Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro
Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
Giovanni Baglione
Intagliatori [Engravers]
Edition, introduction and notes by Giovanni Maria Fara
Pisa, Edizioni della Normale, 2016
The Lives of painters, sculptors and architects
In 1642, a
year before his death, Giovanni Baglione finalised in Rome his Vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti dal
Pontificato di Gregorio XIII del 1572 in fino a’ tempi di Papa Urbano Ottavo
1642 (Lives of painters, sculptors and architects from the pontificate of
Gregory XIII in 1572 to the one of Pope Urban VIII in 1642), the recurrently (albeit
often not positively) quoted work in the following centuries. The author, a formerly
Prince of the Saint Luke Academy, explicitly aimed at continuing the work of
Vasari and Borghini, updating the biographies of the artists (by strict rule,
only those already deceased) for a period of time that went precisely from 1572
to 1642. In those seventy years several pontificates succeeded each other. By
importance (since some lasted only a few months) Baglione identified five popes
(Gregory XII, Pope Sixtus V, Clement VIII, Paul V and Urban VIII), whose pontificates
were the milestones marking the Lives.
The work, which is structured as a fictional dialogue between a foreigner and a
Roman nobleman, was in fact divided into days, each corresponding
chronologically to a papacy. Every day, the biographies of the artists who died
under the respective Pope were discussed. This is also the most evident limit
of Baglione’s Lives, which are
trapped in this kind of chronological “skeleton”, which means that often very
different artists, or artists of very different age groups, were discussed side
by side simply by the fact of having passed away in the same year. Not
surprisingly, one of the criticisms that most often occurred in respect of the
work was to reveal an excessive annalistic character; it was therefore
perceived as a chronicle (sometimes of truly trivial men and works), and not as
a history. I would like to refer, in the face of this interpretation, to what
Herwarth Röttgen wrote in his introduction to the critical edition. Indeed, a
critical edition, albeit unfortunately incomplete and limited to the first
three days, was produced. It was an endeavour which lasted sixty years, and
started with the flight to Italy of Jacob Hess, a German scholar who fled when
Hitler took power in Germany, and ended with the publication in 1995. That edition
has already been reviewed in this blog. You can read the review here.
Röttgen wrote
on this point: "What, then, are the Lives
of Baglione? They are the memoirs of a
Roman painter, who lived as a faithful member of the Academy of Saint Luke, in
the middle of the artistic production of his city. The memoirs crystallize in
the figures of the contemporary artists. He was tied to this Academy, which is always
felt clearly. Certainly, he devoted himself to this task as he was driven by a
personal need, and was not able to escape the normal experience of disputes and
offenses. At the time he wrote his work, that is between 1635 and 1640,
Baglione was already thirty years behind his contemporaries. This is also why
he was no longer able to describe the path of an evolution that had now overtaken
his generation. Around 1640 Raphael had come to be, already for a long time,
the supreme norm; the art of the late sixteenth century, to which Baglione
belonged, was therefore increasingly seen as a period of decline. Thus, the Lives
were neither art history [editor's note: Röttgen intended Vasari] nor a theoretical and artistic idealization
of a rule [editor's note: he referred to Bellori]; they were, rather, memoirs dedicated to [editor's note: over two
hundred] already dead artists of the same
generation as the author; they were
the defence of an era in which some artists were already in danger of falling
into oblivion."
 |
| Ottavio Leoni, Portrait of Giovanni Baglione, 1625, Art Institute of Chicago Source: http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/109032?search_id=1 via Wikipedia |
Engravers
At the end
of the work, when all five days were completed, Baglione made an unexpected
step and devoted a few pages (a dozen) to the biographies of the 'engravers'.
Giovanni Maria Fara has now considered this section and produced an impeccably annotated
critical edition. In a climate of renewed attention in the field of art sources
about graphic artists, this work is an excellent accompaniment to the recent
edition of the Cominciamento e progresso
dell’arte dell’intagliare in rame (Beginning and Progress of the Art of Engraving in Copper) by Filippo Baldinucci, published in 2013 and edited by Evelina
Borea.
Baglione and Baldinucci
The first
thing that Fara pointed out is that, precisely because it was placed out of the
five days, Baglione’s succinct exposure was not harnessed by the annalistic
features held throughout the work, and was therefore more fluid. That said, the
difference between the two texts (Baldinucci’s Commencement was published in 1686, or nearly fifty years later) is
evident and must be mentioned not so much to belittle Baglione’s work, but
rather to have in mind the different objectives that were pursued by the two
authors. Baldinucci’s aim was really the first attempt to draw up a history of
graphic art, narrating its evolution with an international perspective. The
work of Baldinucci was introduced by a brief prologue proving, in essence, that
the author was fully informed of the development of graphic art over the
centuries, and that his reconstructive proposal originated from (sometimes
explicit and sometimes not) personal preferences which lead him, on the one
hand, to follow a purely classical line, and on the other hand, to penalize the
artists who did not profess the Catholic religion.
Baglione’s Engravers was instead a collection of
short biographies of the artists who worked in Rome between 1572 and 1642, and
died before that date. The biographies were accompanied by the catalogue of the
respective productions. Fara writes: "That of Baglione [...] is at once
both a complete collection of biographies in a precisely determined time and
space [...], and a considerable list of prints – both in copper as well as in
wood. To the twenty engravers specifically discussed by Baglione [1]
corresponds a punctual mention of their prints, which allowed the certain
recognition of even eighty-five single engravings and forty-four series
collected by volume series "(p. 13). This is not a small result. The
curator has the merit to accompany the reader in the examination of the works
with a number of highly relevant records which are needed to navigate across the
catalogue of Baglione.
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| Cornelis Cort, The Battle of Zama, 1567, see. p. 27. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Engraving techniques
Unlike
Baldinucci, Baglione seemingly did not make a hierarchical selection between
fictional graphic (or fruit of the imagination), translation (copies of
paintings) or reproduction (copies of drawings). To the contrary, the hierarchy
of the techniques was substantially similar, as well as the cliché of the excellence
"of the foreigners" (oltremontani)
in the discipline. Nevertheless, they were criticized for obvious flaws in the
design: "At different times strangers
from different parts of the world came to Rome, mother of virtue, in order to
learn the good manner and perfect design [2], and they operated various
engraving techniques in different times. Some made it with a burin into a
copper plate, and this is the noblest way; some made with copper etchings [...],
and others in wood in imitation of Albert Durer [...]. Telling the truth, today
carving has advanced as far it can go, both in terms of care and strength. And etching
is imitating the real with such an easy and good way (like in some exquisitely
made prints which are now being sold in Flanders, France, and otherwise), that
if artists had accompanied good design with good Italian manner, it would have
not been possible to desire better" (pages 46-7).
Baglione,
however, showed a different and probably more acute sensitivity than Baldinucci.
This was due to the fact that he was an artist. He could therefore hint to the
technical aspects, stressing that woodcuts are often more difficult than copper
etchings. And finally he described in a few, but rightly stated lines, the
basic notions of relief engraving on wood.
 |
| Agostino Carracci, Crucifixion after Tintoretto (Sala dell'Albergo of Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice), see. p. 30. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
 |
| Francesco Villamena, The Brawl of Bruttobuono, 1601, see p. 35 Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Sources and influences
It would
not be useful to avoid the issue. When talking about Baglione (and many other
historians of the seventeenth century) one cannot but notice the debt incurred by
him in respect of the then unpublished Considerazioni sulla pittura (Considerations on Painting) by Giulio Mancini (written in 1621).
This given is so acquired that it is not arousing any surprise. Much less known
(at least to me) was the fact that Baglione’s Engravers was in turn the source to which John Evelyn (1620-1706) looked
(often copying) in order to draft the Chapter IV of its Sculptura: Or the History and Art of Calcography and Engraving in
Copper, i.e. the chapter dealing with engravers, published in London in
1662. Quite appropriately, the curator displayed Evelyn’s English text whenever
it is apparent that the source of the information was in fact made up of
Baglione’s pages.
NOTES
[1] Fara
speaks of twenty artists, although the paragraphs making up the section of the engravers
are fourteen. The reason is trivial: some of these paragraphs are dedicated to
more than one artist (almost always, they are relatives). This is the case, for
example, of Agostino and Annibale Carracci.
[2] See, in
this blog, Nicole Dacos, Viaggio a Roma. I pittori europei del '500 (Journey to Rome. The European Painters in the Sixteenth Century).
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