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History of Art Literature Anthologies
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Francesco Mazzaferro
Julius von Schlosser and Two Anthologies of Art History Sources
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| Fig. 1) Julius von Schlosser, The Written Sources on the History of the Carolingian Art. The first edition of 1892 |
N.B.: On Julius von
Schlosser, see in this blog, also: Julius
von Schlosser’s Italy, Edited by Loredana Lorizzo; The
Celebrations in Vienna for the 150 Years since the Birth of Julius von Schlosser;
Julius
von Schlosser. The meaning of the sources for the history of art of the modern
age; Kunstliteratur
– La letteratura artistica – art literature; Albert
Ilg and Julius von Schlosser: Two Different Interpretations of Cennino Cennini in
Austria-Hungary of 1871 and 1914.
Through the analysis of art history anthologies,
we are trying to identify the origins and development of the study of art
history sources. The two anthologies (for the first one, you could also talk
about a repertoire of sources) that Julius von Schlosser published in 1892 and
in 1896 are essential milestones in this path. They are the Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der
karolingischen Kunst [1] (Written Sources on the History of the Carolingian
Art) of 1892 (hereafter simply called Shriftquellen)
and the Quellenbuch zur Kunstgeschichte
des Abendländischen Mittelalters: ausgewählte Texte des vierten bis fünfzehnten
Jahrhunderts of 1896 [2] (A Book of Sources on the History of Art of the
Western Middle Ages: Selected Texts from the Fourth to the Fifteenth Century;
from now called simply Quellenbuch).
The similarities between the two anthologies (not only the chronological, but
also the stylistic-literary parallels) are obvious. The two texts were both
published in the second series on the art history sources of the school in Vienna,
directed by Albert Ilg (they were respectively the numbers 4 and 7 of the
series Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, i.e. the
"Written Sources of History of Art and Technique of the Middle Ages and
the Modern Time"). Both belonged to the time when Schlosser's attention was
wholly devoted to the art of the Middle Ages. Yet the two anthologies also reveal
some significant differences, showing the evolution of his thought, in a phase
evidently prior to the contact with the idealistic culture of Croce and
Vossler, which took place around 1902-1903. As done in all posts of this series
on “History of Art Literature Anthologies”, the two prefaces, respectively
dated November 1890 and April 1895, are proposed with a translation from mine at
the end of this post.
Two writings not to be
missed
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| Fig. 2) Ivory panel to the gold code of Lorsch Abbey, 778-820 A.D. |
The Schriftquellen,
whose preface is dated November 1890, belonged to a mainly positivist stage in Schlosser's thought, which was well represented also by other two writings of
those years. The first was a text of two hundred pages dated 1891, and entitled
Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte aus den
Schriftquellen des frühen Mittelalters (Contributions to the history of art
from written sources of the Middle Ages); it was published by the Vienna Imperial
Academy of Sciences [3]. The second piece was a much shorter text of 1892 [4] (hosted
by the cultural supplement of a Munich newspaper, the Allgemeine Zeitung) which was entitled Die Bedeutung der Quellen für die neuere Kunstgeschichte (The
meaning of the sources for the history of art of the modern era).
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| Fig. 3) Julius von Schlosser, Contributions to the History of Art from Written Sources of the Middle Ages, 1891 |
The script of 1891, as we read in the first
pages, was actually a kind of pre-emptive comment to the Schriftquellen, which the author announced as forthcoming: in
reality, it had been originally intended as the introduction to the repertoire,
but had expanded so much during the drafting to induce the Viennese historic to
publish it separately. The author explained that, without the study of the
written sources, the knowledge of the Carolingian and architecture art would be
very limited, due to the scarcity of works of art come to us over the centuries.
There were, however, no other methodological reflections on the study of art
history sources. The essay was divided into four chapters, devoted to the architecture,
the visual arts, the concept of antique and the history of art itself during
the Carolingian era.
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| Fig. 4) The golden code of the Lorsch Abbey, 778-820 A.D. |
The short article of 1892 in the Allgemeine Zeitung of Munich offered to
the contrary exactly an overview of methodological issues to the general
public. Although its title makes you think only about the sources of history of art in
the 'modern era', actually it discussed the highly diverse problems that a scholar
meets in the study of art sources in different phases of art history: the
antiquity, Middle Ages, the Renaissance. Specifically, the study of the art sources
in the Middle Ages was described as contiguous – in the forms of research – to
philology and diplomatics.
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| Fig. 5) The Torhalle of the Lorsch Abbey, 760-790 A.D. |
The sources of Carolingian
art history
One of the intentional features of the Schriftquellen was to be a systematic inventory of all existing
sources (it presented 1100 original texts on Carolingian art, distributed in
five hundred pages). In his preface (displayed, as already explained, at the end of this article)
Schlosser defined the work as a manual (Handbuch).
Therefore, more than an anthology intended to document an era, it was a
specialized publication for professionals: the texts - mostly in medieval Latin
- were neither translated nor commented. Moreover, as mentioned above, the
comment had already been published separately. The critical apparatus was (so
to speak) 'limited' to a glossary of technical terms and to various indices (of locations,
things and people, saints, and the names of the artists).
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| Fig. 6) Friedrich Wilhelm Unger, Sources of the History of Byzantine Art, 1878 |
The absence of a translation of texts (absence whose
motives are considered so 'obvious' by Schlosser in the introduction to avoid offering any specific reason) was an important difference in comparison to an
earlier work, published in 1878 by Friedrich Wilhelm Unger in the first Vienna series
of art sources: the Quellen der
byzantinischen Kunstgeschichte, i.e the "Sources of Byzantine art
history" [5]. There the Byzantine texts had been translated into German,
and accompanied by a series of notes. The structure of Schlosser’s anthology was
inspired instead to one of the classics of the nineteenth century German
classical philology, the repertoire of Antiken
Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Griechen [6]
(Ancient sources of the history of the fine arts among the Greeks) of Johannes
Overbeck, an exceptionally rich collection of passages of Greek and Latin
literature offering a testimony on Greek art, from the Homeric to the Byzantine
era, without any German translation of the original texts.
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| Fig. 7) Johannes Overbeck, Ancient Sources of the History of the Fine Arts among the Greeks, 1868 |
The sources of the
history of art of the Western Middle Ages
The Quellenbuch
(1896) reflected the transition of Schlosser’s focus from a medievalist inquiry with a technical angle of a purely documentary nature to the study of medieval
art literature as an autonomous discipline, intermediate between art history
and literary history. Not surprisingly, within the Quellenbuch, it appeared for the first time the term "Kunstliteratur" (Art Literature), while there had been no
reference to it in the Schriftquellen.
The recent exhibition held at the Institute
of Art History in Vienna to celebrate the one hundred fifty years of the scholar's
birth revealed that the first available document referring to the concept of Kunstliteratur in the rich archival documentation
on him held at the funds of the University of Vienna was precisely dated 1896.
Compared to the repertoire of 1892 and its
ambition to offer a 'complete' collection of Carolingian sources, the new text was
more selective and therefore was a true anthology. Schlosser himself wrote it
in the preface: "This Quellenbuch
has another ambition. I would like to offer a glimpse into the art literature
of the ancient Christianity and the Middle Ages, and - as it has already been
done in purely historical studies – I prepared a reader collecting statements
about art in the intermediate era. The organization of the individual steps is
therefore also chronological, according to the time of the writing of the
respective texts. Therefore, this new volume has nothing to do with the
collections of (Byzantine and Carolingian) literary sources already published
in previous editions of this series. Those writings aimed at a publication
as complete as possible of all the records and passages on the art of those
times and are therefore essentially designed for a smaller group of
specialists. But here we have collected in principle only the broadest and most
coherent text, and only in the most important and interesting sections for a
historian."
 |
| Fig. 8) The Book of sources on the history of art in the Western Middle Ages |
In a long introductory essay (pages VII-XXI)
entitled Überblick der Kunstliteratur vom IV bis zum XV.
Jahrhundert (A Look at the Art Literature from
the Fourth to the Fifteenth Century) the Quellenbuch
also offered a theoretical discussion about the genres of art literature, differentiating them between poetic
(ästhetische), theoretical and historical
literature. These are pretty much the same categories that you will find in the
discussion on the sources of history of medieval art, in the masterpiece of Schlosser,
the Kunstliteratur of 1924. Most of
the contents in the 1896 essay were thus re-used in the main work after thirty
years.
Schlosser first discussed the poetic literature on art: inspirational examples
from the antiquity were the description in verses of the equestrian statue of Domitian
by Statius (40-96 AD) and the Hellenistic epigrams dedicated to art.
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| Fig. 9) Byzantine Inscription, Jerusalem (undated) |
Art literature - conceived in these poetic
terms - experienced in the Middle Ages some specific developments, to which
Schlosser devoted particular attention: from the Greek-Latin epigrams of the
antiquity derived, starting from the Byzantine era, the tituli, i.e. religious inscriptions often in verses which were
affixed in bas-reliefs, mosaics and frescoes, illustrating the scenes there
reproduced. Some poets like Prudentius (348-410 A.D.) and the Bishop Paulinus
of Nola (353-431) specialized themselves in the composition of programmatic tituli in verse, commenting on works of
art still to be produced. But it was with Eckhart IV of St. Gallen (980 -1057)
and his verses for the cathedral of Mainz that this art was perfected, up to his
spread in Italy, producing examples until the Renaissance (for example with extracts
by Petrarch in the frescoes by Guariento in Padua or other verses in the paintings
by Pinturicchio on the life of Enea Silvio Piccolomini, in the Library in
Siena).
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| Fig. 10) Latin tituli in the mosaics of San Marco in Venice, XI-XII century |
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| Fig. 11) Pinturicchio, tituli at the base of the fresco "Coronation of Enea Silvio Piccolomini with a laurel wreath by Frederick III", 1502-1508 |
Another typical example of medieval art
literature - Schlosser writes - was the poetic description of ekphrastic
nature, like the texts of writers and orators who set themselves the goal to
describe the works of art. Here were mentioned many authors who lived in the
world of the medieval religious orders, as well as laymen as Walafrid Strabo,
author of verses on the (lost) poem on the equestrian statue of Theodoric in
Ravenna, and even Boccaccio, with his allegorical lyric "Amorosa visione”.
While the poetic literature was described with
great attention, very limited room (only a few lines) was instead devoted to
the second genre, i.e. the theoretical
literature, by its nature not considered sufficiently artistic. Indeed, in
the preface, Schlosser said that this exclusion from the Quellenbuch was 'self-explanatory'. In the introductory essay
Schlosser also provided an example and explained that the Quellenbuch did not include any quotation from the Theophilus’ Schedula Diversarum Artium, since that
text had an exclusive focus on technical factors (colour recipes) and therefore
fell outside the borders of art literature in strict sense. It should be said
here that, precisely in his 1924 Kunstliteratur,
Schlosser will dedicate ample space to Theophilus. In the Quellenbuch there was also no reference at all to the Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini, the work
to which he instead assigned 1924 a central role in the creation of a new artistic
language in vernacular Italian, as explained in another post.
Finally, he treated the historiographical
texts, namely the third genre (the historical
literature). They were primarily pontifical books and inventories of the
Roman ecclesiastical world (documenting the construction and decoration of
churches), and then the inventories of the French courts and ecclesiastical institutions
(citing Gregory of Tours). In this category he also assimilated the periegetic
and topographical texts (like the chronicles of pilgrims in the Middle East or
in Rome) and the biographies of artists, sometimes in the form of legend.
Particular attention was given to the art literature texts on artists in the late
Italian Middle Ages.
The introductory essay was followed by the texts:
it is, in truth, very surprising that the three hundred pages did not follow at
all the tripartite division just described, and there was no attempt to suggest
a correspondence between them and the different categories: from an
introductory essay by genres Schlosser passed to an exposure of texts in purely
chronological terms, without any discussion of the reasons thereof. We are
waiting with impatience for the publication of the recent presentation by Prof
Raphael Rosenberg of the Vienna University on this conundrum: “Art Literature: according to chronology or
genres?” [7]. The anthology was indeed structured in three chapters: the
Christian antiquity and the early Middle Ages; the High Middle Ages; the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The last quoted text was an extract of
Ghiberti's Commentaries (one of the most beloved author by Schlosser) on Tuscan
Trecento artists. Also here, none of the text was translated (the book
contained, therefore, writings in Latin, and in the various medieval vernacular
languages – old German, French, Italian). It followed the indexes of authors,
places, things, artists and technical expressions.
Factors of continuity
and discontinuity
It has been authoritatively claimed [8] that,
in the evolution of Schlosser’s thought on art literature, one of the key
moments was marked by the passage from his university lecture notes (published
since 1914, starting with a one hundred pages text on the Middle Ages [9],
entitled Materialien zur Quellenkunde der
Kunstgeschichte. 1. Heft. Mittelalter (Materials on the study of the
sources of art history. First case: Middle Ages) and the main work of 1924, the
Kunstliteratur. The adoption of the title 'Art literature'
instead of 'materials' in the latter was seen,
according to that interpretation, as a proof of the influence of the aesthetics
theories of Vossler and Croce, and would have marked the transition from a
positivist to an idealist view.
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| Fig. 12) Julius von Schlosser, Materials on the study of the sources of art history. First issue. Middle Ages, 1914 |
In reality, this post shows that the
terminological shift occurred already between 1892 and 1896, and it must have
therefore been independent of the fruitful contact, which Schlosser had with the idealism of Croce
and Vossler’s aesthetics in the following years. The adoption of the expression
'art literature' was probably part of a maturation of the scholar, who tried to
provide a more systematic structure to an interest in art sources that was undoubtedly
stemming from his cultural education in Vienna. Instead, between the 1914 Materials and the 1924 Manual, except for the title, nothing changed:
it was essentially the same text, first published in separate sections and later
on in a single volume.
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| Fig. 13) Julius von Schlosser, Art Literature, 1924 |
If anything, what is striking is indeed the
element of continuity of the 1914-1924 texts compared with the studies of the
previous thirty years. The clear didactical intention of the "Art Literature" was already evident
at the end of the previous century, even if the author addressed a certainly
very narrow world of scholars, able to use Medieval Latin as vehicular language.
As early as 1892, in fact, he had the ambition to write a ‘manual’, although a specialist
one; in 1896 he tried indeed to make sure that the use of sources would be
available to a larger number of students.
It has already been noted in another post that
the definition of the sources of art history as a collection of ancillary and
secondary knowledge tools, already exposed in the 1892 article in the Allgemeine Zeitung, was exactly
reproduced in his main work in 1924. It can now be added that the arrangement
of the medieval artistic literature in poetical, theoretical and
historiographical already appeared in 1896; likewise, from his work in that year it also derived
much of the substance of the pages on the Middle Ages published in 1914-1924.
The major element of discontinuity was the new
interest, emerging already in the 1914 Materials,
for the literature on colour recipes of Theophilus and Cennino, no longer
considered by him as minor works, like he did in 1896. It should be noted here
that, when he wrote the Quellenbuch,
Schlosser was still subject the editorial instructions by Albert Ilg
(1847-1896), director of the second series of the "Written sources of the
history of art". Ilg, first translator of Cennini in German in 1871, had
been a great detractor of Cennini himself. Moreover, Schlosser and Ilg were on bad
personal terms (it is famous that Schlosser did not consider him as belonging
to the mainstream Vienna school of art history), and, when Ilg passed away in
1896, perhaps new spaces of intellectual freedom opened for Schlosser.
Vienna against Berlin
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| Fig. 14) Ernst Guhl, Letters of artists, the 1880 revised and enlarged edition |
Equally interesting is the comparison between
the two Viennese anthologies of Schlosser on the one hand and the two of Berlin by Ernst Karl Guhl (1853-1856) and Hermann Uhde-Bernays (1926) on the other hand.
Although von Schlosser was a great admirer of Carl Friedrich von Rumohr
(1785-1843), the founder of the school of art history in Berlin, at least the
comparison of the anthologies of art history sources seems to suggest that Vienna
and Berlin lived in different and parallel worlds. The Viennese anthologies (like
those of Schlosser and Unger) were all concentrated on specific periods and
themes (the Byzantine world, the Carolingian Empire, the Middle Ages) whose
full understanding required to compensate for the shortage of art works with
the widest possible analysis of all available written sources: the pattern for their research was that of philological repertoires supporting archaeological research. The Berlin
anthologies instead focused on epochs characterized by a very large presence of
both material and written evidence, and therefore emphasized a single genre (the
letters) excluding other types of text (treatises, memoirs, etc.).
Moreover, while in Schlosser's anthologies the goals were philological completeness (1892) and comprehensive historical
representation (1896), the Berlin work stream of art history sources offered instead
to the authors the ability to implement ex
ante a highly subjective selection of their texts, defining objectives for
the anthologies which were very selectively defined in advance by the editors.
In the case of Guhl, he chose the letters of the artists which could explain
their relationship with their age, while in the case of Uhde-Bernays the aim was
to witness the development of the spiritual aspects of art creation. The Berlin
scholars made use of their collections of letters in order to propose an
alternative reading of art history, centring it all on the unique and personal
vision of the artists (often opposed to the interpretations of art critics).
In conclusion, if for Schlosser (and Vienna)
the analysis of the sources of the history of art was at the service of the
scholar as an ancillary and secondary instrument, for those in Berlin it offered
instead an interpretation that, according to idealistic reading, originated
from the individual sphere and was therefore more authentic than any material
elements of knowledge.
* * *
Schriftquellen zur
Geschichte der karolingischen Kunst (Written Sources on History of Carolingian
Art)
Preface
This paper resumes,
albeit in a different form, a thread that has already taken shape in the first
series of these written sources of the history of art, thanks to the collection
by Unger on the Sources on the history of Byzantine art. I already dwelled on the
justification and usefulness, as well as on the objectives and purposes of such
an endeavour in the introduction to my 'Contributions to the history of art
from the Early Middle Ages sources', which were published in the Proceedings of
the sessions [Sitzungsberichte] of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna
(Tome 123, 1891, released also separately with the same title). So, in order to not repeat what has been said, I am referring to that writing, which the reader will
always need to have in his hands as if it were an extensive commentary, since
it contains the results of the study of Carolingian written sources.
The essential task of
this introduction will therefore be to explain to the reader the structure and the
content of the book.
The temporal and spatial
boundaries of the matter are already clear in the title. It includes a time
period of about 150 years, from King Pepin the Short to the death of the last
German Carolingian at the beginning of the tenth century, which marked a turning
point in the history of German life and art. The scene is France in its
broadest definition, and therefore the East France and the West France areas, corresponding to the current France and Germany, which for many centuries had a
common history. Italy assumes an autonomous position, due to tradition and
history; here the IX century did not imply a real break and it would be little
justified and useful to identify a separate phase of historical development.
And, instead, the Carolingian Europe had a very distinct position just in Northern
Europe, with specific and well defined features. It is the start-up of a
national-Nordic art, and especially national-German art; therefore, it was a
break both for what was there before and what would be after. I then believe
that this justifies the effort to compile the written sources documenting this
phase.
The first requirement
of a manual is its use convenience and clarity; a second and no less important one
is represented by having good indexes. This book tries to satisfy both needs.
The organisation of the quoted texts (each marked by a number) is geographical-alphabetic for
architecture, and by subjects for the fine arts. Within these categories, the
order is, as far as possible, chronological. At the beginning of each section
it is indicated the relevant literature, with the aim of completeness. One may,
however, perhaps find here and there some gaps, especially as regards the local
French literature, very difficult to recover. Regarding the completeness of the
same sources, however, their number (over 1100) speaks for itself: I do not
think that I can have missed a very significant text. I faced difficulties on
how to handle the news that was limited only to give an account of the
consecration of the cloisters, the building of churches and chapels, the fires
and the devastations of all kinds. In these cases, I have considered only what
was meaningful and historically significant, since the book has a history of art
content, and it not about archaeology.
Unlike the usual practice
for this kind of publications, I have abstained from a German translation. The
reason is obvious. In contrast, I made a considerable effort in the
implementation of a technical glossary. For the same reasons I have prepared an
index of the names of saints, often so important from the point of view of art
history, an index of the places, an index of persons and things, and finally a
list of the names of the artists.
A detailed
alphabetical list provides information on the sources, their places of publication
and their versions. It also provides a list of abbreviations. Some other
abbreviations are very easy to interpret. Here I would like to indicate that
the indication 'Beiträge' with no additional element indicates my
'Contributions' above.
I owe a special thanks
to the scientific institutes of Vienna, in particular the Institute for
Austrian history, the I.R. Library, the I.R. university library and then
especially to Dr. Ludwig Traube of Munich, who not only supported me with the unpublished text of his edition of the Latin poets of the
Carolingian era in three volumes, but also helped with suggestions and
proposals during the proof reading.
So all what remains is
to wish that this book will be at the service of science.
Vienna, November 1890
* * *
Quellenbuch zur
Kunstgeschichte des Abendländischen Mittelalters: ausgewählte Texte des vierten
bis fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts (A Book of
Sources on History of the Western Middle Ages: Selected texts from the Fourth
to the Fifteenth Century)
Preface
This book originates
from a personal need. I collected the most important written sources on the
history of medieval art, in order to have them at hand over the course of their
studies. This was also needed to avoid ever having to sieve again, with much
effort and huge waste of time, the original publications, which are sometimes
very difficult to find and to browse. And thus I gladly accepted to follow
the invitation of the director of these "Written sources" and to bring
together for the specialist the main sources in a volume, especially since the
historical and theological repertoires from which they are derived are not normally
included in the libraries of art historians.
I then made another
consideration. Rightly so, the study of the written sources - alongside that of
the monuments - is today given great emphasis. It is therefore necessary that
students can have a way to make experience with the use of these sources. I
think therefore that this collection will help university lectures and facilitate
practical workshops as supporting text.
This Quellenbuch has
another ambition. I would like to offer a glimpse into the art literature of
the ancient Christianity and the Middle Ages, and - as it has already been done
in purely historical studies – I prepared a reader collecting statements about
art in the intermediate era. The organization of the individual steps is
therefore also chronological, according to the time of the writing of the
respective texts. Therefore, this new volume has nothing to do with the
collections of (Byzantine and Carolingian) literary sources already published
in previous editions of this series. Those writings aimed at a publication
as complete as possible of all the records and passages on the art of those
times and are therefore essentially designed for a smaller group of
specialists. But here we have collected in principle only the broadest and most
coherent texts, and only in the most important and interesting sections for a
historian. Also taking into account the size of the book, I had to exclude all
non-literary evidence: for example, the inscriptions - in their own way, or as
affixed to monuments - but also documents, statutes, inventories and finally -
as is obvious - the theoretical writings.
A further limitation
is clarified in the text: we only consider the Western texts until the end of
the Middle Ages.
Vienna, Easter 1895
Dr. Julius von
Schlosser
NOTES
[1] The work was published just four years
later, in 1896.
[2] It was published in Italian in 1992, with
the title Quellenbuch. Repertorio di fonti per la Storia dell’Arte
del Medioevo occidentale (secoli IV-XV). Con un’aggiunta di nuovi testi e
aggiornamenti critico-bibliografici a cura di János
Végh, Firenze, Le Lettere, 1992.
[4] See:
[8] De Mambro Santos, Ricardo - Words of
suspension. The definition of ‘Written Sources’ in Julius von Schlosser’s Kunstliteratur in "Journal of Art
Historiography" Number 2 June 2010. See:
[9] See:
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