Carlo Francesco Marcheselli. [Paintings of the Churches of Rimini]. Edited by Pier Giorgio Pasini

Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro
Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro

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Carlo Francesco Marcheselli
Pitture delle Chiese di Rimini 1754
[Paintings of the Churches of Rimini]
Edited by Pier Giorgio Pasini

Bologna, Edizioni ALFA, 1972

Rimini, Façade of the Malatesta Temple
Source: Wikimedia Commons

We are displaying hereafter the text of the cover flap:

"The work entitled Paintings of the churches of Rimini described by Mr. Carlo Francesco Marcheselli patrician of the same city was the first organized guide, at our knowledge, of the artistic heritage of Rimini, and was released in 1754. It had however been drafted much before, between 1730 and 1735, as a sign of friendship and esteem for the young Rimini artist Giovan Battista Costa; at the origin of the work there were also other reasons, consisting of a revival of interest in local history, of a new literary and scholarly curiosity and of a renewed opening in Rimini to innovative cultural interests. The small volume by Marcheselli, in the absence of specific local examples, was perhaps conceptually inspired by the similar guide by Malvasia (The Paintings of Bologna, 1686), which had been published in 1732 already for the third time; however, it was based on original documentary research and on the direct recognition of the works, mainly selected among those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The definitive version of the book was due to Giovan Battista Costa, who is to be considered a co-author, having remodelled, updated and expanded it considerably.

The Paintings of Rimini experienced a remarkable distribution. It benefited from a plain and simple text, but above all from the precision with which it listed, rather than describing, the works of art of Rimini; excluding those of the fourteenth century, already rare in the seventeenth century, and those of the fifteenth century, scarcely valued by the authors (except those of Pietro [sic] della Francesca, Bellini and Ghirlandaio). The volume presented for the first time paintings which are now well known, produced by artists such as Vasari, Veronese, Tintoretto, Boscoli, Picchi, Cesi, Albani, Massari, Guercino, Franceschini, Creti; they were supplemented by those of local artists such as Coda, Arrigoni, Cagnacci, Centeno, Costa, and a large number of minor artists, whose works are now almost all dispersed. So the volume was, right away, an important point of reference not only for travellers, but also for scholars; its importance and usefulness are not further decreased even today, because it was the first organic repertoire informing us about the consistency of the artistic heritage of Rimini before the great political and military upheavals at the end of the eighteenth century and the consequent dispersion of them. Dispersions which, along with the severe destruction of the last war, have almost halved this heritage and made it difficult to fully understand the surviving part of it."

Piero della Francesca, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta praying in front of Saint Sigismondo  (1451),
Rimini, Malatesta Temple
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Not only Marcheselli

To be precise, the title contains the following subtitle, which testifies to the efforts made by the curator: "Facsimile reprint, accompanied by search indexes, by a bibliographic and informative commentary, and by an illustrated repertoire. In the appendix, Marcello Oretti’s manuscript on "The Paintings in the city of Rimini" (1777)". In particular, therefore, in addition to the text of Marcheselli, Pasini added the transcript of the pages dedicated to Rimini in Marcello Oretti’s manuscript titled Notizie artistiche di diversi luoghi d’Italia (Artistic news from different places in Italy) preserved at the Archiginnasio library of Bologna with mark B. 165^II. We have already spoken of this manuscript with reference to the artistic literature in Imola. Among the various locations visited by Oretti in 1777 there was in fact also Rimini, and the sheets 190 to 201 of the manuscript are related to it. The reason why the editor believes useful to also add these pages is because, since Marcheselli’s guide, there has not been any other documentation on the consistency of the artistic heritage of Rimini until the publication of the Guida del forestiere nella città di Rimini (Guide of the stranger in the city of Rimini) by Luigi Tonini, in 1864. To be precise - and here of course Pasini could not know it, and if anything he could only hope for the best - after the printing of this work (which - I remember – happened in 1972) a new manuscript was discovered, entitled Delle cose notabili d’Arimino (About the notable things of Rimini), dating back to around 1755-1760 and attributed to Gianfrancesco Buonamici. The manuscript has been published recently by Patrizia Alunni and is going to be discussed in a forthcoming review in this blog.

Giovanni Bellini, Pietà, about 1470, Rimini, Town Museum
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Altarpiece of Saint Giovanni Ferrer, Rimini, Town Museum
Sources: Sailko via Wikimedia Commons

Problems of attribution

As mentioned, the Paintings of Rimini was written in the last years of Carlo Francesco Marcheselli’s life (1671-1735). He was a member of the local nobility, and a shy and erudite man, with the sole purpose (according to what was stated in the introductory letter) to please and support in the studies the Rimini artist Giovan Battista Costa (1697-1767). The latter benefited from the patronage and the favour of Marcheselli to such a point that I would even ask myself (it is my personal view) whether he was not his natural son. What is certain is that Costa updated the work and published it in 1754. Given that the certain updates (i.e. those after 1735) concern at least one third of the quoted works, it would be more correct to consider the two as co-authors. The curator, however, notes that, while additions for the most recent paintings are easily noticed, we do not know whether Costa himself eliminated pictures mentioned by Marcheselli, or changed somehow the basic structure of the writing.

Guercino, San Girolamo hearing the sound of the Last Judgment, Rimini, Town Museum
Source: http://archivio.comune.rimini.it/servizi/citta/archivio-storico/monumenti/pagina9-201.html

An erudite guide

The Paintings of Rimini still are the typical result of a scholarly world that is giving increasing attention to the (especially clerical) heritage in the town. It might have been inspired (in this case) by the reading of the “Paintings of Bologna” by Malvasia (1686, but with a third edition in 1732). It was in every way a guide for the foreigner, in which were mentioned works of art especially from 1500 onwards, and which was structured according to a scheme that - we can anticipate it - will not be replicated identically in the Notable things of Rimini. What little had been left from Rimini’s fourteenth century is absent; the fifteenth century is poorly represented. There is even no specific attention to the Roman vestiges of which Rimini is still rich today, which are somehow beyond the author's (or, rather, the authors’) immediate purpose. Their goal was to document the richness of mobile works. We are almost exclusively faced with quotations; value judgments are virtually absent and limited to a maximum of some standard adjective. If one wants to identify a trend, this may consist of Costa’s attempt to self-celebrate his works, something that is humanly understandable. Nevertheless, Marcheselli’s guide should be considered a disappointing document. Its main merit is precisely to exist, and to give testimony of a heritage which was largely dispersed in occasions of ecclesiastical deletions at the turn between end 1700 and early 1800, and suffered severe blows even with the bombing of the city during of World war II. It must be said, however, that the iconographic apparatus that is presented in the work is absolutely excellent (especially if we consider that we are in 1972) and allows an ideal use of the meagre text by Marcheselli and Costa.

https://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.com/2018/12/giorgio-vasari.html