other colours that were introduced and practiced by the Venetian school of painters in their figures."(p. 108) In Susinno’s biographies, the attention with "colouring" was a constant imperative: it could be "vague", "hard", "charming", "terrible", depending on the circumstances. Open a random page of the book and it will hard not to find any evidence of a discussion about colours. If we wanted to give a restraining appraisal, in short, we should say that Susinno assessed works of art according to the two renown categories of "design" and "colour", according to a scholarly line that considered syncretism (and not opposition) between these two aspects as the main objective that the artist must pursue. The innovation of light was not captured.

Domenico Marolì, Lot and his Daughters, Regional Museum of Messina
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Domenico Marolì, Euclid of Megara Dressing as a Woman to Hear Socrates Teaching in Athens, Camesso Gallery
Source: http://www.canesso.com/Euclid-Megara-Dressing-Woman-Hear-Socrates-Teach-Athens-DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=6&tabindex=5&objectid=67539

The focus on technical issues

But, once again (please remember the question of whether the glass was half empty or half full) I would not be a correct reviewer if I ignored a profound truth. Susinno was so attentive to coloristic aspects that he analysed them from a technical point of view (which Bellori for example did not). He spoke of the pigments used by artists with an expertise that proved his technical knowledge, confirming us that he really was a painter (although we do not know anything about his catalogue), and making us understand that, most likely, his activity mainly consisted of the restoration of deteriorated works. I think, in this regard, that the best thing is to quote a memorable page, which Valentino Martinelli also recalled in his introduction. We are talking about how Filippo Tancredi (the last painter whose biography is included in the Lives, personally known by the Messina scholar) made oil paintings:

"Filippo’s manner in oil was at the same time vague, nuanced, sweet and tasty. But he painted with only five colors, namely lead white, yellow soil, red soil, lack and black earth; he managed the last so discreetly, that it seemed he would put blue and not black. To finish, he used elegant lacks, blue and yellow saint. His speciality was to handle indigo, which he made appear blue, and to make multicolour air fields, combining green with indigo and holy yellow [...]. He ended his canvases more with his fingers than with brushes; his white surfaces were soft and beautiful; he was genial with the refined lack and yellow surfaces" (p. XXVIII). I do not remember similar examples in Italian art literature in the early eighteenth century.

Agostino Scilla, Fresco in the Chapel of Sacrament in Syracuse Cathedral
Source: Giovanni Dall'Orto tramite Wikimedia Commons

The restoration

The focus on techniques and craft (with an approach that denied the existence of "secrets", but simply explained how certain colour effects were obtained from combinations of pigments), the emphasis on the state of conservation of the works, the indication of measures to restore the original beauty of the works’ colours, and, not least, the "responsive letter" placed at the end of the book (in which he argued for the restoration of deteriorated works) induced Martinelli "to identify an interest which was not only theoretical but also practical, namely to carry out, in Messina, a greater number of restorations by competent painters (of which Susinno do not omit to name a few names); on the other hand, the tradition in Messina wants that Susinno was precisely among them"(p. LX). I completely agree. Obviously, restoration at Susinno’s times had a very different connotation from today. In his "Responsive letter" the scholar from Messina did not fail to point out his Roman experience, and of course he could not but mention Maratta and his intervention in the Raphaelesque loggias of the Villa Farnesina; however, it is certainly questionable considering the intervention of Daniele da Volterra in the Sistine Chapel, who covered the nudity of Michelangelo's Last Judgement (p. 291), as a restoration. Neither did he only mention only painting, but he also cited the actions on ancient Greek and Roman statues, in which the practice of the time provided for the integration of the missing parts. And yet, the aspects linked to the restoration in the Lives of Susinno should be carefully studied, if only because Alessandro Conti, author of a fundamental Storia del restauro (History of the restoration), seems to have missed it [5] [6].

Filippo Tancredi, Vision of St. Helen and Costantine, Oratory of St. Helen and Costantine, Palermo
Source: http://palermodintorni.blogspot.it/2015/01/oratorio-dei-santi-elena-e-costantino.html (autore Leo Sinzi)

***

I will stop here. Believe me, I could have gone much further. Indeed, the wealth of ideas that the reading of this work offers appears peculiar. I hope that it will finally be studied in depth, so that it will acquire the proper role it would merit in the art literature of the time.

NOTES

[4] Giovan Pietro Bellori, Le Vite de’ pittori, scultori e architetti moderni (The lives of the modern painters, sculptors and architects), curated by Evelina Borea, introduction of Giovanni Previtali, Torino, Einaudi, 1976, p. 217. An English translation was recently published in 2010. See: Giovan Pietro Bellori: The lives of the modern painters, sculptors and architects: a new translation and critical edition by Hellmut Wohl; Alice Sedgwick Wohl; Tommaso Montanari, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 504.

[5] Alessandro Conti, Storia del restauro e della conservazione delle opere d’arte. Milano, Electa, 2009. An English translation was published in 2007, and most recently newly edited in 2016. See: Alessandro Conti, History of the restoration and conservation of works of art, Routledge, 2016, 436 pages.

[6] For a first contribution you see on the Internet Annalisa Raffa, The restoration of the paintings in the work of Francesco Susinno, without indication of date.