[Letters of the Artists of the Nineteenth Century] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Edited by Else Cassirer. Part Five

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[Letters of the Artists of the Nineteenth Century]
Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert
[Edited by Else Cassirer]

Berlin, Bruno Cassirer Verlag, 1913 [on the cover page] / 1914 [in the frontispiece], 710 pages, with 150 illustrations.

Review by Francesco Mazzaferro
Part Five

On the Cassirer Family, please see: https://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.com/2019/11/cassirer-family.html

Fig. 99) Friedrich Overbeck, Italy and Germany, 1815-28

Go Back to the Beginning

Germany and Italy

The importance of the relationship between Italian and German artists in the nineteenth century can be measured by counting the number of them who moved permanently in our country and even died there. Among those whose letters are collected by Else Cassirer, for example, it was the case of Carstens (Rome, 1798), Pforr (Albano, 1812), Koch (Rome, 1839), Ahlborn (Rome, 1857), Overbeck (Rome, 1869), Feuerbach (Venice, 1880), van Marees (Rome, 1887), Stauffer-Bern (Florence, 1891) and Böcklin (San Domenico di Fiesole, 1901). To the artists who passed away in Italy one should add those who spent an important part of their life, but returned to Germany, such as von Cornelius (in Rome between 1811 and 1819), Schnoor von Carolsfeld (in Rome between 1818 and 1826), Richter (in Rome between 1823 and 1826), von Steinle (in Rome between 1828 and 1834) and Erwin Speckter (in Rome between 1829 and 1834). Very numerous were the young artists who undertook the classic grand tour at the beginning of their career, crossing the peninsula far and wide in the course of one-two years: among those included in the anthology, I should mention  Schinkel (in Italy between 1803 and 1804), Blechen (between 1828 and 1829), Schuch (in 1869) and Speckter (between 1876 and 1877). Many German artists met each other for the first time in Rome and, during all their lives, remembered the magical atmosphere of the months spent together.

There is no doubt that such an intense relationship between German artists and Italy cannot simply be occasional. The source was twofold: the legacy of the presence of Winckelmann and Mengs in Eighteenth century Rome on the one hand and the set up in the German culture, since the early nineteenth century, of the myth of Rome as the ancient homeland of art and Renaissance (think of the enormous success of Goethe’s Journey to Italy, published in 1816-1817), on the other hand. It is a theme that has been the subject of many studies, and that goes beyond the scope of this article. The letters of the artists gathered by Else Cassirer, however, offer some testimonies that I think should be taken note of.

Raphael and Correggio

If there is a surprising element in the Letters of the Artists of the Nineteenth Century it that some judgments of the German artists on Italian art are persistent, despite the change of taste, revealing themselves as the common pillars of the feelings of many generations. This is the case of Raphael’s myth. At least since the beginning of the seventeenth century the painter from Urbino was considered as the greatest painter of all time, in Germany like indeed in many other parts of Europe. The still recent purchase of the Sistine Madonna by Augustus III of Saxony in 1754 had made it possible for the enthusiasts of the artist to admire one of his masterpieces on German soil, in Dresden; nevertheless, the Raphael Rooms, the frescoes of the Villa Farnesina and the Vatican tapestries were among the works of art that continued to attract generations of German artists to Rome.

Fig. 100) Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Augusta Reuss-Ebersdorf in the clothes of Artemisia, 1775

The letters reveal that German classicism was for a major part an imitation of Raphael. In a letter preceding 1785, Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751 -1829) wrote to his brother: "I drew a lot starting from Raphael. What wonderful characters and beautiful faces he produced, you cannot even imagine. (...) It is said that the most natural painters are Raphael, Albrecht Durer and Holbein. And it is absolutely true: they have no manner, just nature." [146] And he added, in a letter to a correspondent whose name we do not know: "I do not need to explain what great man Raphael was in every aspect of painting. One does not realize it fully until you have not studied it. He excelled in all respects, but especially in the composition. He was also the best painter ever in the attitude and in the variety of faces and expressions. At the Vatican, where you see so many of his works side by side, I have often been surprised by how he managed to differentiate characters resembling one another. Sometimes I crossed the rooms and I compared all wise men among each other. He was able to introduce a thousand shades to differentiate them, and yet they are all so sage and serene." [147]

Fig. 101) Johann Wilhelm Tischbein, La Belle Jardinière, after Raphael, undated

In an undated letter to Herder, in which the painter apologized for not being able to accompany the philosopher during his visit to Rome (we are between 1788 to 1789), Tischbein listed the artworks not to be missed: "As to Raphael, you should observe carefully the battle of Constantine. Among the paintings it corresponds to what the Iliad is among the poems. It is a complete work and contains all the elements that are necessary to narrate a battle. The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the temple is perhaps the most successful work he has ever devised. The image is immediately clear. The representation is evident. When I see this picture, I immediately think of the love of God, how he created human beings in his own likeness, and how he shaped the face of Raphael and breathed his spirit into it. Consider [the frescoes in the] Villa Farnesina as a Nordic painting, but do not focus too much on the execution: it was performed by pupils and then deteriorated by restoration." [148] In conclusion: the focus is on the frescoes and the composition.

It was already said that classicism venerated Raphael: he was lauded in another letter of the classicist painter and sculptor Jacob Asmus Carstens (1754-1798) dated 1793 and addressed to the Prussian interior minister Friedrich Anton von Heynitz (1725-1802) [149]. Moreover, when the classicist painter Gottlieb Schick (1776- 1812) wanted to convince Schelling in 1808 about the drawbacks of academic teaching, he used Raphael’s youth as an example of an alternative path, in order to explain that learning in a workshop and exposing trainees to a direct confrontation with artists would benefit art more than any bureaucratic structure for teaching [150].

Fig. 102) Asmus Jakob Carstens, Priam Visits Achilles, 1794 (plaster work)

The myth of Raphael continued with the Nazarenes and the Romantics. When Overbeck wrote to a friend in 1857, to inform him that he had worked for years (to be precise, for ten years) to a (lost) series of tapestries on the Seven Sacraments, he explained that he wanted to use the model of Raphael's tapestries, combining a central image and a frame with friezes that would explain the theological aspects with references to the old testament. He further wrote with some trepidation that he was still hoping, despite the advanced age (he was sixty-eight), that the bishop of Orvieto would give him the task to translate these raphaelesque tapestries in a cycle of frescoes on the same theme in the cathedral. Unfortunately, the project did not materialize [151]. Turning now to Cornelius, he signed off the letters he sent to his friend Fritz Flemming as Raphael; the latter signed as Plato [152]. Finally, Raphael was also celebrated in letters by Schnoor von Carolsfeld in 1818 [153] and Moritz von Schwind in 1827 [154].

Fig. 103) August Gaber, Baptism, Engraving taken from a carton by Friedrich Overbeck, 1870

Here is what wrote Erwin Speckter, the romantic painter, in 1831-1832: "The more I see Raphael, the more I love and adore him. Everything about him delights me: the rich imagination, the youthful bonhomie, the grace and the beauty. He was so rich of these qualities as a tree that is so full of fruit that its branches are threatening to break. Yes! Everything, everything is so beautiful: the clothes, the design, and the colour. That inner spirit, so deep in the expression! For this reason, he has conquered my soul and completely filled it of feelings." [155] The romantic reading was necessarily different from the classic one: grace and spirituality replaced composition. Clearly, this happened under the influence of Friedrich Schlegel, who inaugurated a new reading of the painter in German aesthetics.

Fig. 104) Erwin Speckter, Portrait of a woman in Albano, 1831

Schlegel made the Sistine Madonna the new benchmark for understanding Raphael’s painting. And, in fact, Alfred Rethel (1810-1859) focused his 1842 letter to his brother Otto on the Sistine Madonna. Rhetel wrote to his brother from Frankfurt in order to inform him about a recent trip to Dresden. "I am turning right away to the core of the Dresden collection, and this is the Sistine Madonna. Dear Otto, I know well that you are well aware of what is truly divine art. I also know that you are convinced that the concept of art must be conceived as something higher than reproducing realistically one herring with onions! And yet, I'm not sure I will manage to express you, with my own so miserable means, the impression that this picture has provided me. You cannot have even a clue of the image by checking an engraving, if not, my God, very imperfectly! The reproduction by printing would be a real shame, if it was not mitigated by good intentions, because it does not provide you anything but a vague and erroneous hint of the painting. Think about the painting in original size, so that the angels in the foreground appear colossal, painted in an intense tone, that shakes you deeply. (...) The expression of the Christ child disturbs so much that one is unable to endure it more than a quarter of an hour; a whole world hides in her eyes. He is there to sacrifice himself for the sins of the world and at the same time to judge us in the doomsday. His eye is burning, becomes bigger and bigger, the lips appear to move. What shakes most in this powerful expression of life is the outer calm of the beautiful form of the new-born. No gesticulation with the arms and legs; the shapes are those of a new-born, but modelled in a really wonderful way. And in which way the forms are included in the painting: Floating on the surface! Every time I saw the image (six consecutive times, every day) I had the impression as if a curtain had just been opened, and the mother appeared with her son, light as a feather, as if she were only present in thought. As like if she were there now, but could disappear at any moment. She is the queen of heaven but also a loving mother.

Fig. 105) Raphael, Sistine Madonna, detail, 1513-1514

Ah! And now the old Pope Sixtus on his knees, with his hand on the left side that moves away from the painting, while the hand on the right side tends to the chest. With a steady, strong, even thundering gaze, he turns to the heavenly apparition and asks forgiveness for those standing in front of the painting as spectators. How he has been painted! In a simple golden mantle, with a white robe, a dark brown face with a beard and grey hair. And in what manner lightness and darkness are taken into account in his image! Movement, model and expression are therefore clear and understandable both from a shorter as well as from a longer distance.

Fig. 106) Raphael, Sistine Madonna, detail, 1513-1514

And now the two angels on the bottom. It is impossible to even understand with what technique he was able to paint them! It is clear that, originally, they were not there (one can see the underlying clouds through the angels, so light and thin was the way with which they were produced). And what expressiveness in the heads of two children! We would be pleased to provide such an expression to a child Christ! And yet, their faces are intentionally much less intense than that of the Christ child, and the viewer realizes again, looking at them, that he is looking at the product of a man, and not a work of God. Great, great master!

Fig. 107) Raphael, Sistine Madonna, detail, 1513-1514

Yes, he must have had some sort of vision! All of this has been portrayed as if it boiled and rose from his soul, without being cooled by preparatory studies and completely forgetting the outside world. Maybe, in a way even incomprehensible for him! It is Raphael’s best oil painting. Great masterpiece in Germany! I feel like drunk. No kingdom could ever compensate me for the joy I felt in front of that picture. In front of it, I experienced it with deep gratitude the value of the heavenly gift to be overwhelmed by the feelings I sensed in front of such a work, feelings which have in part already vanished but partly are still present." [156] We are facing a painter who is clearly so much influenced by the romantic aesthetic thinking, to the point of seeming a pre-symbolist.

Fig. 108) Alfred Rethel, Nemesis, 1837

Surprisingly, alongside Raphael, the references to Michelangelo were much less frequent and almost exclusively focused on the Sistine Chapel (nothing on Michelangelo's architectural work, and almost nothing about the sculptor Michelangelo, until 1869, when Hans van Marees made the praise of the Prisoners in the Louvre [157]). Instead, it is significant how insistent was the praise which different artists made in their letters to Correggio, like the other great Italian master of the art.

Fig. 109) Correggio, Adoration of the Shepherds (The Night) 1528-1530

Fig. 110) The representation of the drama Antonio Allegri da Correggio by Adam Oehlenschläger,
in a dramatic version, at the Theatre of the Grand Duke of Darmstadt on December 18, 1818

And yet we must remember that also European romanticism treated Correggio as a key figure: the romantic Adam Oehlenschläger, the Danish national poet, composed in 1811 the dramatic poem Correggio, a European success story which was translated into Italian in 1812 and in German in 1817. In Germany, moreover, the reputation of Correggio had already been consolidated since Augustus III of Saxony had bought in 1746 The night. Peter von Cornelius valued its shadows in an undated letter to his friend Flemming [158] and Schnorr von Carolsfeld appreciated the expressive intimacy of the picture, praising it in a letter from Bologna to the father, dated 1827: "Correggio must have been a man who was capable of a high intimate love" [159]. Feuerbach announced to his mother in 1855 that he would spend a month in Parma to study Correggio: "Correggio has everything that can enchant a man's heart: gentleness, grace and a glowing colour" [160].

Different sensitivities among the Nazarenes on Italy

Fig. 111) Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld, Italian shepherds, 1819

Of course, the letters of the Nazarenes offer many references to Italy. There are those - like Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld – who were in love with everything that related to our country. In 1818 he wrote to his friend Johann Friedrich Rochlitz (1769 -1842), writer, poet and music critic: "If I have to list the elements that stimulate me and make me particularly happy, here they are: the south, the ancient art world, the way of living of our countrymen here in Rome and, finally, the way I myself make art. With regard in particular to art making, I believe that the way of living and behaving of the Italians and their appearance on the whole are much more suited to hit the eye of the painter than it is the behaviour of the German peasantry. At least for my part, I look with greater pleasure at a girl of Albano on a mule than a Schönfeld woman while she is carrying a heavy basket on her shoulders, as if she herself were a beast of burden." [161]

A few years ago, in a letter of 1812 to the painter Karl Mössler (1788-1860), Peter von Cornelius did not hesitate to use instead tones that suggest his relationship with Italy was like a betrayed love: "With the exception of my brothers of cloister [translator's note: these are the other Nazarenes, who are part of the Brotherhood of St. Luke] here in Rome people only speak on German art with a sense of superiority and I am all the more sorry about this since, here in Italy, the German essence of art appears to me in all its glory and it seems more and more beloved. I tell you, dear Mössler, and I am strongly convinced of it: a German painter should not move away from Germany. Well, I have taken this step in my time, and it is good that it did so, but I will not live long under so a hot sky where the hearts of the people are so cold; I discover with pain and joy that I am a German to the core" [162].

A technical-functional approach: the journey of Schinkel in Italy (1803-1804)

Fig. 112) Karl Friedrich Schinkel, The Cathedral of Piran, 1803

In 1803, in his early twenties, the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) undertook a two-year trip to Italy, documented among other things in a diary [163] and in about four hundred drawings. In December 1804, he also sent a short report of the Italian trip from Paris to his master David Gilly. The text was chosen by Else Cassirer for his epistolary nature, and perhaps also because, however brief, it demonstrates the practical attitude of the young architect, his passion for materials, his interest in the finality of the buildings that he observed, and his attention to the state of preservation of the works. Schinkel entered Italy from Triest, circumnavigated Istria and crossing the Adriatic by boat in order to reach Venice. From there he travelled along the entire peninsula down to Sicily, from where he took a ferry to Genoa to visit Turin and Milan and then travel to France. Schinkel’s observations denote a pragmatic spirit, linked to his idea that 'the principle of art in architecture' is related to practical finalities and must meet specific goals: "At the first arrival in Italy I immediately understood that, beyond the climate, there is a major difference in its architecture [translator's note: compared to the German one]: the lack of timber and the abundance of all kinds of stones. Where we place wooden beams, there are often stone vaults. From this also follows a different construction of the walls and the roof." [164] On the Istrian architecture, he noted that "the beautiful material of various types of marbles, drawn from the same rock holding the city" [165] and the ability to minimize exposure to weather conditions, which has allowed to maintain in excellent condition even the simplest buildings, minimizing the need for constant maintenance. He appreciated the ways in which windows and doors had been worked, the walls were connected to each other in order to support the vaults, the roofs were designed to withstand the rains (and he recorded the differences with the Germans roofs, designed to support the weight of the snow). He noted that the predominance of the stone on the wood reduced the risk of the spread of fire in inhabited areas [166]. He added that, while in the Middle Ages architectural choices were dominated by the need of ensure the solidity of the buildings, that priority was then lost afterwards to chase instead fashions and appearances.

Fig. 113) Karl Friedrich Schinkel, The Church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Cittaducale, 1803

Fig. 114) Karl Friedrich Schinkel, The Friedrichswerder Church in Berlin,1824-1830

In Venice, Schinkel expressed astonishment at the richness of the architecture styles that was the result of the encounter between East and West (he talked about a 'Saracen' style, i.e. of Moorish architecture). For variety of marble, arches, friezes and cornices and other façade decorations - he wrote to his teacher – in Germany a so rich style might appear at most in the scenic construction of opera plays [167]. And yet one could see in Venice "an extraordinary attention to assign a certain purpose also to every detail, beyond its beauty" [168] according to rules that should be used also in Germany.

Fig. 115) Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, Berlin, 1824–1830

Fig. 116) Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Church of St. Nicholas, Potsdam, 1830-1850

Many of the buildings created by Schinkel during the first half of the nineteenth century will be clearly inspired by buildings he had admired in Rome (which he visited twice: in 1804 and in 1824). Yet, in the report to his teacher on the first trip, he wrote that his attention was not captured by the ancient buildings by themselves ("Most of the old buildings do not offer anything new to the architects. I know them from my youth" [169]) but by the perfect employ of architectural techniques (the use of travertine, the ability to achieve "most of the buildings, porticos and large arches" through brickwork and lime [170]), as well as by the poetic vision that some of the ruins offered for the fact to be located in the middle of nature [171].

Fig. 117) Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Country house near Syracuse, 1804

Fig. 118) Karl Friedrich Schinkel, The Villa of Prince Butera near Palermo, 1804

The trip to Naples and Sicily made him discover a completely different architecture from the German one [172]. "The buildings have a flat ceiling on which a very solid layer of pozzolan and gypsum is laid. Also from the point of view of the distribution of the spaces, the architecture of these countries is the most different from ours. What, in our homes, we usually call a waste of space becomes increasingly more evident the most we move south. Open rooms, supported by pillars and arches, and wide corridors, which lead in every direction to broad viewpoints and vineyards, here represent the largest part of the house. If one spends only a little time in the rooms, these open spaces are used instead for activity and work in the intense heat, because the air - circulating – refreshes them" [173].

The romantics and Italy

Among the letters of the anthology appears a short dispatch from Caspar David Friedrich to the fellow painter Johann Ludwig Lund (1777 -1867), a neoclassical painter who was educated between the German and Danish cultures. Lund was his friend, had studied together with him in Dresden and then moved a decade to Rome with his wife. From there he and his wife invited Friedrich to settle in Rome with them. The answer was dated July 1816: "Thank you for the kind invitation to come to Rome; however, I must openly confess that my senses never led me in that direction. Nevertheless, after browsing some of the design books by [Carl Gottfried Traugott] Faber, I almost changed my mind. Now I could almost think of moving to Rome and live there. But I cannot consider, without shuddering, the very thought of how I could return to the north, which would mean, in my opinin, nothing but bury me alive. I can remain calm, without being terrified, if that should be the destiny; but going back is against my nature, my whole being would be opposed" [174].

Fig. 119) Johann Ludwig Lund, Ida Brun, 1811

Among the artists of the next generation, moved to Italy also the Hamburg-born Erwin Speckter (1806-1835), a pupil of Cornelius and friend of Philipp Otto Runge. Speckter left us two volumes of letters from our country, although he died when he was not yet thirty years old [175]. He was a young painter of the transition: educated in Munich in the Nazarene manner, he had already discovered in Germany the value of colour, thanks to the affinity with Runge; the arrival in Venice in 1830, through Verona and Padua, confirmed this intuition. "It seems to me perfectly reasonable that all Venetians have been great painters of colour, because here everything is only colour and every idea, in this world of colours, must be translated into colour" [176].

Fig. 120) Erwin Speckter, The atelier of Bernhard Nehers and Erwin Speckters in Rom, 1831

He liked everything in the lagoon city, and wrote about the feeling of stupefaction on his arrival in St. Mark's Square. And yet he also recorded, in the letters chosen by Else Cassirer, the decadence of the Serenissima: he described the palaces once owned by the nobles and the admirals between Padua and Venice. "But what have become those buildings today? Most of them are empty. A long road of sighs between Padua and Venice. They are all well preserved, they are the same magnificent palaces, but only the sun triumphs today in the empty halls, trying in vain to find out in every corner where splendour, joy and life may have remained." [177]. And with already romantic spirit, he observed: "A really clear contrast with the lost glory of human works is the beautiful and lavish nature; it alone seems to have overcome all difficulties. The more the buildings are abandoned, the more the ivy and the grapevine are triumphing around the old statues and columns. They seem to want to hide, pitifully, every pain of the world" [178].

Fig. 121) Erwin Speckter, Girl from Fano, 1834

Carl Begas, who had visited our country fifteen years before, joining the Nazarenes, sent in November 1840 a letter to the younger painter Carl Steffeck (1818 -1890), who was leaving for Italy, offering some guidance: "Look around you with sharp eyes; as a naturalist by temperament, I would like to give you the advice to carefully observe the mass of the people and the way they can joyfully organize themselves, as well as the so characteristic nature that can be found only there" [179].

Italy in the last quarter of the century

Since the seventies, the artists began to travel around Italy with the Cicero by Jacob Burkhardt (1818- 1897) in their pocket, and to compare their impressions with those of the text. The publication of that volume in 1855 marked the birth of the myth of the early Renaissance. If previously the main goal of the artists’ interest was always Rome, Florence now took on a new space. In 1877 arrived in Italy Hans Speckter (1848-1888), whose uncle Erwin has just been mentioned, for his stay in Italy forty years before. Hans' interest was for the churches of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella, for Cimabue and Arnolfo di Cambio, for Ghiberti and Donatello. These were names that had not appeared in any previous point in the anthology. "Despite the terrible heat, I like Florence so extremely that I must always repent in secret that I did not have that impression immediately. I realize how much I've learned here, because I have seen and studied the art of the past. I have no nostalgia even of Rome. The fresh spring is indeed here, and even if the major works of Raphael and Michelangelo are in Rome, how infinite is the wealth of value of the spring of art, whose absence is not felt there because of the excess of the most various examples of art of all times. That period, in fact, is the most informative and enjoyable stage of all" [180]. The letter concluded by defining the Florentine republic as "the cradle of modern Europe" [181].

If the world of the Nazarenes had ran out, a group of German artists renewed their tradition in Italy, to the point that with them was inaugurated the neologism of "German Romans" (Deutschrömer). They were Arnold Böcklin, Anselm Feuerbach, Adolf von Hildebrand and Hans von Marées. There is no letter of the sculptor von Hildebrand (1847 -1921), who however was perhaps the most important figure in the German art literature, with his essay on "The problem of figurative art form" (Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst) of 1893.

The Swiss Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901) symbolized perhaps the transition, in the German world, from a predominantly 'Roman' vision of Italian art to a 'Florentine' one; he lived between Germany and Italy, where he stayed for extensive periods, also at the urging of Burckhardt. From 1850 to 1859 and from 1862 to 1866 he moved to Rome; from 1874 to 1885 and from 1892 until his death in 1901 he lived in Florence instead.

Fig. 122) Hans von Marées, Self-portrait (right) with Lenbach, 1873

Fig. 123) Hans von Marées, Self-portrait (left) with Hildebrand,1863

With Hans van Marees (1837 -1887) we are discovering the letters of a painter who not only had an extensive network of contacts with the artists of his time, but also an intense relationship with the aesthetic theory. He was the protégée of Konrad Fiedler (1841 -1895), an art critic and scholar of aesthetics.

Fig. 124) Anselm Feuerbach, Portrait of the mother, 1872

Anselm Feuerbach (1829-1880) maintained a lifelong close correspondence with his stepmother Henriette, which the latter collected and published in 1882 (two years after Anselm's death in Venice) with the title "Spiritual Testament" (Vermächtnis). It turned to become a classic of German art literature. Besides letters, Feuerbach also left us larger writings like the article "The Germans in Italy" (Die Deutschen in Italien) and a series of polemical pamphlet, the most important of which against the leader of the Austrian history painting, Hans Makart. An important part of the correspondence was written in Italy, where he resided first in Venice, then Florence, then Rome, and finally back in Florence. To live in Italy meant for him to have reached a true spiritual retreat, which protected him from the academic world in Berlin and Vienna, vis-à-vis which he did not hesitate to spend severely bitter words. In 1866, after returning from Naples and Pompeii, he wrote: "It is impossible to describe the charming impression of Pompeii, the sea, the bronzes and the vases. I was able to achieve a more elevated experience and abandon myself to the purest pleasure. And I vowed in my heart that the smallness and misery of my country should not infest my spirit anymore" [182]. In 1873, he moved to Rome and observed: "Here I found my old friends and I found a spiritual serenity in a stable manner, which I could not obtain elsewhere" [183]. The letters chosen by Else Cassirer do not offer other useful references.

What’s about nineteenth century Italian art?

Canova and Segantini are the only Italian-speaking artists whose letters appear in the anthology. As we will see, there are Spanish (Goya), French and English sections, but no Italian one. All in all, the absence of interest for contemporary Italian art was a phenomenon that was inaugurated by Winckelmann, confirmed by Goethe and lasted until the early twentieth century: the German artists had a huge interest and love for the Italian art of the past (the antique, Raphael) but were not finding enough reasons of interest for contemporary art in Italy. Antonio Canova and Giovanni Segantini were most probably included by Else Cassirer in the section on German artists (although the original writings are in Italian) because they were subjects of the Austro Hungarian Empire.

Fig. 125) Antonio Canova, Hercules and Lica, 1795-1815

Canova is present with two letters addressed to Leopoldo Cicognara of 1812 and 1815. The second one, dated 2 October 1815 (with a postscript on 8 October) [184], was a letter from Paris that contained a veritable hymn to Austria and Prussia. The letter began with the assignment received in Paris to recover the works stolen by Napoleon. It explained that the decision to leave Paolo Veronese’s Weddingat Cana at the Louvre (to avoid damaging the canvas while trasporting it back to Italy) was not his own, and that it had already been taken before his arrival. Moreover, also the information about his alleged contacts on this issue with the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph was totally false. Instead, he announced to Cicognara the return of the Quadriga in Venice, and in this case he confirmed to have proposed a new location to the emperor: in the Doge's Palace on the side opposite the island of San Giorgio (a new location that obviously did not materialise). He did not share the decision concerning Paolo Veronese’s artwork, because it was harming "the interest and the honour of my country". However, it is clear from the letter that a simply 'Italian' definition of ‘his country’ was not obvious: "I have now in my hands the early masterpieces of sculpture: they are held in an Austrian barracks. Both paintings of Rome and the Papal States of which I managed to obtain restitution are now being packed, even if I have not yet received a precise list of the stolen works, which would be needed and that I am awaiting any time from Rome. If something is left behind or gets lost, it will not be my responsibility, but it is the fault of those who have sent me here with no hope of success and without a single document of the artworks whose return we must demand. Nevertheless, we were able to regain the best, and this only because of the Prussian, Austrian and English bayonets; since these are the three powers that protect us in a special way"  [185]. The publication of this letter in Berlin's anthology In 1913 was a special tribute by Else Cassirer to the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollern.

Fig. 126) Giovanni Segantini, Self-portrait, 1893

When the Letters of artists were published in 1913, Segantini, born in the Trent province (then called Italian Tyrol), was a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, although his training as a painter was linked to Brera in Milan. The Italian painter appears with some letters which clearly show his role as a desecrator, and as a painter engaged in the renewal of Italian art. In 1894 he wrote to "Mr. Candidus", a not-identified journalist: "As a small minority appear the independent, loner and originals painters, who own or believe to own the gift to feel new sensations, which they want to reproduce, thereby violating, or attempting to violate - according to their means - the old theoretical laws of art, replacing them with their personal ones. In doing so, they tend to destroy the conservative majority" [186]. In 1897 he wrote (as a spectator, as he was not exhibiting at the show) a letter to the organizing committee of the Second Biennial of Venice, contesting the composition of the jury, which in his view was not in line with the statutes [187]. In 1898 the writer explained to his friend Domenico Tumiati the first reaction he had, when years earlier met in Brera the Lombard naturalism of Tranquillo Cremona, Mosè Bianchi di Monza and Luigi Chirtani. "I retired in the hills and lakes of the beautiful Brianza region, convinced that the art of painting is not only limited to the colour, but that it, when used properly, can express all the feelings of love, pain, joy and mourning. Arrived in Brianza, I have not, therefore, experimented with the study of the expressive capabilities of colour, but I tried to reproduce my feelings, especially during the evening sunsets, when my soul tended to a gentle melancholy" [188]. It was an intimate renewal of the language that would be the basis for the future development of the symbolist.

Fig. 127) Giovanni Segantini, The angel of life, 1895

The misadventures of an artist in Italy

It remains to be said that the letters also collect testimonials of mishaps. Travelling is always an adventure. Living in Italy then meant for artists to face a different world, and at times to run into extraordinary difficult situations. Here is a selection that shows the variety of situations.

Christian Daniel Rauch (1777-1857) to Tieck: "Dear friend, on Wednesday, April 29, we arrived here [in Rome] safe and sound; already in Siena we found a frightening sirocco, which lasted even here in the early days; I had never met such a warm and still today the air (which is now already better) has an oppressive effect on me: burning as if it came from within a heated ball" [189].

Johann Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1829) to Goethe: "You will remember when we arrived to Naples at the tavern at the Largo di Castello and asked to drink a glass of water. When it was given to us, I realized that it contained several beatles. I wanted to avoid that we would drink that water, but the girl explained to me that that was the best that she had, and each of us drank the water willingly. You took the glass and sipped slowly, saying that, in the end of the day, we are eating crabs and eels, and there is nothing wrong. Even these lovely animals will not do anything wrong and perhaps they will feed us" [190].

Fig. 128) Christian Gottlieb Schick, Allegory of the divine beauty of nature, 1809

Christian Gottlieb Schick (1776-1812) to his brothers (1812) - "Here in Rome it is still summer [November 17]; the trees and grass that have been burned by the terrible heat this summer, are coming alive and shining in the most beautiful green fields; all vegetable plants are planted now like in August with us, and all the flowers that adorn the meadows in spring germinate here in mid-November on the fresh grass. What a wonderful country, you cannot even imagine it. Every day, when I wake up, I hear the birds singing like in May in Germany and almost cannot realise that the year is ending soon. This and the works of art that are here one neighbour to another, however, are also the only advantages that this country possesses over others. Beyond these two things, it must be really unpleasant to live in Italy; no other convenience of everyday life is here. Individuals, especially those of Rome, prefer to beg rather than earning their bread by the labour of their hands. The Pope's government is the worst you can ever find. The court principles have leased all the land, and leave it fallow for half, for the damn reason that they want to keep up the price of grain. The common people should therefore be ruined. (...) The poverty that dominates among the common people is beyond all description. Hunger leads them to take extreme acts: they dig in manure and as soon as they find something that only in part is edible, they swallow it with the highest appetite. If they find gnawed bones, they still gnaw it; mouldy bread that maybe lying in the street for a few months is not too bad for eating it. It's also not too uncommon for people here to die of hunger. Italians do not think it is too dramatic; they have become accustomed to these events"  [191].

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872) to his father (1818): He told his father of scams that take place between Italy and Germany to sell at high prices pictures of limited value to German customers. He explained the activity of von Rumohr (1785-1843), the young art historian, to discover and prevent scams [192].

Fig. 129) Carl Schuch, View of Olevano, 1875

Carl Schuch (1846-1903) to Julius Rettich on bloody events in the Roman countryside (1868): "Remember: do not send me a registered letter. Because here they take each registered mail as if it were a wallet, and here the bandits are not extinct. Only a few days ago in nearby Palestrina there was an execution - the convict had killed at least seven people - and yesterday they found the brother of the innkeeper with three strokes of knife - una brava coltellata [sic – in Italian: a serious knife wound]” [193].

Fig. 130) Carl Schuck, Landscape with ruined bridge,1870

Carl Schuch (1846-1903) to Julius Rettich, probably in 1868: "The Italian is a capricious being – he offers the relaxed spectator, the anti-moralist endless opportunities for enjoyment. It's funny to see how easily he can lie; people lie on minimal issues with the utmost naturalness, which on the one hand offends and is disgusting for the German nature, and yet it is not without appeal. The Italic [sic] is not only lying to others, which in some respects can be excused as a form of defence and needs, if not even of nobility, but also lies to himself. He willingly brings himself and others into error, is a naive selfish and lives in reality only for others, because it is a natural born actor of life, and mimics all manner of life, never living his own. For him, everything is surface, appearance, mask, pose, and in some cases even a pretty picture. These stylish men are beautiful, sometimes really beautiful as the ancient sculptures, and yet only containers of a magnificent shape, but without meaningful content; the women, in most cases fascinating, sometimes of a mind-altering beauty, are almost always hot and skilled tools of lust" [194].

Fig. 131) Karl Stauffer-Bern, Portrait of Lydia Welti, undated

Karl Stauffer-Bern (1857-1891) from the madhouse of Florence (1890): "On the madhouse in Florence I have to produce works in pictures and words. It's worth doing it, because what I have suffered here for the stupid doctors, and the horror of the premises - until Hildebrand [editorial note: the sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand] did not assist me - deserves to be shown. My whole past life, including the Carceri nuove [new prisons in Florence], which among other things were built before 1400, and the Carceri murate [also in Florence] and all what I experienced there, are nothing compared to what I had to endure in this pigsty. Straitjackets etc. You'll see one day what happened at my hairs. But I will tell you the rest in front of a bottle of Neuenburger. You will be surprised by many things” [195]. Stauffer-Bern committed suicide a year later in Florence: he had been arrested (and later declared mad) in Florence after the husband of Lydia Welti, a very affluent Swiss industrialist, had denounced the extra-marital relationship to the police. The industrialist had also let declare Lydia as insane and, after a short stay in a madhouse in Rome, had brought her back to Switzerland. The suicide of Stauffer-Bern was followed by that of Lydia: a sort of nineteenth-century re-edition from the truth of the myth of Romeo and Juliet.

End of Part Five 
Go to Part Six 

NOTES

[146] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1919, 712 pages. Quotation at pages 25.

[147] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 27.

[148] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 27.

[149] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 107-108.

[150] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 123.

[151] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 131.

[152] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 137-140.

[153] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 157.

[154] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 157.

[155] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 203.

[156] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 246-247.

[157] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 327.

[158] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 139.

[159] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 161.

[160] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 314.

[161] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 156.

[162] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 140.

[163] See: https://archive.org/stream/briefetagebche00schi#page/n7/mode/2up

[164] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 67.

[165] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 67.

[166] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 68.

[167] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 69.

[168] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 69.

[169] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 69.

[170] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 70.

[171] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 69.

[172] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 69.

[173] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 70.

[174] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 166.

[175] Speckter, Erwin - Briefe eines deutschen Künstlers aus Italien. Aus den nachgelassenen Papieren, Leipzig, F.A. Brockhaus, 1846, 2 volumes, pages 456 and 412.

[176] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 202.

[177] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 197.

[178] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 198.

[179] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 208.

[180] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 270.

[181] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 270.

[182] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 324.

[183] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 324.

[184] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 64-65.

[185] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 65.

[186] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 350.

[187] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 354-355.

[188] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 356.

[189] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 95.

[190] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 31.

[191] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 119.

[192] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 153.

[193] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 422.

[194] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 423.

[195] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 345.