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venerdì 9 dicembre 2016

Barbara Tramelli. Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo's 'Trattato dell'Arte della Pittura'. Color, Perspective and Anatomy. Part One



Barbara Tramelli
Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’Arte della Pittura.
Color, Perspective and Anatomy
Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2017 (but 2016)

Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
Part One


Fig. 1) The cover of the book with the Self-Portrait as a Young Boy by Giovan Paolo Lomazzo

Preliminary caveat

It must be immediately said that the work of Barbara Tramelli is not a critical edition in English of Gian Paolo Lomazzo’s (1538 to 1592) Trattato dell’Arte della Pittura (Treatise on the Art of Painting - 1584). Moving however from the analysis of the inputs which Lomazzo’s writing offered about color, perspective and representation of the human body, the monograph aims at recreating an intellectual context. The author specifies that she does not pursue the traditional approach of an art historian to interpret the Treaty. She prefers combining the artistic aspects with the history of books and the history of the transmission of knowledge. Her purpose is to understand what the Lombard artist owed to previous sources, what benefit he had from (obviously oral) discussions and exchanges of views with the main figures of the Milanese culture of his times, and how extensive have been his original contributions. And one thing is certain: her work must have been particularly demanding. Anyone who has some knowledge of art literature knows that to cope with Lomazzo’s texts is an unrewarding task. Personally, when I think of Lomazzo and his writings, I have always in mind his Angelic Gloria frescoed in the Foppa chapel of the Church of San Marco in Milan, a work that, when observed directly, provides a sense of vertigo and of typically Mannerist uneasiness, as if the angels who are above your head seem to be threatening to fall and to bury you along with the pictorial material; it is an indistinct mass, in which not even a centimetre of the apse escapes the artist's narrative fury.

Fig. 2) Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, Angelic Gloria, Apse fresco painted in the Foppa Chapel
in S. Marco Church at Milan
Source: Giovanni Dall'Orto via Wikimedia Commons

There may be of course several comparisons, encompassing Correggio’s dome of the Parma Cathedral and the Concert of Angels by Gaudenzio Ferrari in Saronno, but personally I cannot help but ponder how much Lomazzo conserved a secret soul, in many respect a medieval one, as his picture recalled those coronations of the Virgin where the angels flock symmetrically on either side of the table, according to a predetermined hierarchical order.


Fig. 3) Gaudenzio Ferrari, Concert of the Angels, 1534-1536, Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of Miracles, Saronno
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Also in the literary works of Lomazzo, it prevails the same overcrowding, horror vacui. i.e. the same fear of empty space, but here without any order. Rather, the existence of a framework is only formally declared, while in practice all is overwhelmed by inconsistencies, repetitions and contradictions. I am sure that Barbara Tramelli must have spent years jumping from one page to the other of Lomazzo’s writings, following clues, searching for confirmations, and proving illogic statements. And she must have spent much time to decide what to discard or not, and what was essential or not. The result was a typically Anglo-Saxon work, not just (too obvious) because it has been written in English, but because it stands for clarity and rationality. I will say it now (and I will explain below the reasons thereof) that the work has not always convinced me in substance, but it demonstrates intellectual honesty in providing an essential and consistent line of interpretation. It is a book that I have read with pleasure, as, in short, it is never discouraging the reader and making him feel inadequate: the difficulties of the reader are the same as those of the author, and she exposes her doubts with the utmost sincerity.


Lomazzo's writings

In today's art historiography, Gian Paolo Lomazzo is mainly cited for his theory of the "Idea" (i.e. of ideal beauty, replicated from an other-worldly reality, according to a basically neo-Platonic logic). In this sense, it must be recalled that Lomazzo was 'rediscovered' by Erwin Panofsky in his famous Idea; a concept in art theory, 1924 [1]. Others have also stressed Lomazzo’s peculiar approach to art, characterised by his "cultural relativity". Accordingly, for him all different ways of painting (different styles, we would say today) were perfectly worthy of attention and merit, if they were in line with artists' inclinations. In fact, the literary production of Lomazzo was very wide and today has almost completely been published. His first text known to us is the only one which remained manuscript and incomplete. This is the Libro dei sogni (Book of Dreams), 1563. Twenty years later was released the Trattato della Pittura (Treatise on Painting - 1584), in a completely different personal condition (Lomazzo suddenly became blind in 1571). Apparently three versions were edited in the same year and one the following year [2]. Then, in a quick sequence, he produced the Rime (Rhymes - 1587), the Rabisch (Arabesques - 1589), the Idea del Tempio della Pittura (Idea of the Temple of Painting - 1590) and Della Forma delle Muse (On the Form of the Muses - 1591). The sequencing of the publication of the works does not necessarily coincide with the one with which Lomazzo wrote them; nor the works with more literary ambitions (Rabisch and Rhymes) should be separated from the analysis of the others. In his 1973 edition, Roberto Paolo Ciardi (see footnote 6) highlighted the close relationship between the Book of Dreams (which, as mentioned above, was written in 1563) and the Rhymes. The Book of Dreams was due to encompass sixteen sections, each called 'ragionamento' (reasoning). At the end of each of the seven ‘reasonings’ which have came down to us, the author indicated a series of poems that were to be read by way of interlude. All these compositions belonged, in reality, to the Rhymes. It seems therefore evident that the two works were essentially initiated hand in hand; the drafting of the Rhymes, however, lasted for decades, as they also include largely subsequent poems. Again Mr Ciardi says, much more doubtfully, that the Book of Dreams represented, in essence, a version in a nutshell (and in a dialogue form) of the Treatise on Painting. Whatever it happened, and despite the absence of documentary information, all scholars agree that the Treatise and the Idea started many years before. It is impossible, at this point, not to notice the time lag between the Book of Dreams (1563), the only dated and of which we got an autograph manuscript, and all the published writings, which began to be released - as mentioned - in 1584. The question is: what did Lomazzo do in the meantime? Why did he publish only in an old age? The first explanation given since the nineteenth century was that Lomazzo began writing only after he became blind, having abandoned painting, in 1571. This thesis it proved however to be inconsistent with the above mentioned information (at the time the manuscript of the Book of Dreams was not known). It is highly unlikely, then, that Lomazzo has been working on the Treatise for thirteen years after he lost his sight, and from 1584 onwards has found inspiration that drove him to become graphomaniac. The explanation is probably to be sought in the artist's acquaintances and the historical contingency of Milan in those years. 

Fig. 4) Frontispiece of the Trattato dell'arte della pittura (1584)
Source: https://raccoltavinciana.milanocastello.it/it/content/giovan-paolo-lomazzo-trattato-dell%E2%80%99arte-della-pittura


Lomazzo and his acquaintances

Fig. 5) Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, Self-Portrait as Abbot of the Academy of the Val di Blenio,
about 1568-1571, Milano, Brera Gallery
Source: Wikimedia Commons

One of the most well-known biographical elements in the life of Lomazzo is his participation in the Academy of Val Blenio. He was also "Abbot" (essentially, the director) fo the Academy from 1568 until his death. Ms Tramelli devotes ample space to talk about the Academy and those who belonged to it, grasping the full significance of a "location" for the informal transmission of ideas. Established in 1560, the Academy was what today we would call a cultural circle. It was open to all (not only to the nobles) provided that they could read and write. It was, therefore, an academy of scholars with a strong connotation of a Milanese identity. The Val Blenio is a valley between Como and Switzerland; from there, traditionally, came the porters who were engaged in the heaviest transport work in Milan. By choosing to call each other 'porters' or, even more amicably, ‘Compà’ (Companions), the components accepted to join an essentially egalitarian academy (even the "abbot", in fact, was not a superintendent) in which a peculiar dialect (the 'porters’ language') was spoken. The dialect had its grammatical rules and vocabulary that was - of course – inspired by the oral dialect of the Blenio porters, but in reality, in the same moment when it was put into writing, became a somewhat 'artificial' language, only understandable by the members belonging to the association. It was, in fact, a sophisticated cultural operation, as confirmed first by the fact that the names of the members of the Academy, published at the end of the Rabisch (it means, in the porters’ language, the 'arabesque') were nobles, painters, poets, artisans, writers, lawyers, engineers, physicians and astrologers, with the sole declared intention of passing time with friends and indulge in much drinking of wine. In fact, as claimed by Ms Tramelli and absolutely logical to believe, in this circle of revellers were also held educated discussions on the most diverse subjects: painting, and its belonging to the liberal arts could only be one of these. Although we do not know precisely, we can easily imagine that the presence of so a potentially subversive academy, devoted in hindsight to neo-pagan rites, displeased the Spanish Milan where Carlo Borromeo, one of the most ardent promoters of the new creed of the Counterreformation, was archbishop from 1564 to 1584 [7]. This is crucial. Some believe that Lomazzo did not publish anything until 1584 simply because his writings included topics not satisfactory with Counterreformed principles. This certainly applied, for example, to the 1563 Book of Dreams, which contained pages with an explicit erotic content inspired by the well-known ones by Aretino. More generally - according to scholars such as, for example, Ciardi - Lomazzo, even beyond his erotic contents, had certainly not embraced the Counterreformation in a fervent mood and had all the features to be suspected as an affiliated to Protestantism. Barbara Tramelli does not deal particularly with the issue, simply because it does not concern her main field of investigation (to her, basically, it's interesting to find the traces of the others 'porters' of the Academy into the Treatise). However I think one thing is certain: as from a certain moment on, things changed for Lomazzo and for the Academy, and all became easier. This happened roughly between 1580 and 1585. Previously, the Academy had found a protector (and indeed a member), in Pirro Visconti Borromeo (1560-1604), a rich noble representative of a secondary branch of the same family of the Archbishop (demonstrating that not everyone may feel the same way in the same family). More importantly, in 1584 Carlo Borromeo passed away. Perhaps it is pure coincidence, but since 1584 Lomazzo began publishing. It is not at all certain that Carlo Borromeo was the sole impediment to the release of the writings: an even simpler explanation is that Lomazzo did not have the funds to finance the publications, and that he might have collected them just thanks to Pirro Visconti Borromeo. It should be added that, between 1585 and 1589, Pirro promoted the renovations of his 'villa of delight' in Lainate, entrusting the project to Martino Bassi, who knew Lomazzo, and the pictorial decoration to the Parma painter Camillo Procaccini. The villa in Lainate would eventually become home to a prestigious wunderkammer, fruit of collecting passion of the noble, with waterworks, grotesque and every other kind of fashionable decorations in those days; Lomazzo was blind and could not paint, but it is obvious that he played an advisory role in the work. And in 1587 he published the Rhymes, whose full title is "Rime ad imitazione dei grotteschi usati dai pittori” (Rhymes in imitation of the grotesques used by painters): those grotesques that Procaccini was painting in Lainate and Giovan Paolo knew well, having been as a young man in Rome and visited the remains of the Domus Aurea. This is much more than a coincidence.


Fig. 6) Frontispiece of  the Rabisch (1589).
Source: Wikimedia Commons

For whom did Lomazzo write?

One of the most discussed aspects (and to which the authoress reserves most attention) is to understand to which audience Lomazzo addressed his works. In the case of the Rabisch the answer is obvious: it was written to be read by the other 'porters' of the Academy of Val Blenio. The issue appears more blurred for the Treatise. Certainly, the Treatise had a didactic purpose: Lomazzo argued on several occasions to write for young painters and their training. The training course offered to them consisted of theoretical and practical aspects, interconnected one with the other. However, it seems safe to say that there were basically two types of addressees: on the one hand, of course, the artists and the other the 'amateurs', i.e. those who were interested in art (and might collect artworks), without being in turn art creators. There were many of them also in the ranks of the Academy. And yet, one must remember that Lomazzo operated a precise distinction between 'artists' and simple ‘professionals’. "His attitude towards "practical painters" who do not consider theoretical notions necessary for their work is very critical. He labels as ignorant those artists - so numerous compared to the learned ones - "who suffocate and infect the whole world, with the vagueness of their mere pratice" [8]. In this respect the Blenio Academy of which he was part [...] may be considered a disguised attempt by Milanese painters and artisans to join forces with local men of letters in order to fight against the predominance of artists ignorant of "good letters", and in order to create a new "ideal type" of painter capable of discoursing on various topics and expressing himself poetically"  (pp. 30-31).

It has been assumed that this type of approach was not only a general reference to the nobility of art (and the cultivated painter) against those who exercised their profession in vulgar manner. Likewise statements, at least in principle, were very frequent (not only in Italy) and often had a somewhat rhetorical flavour, since they aimed precisely at celebrating the instructed painter. Sometimes, with all due caution, it has been proposed to read them with a reference to the reality of events, like it is the case for example of Diálogos de la Pintura (Dialogues on painting) by Vicente Carducho, published in Madrid in 1633. They would be an attempt by Italian trained artists to take the leadership on the rest of the guild painters, creating an Academy of Design. In the case of Lomazzo, Ms Tramelli took rather the view than the targets of the artist’s arrows were the ‘foreigner' artists, i.e. those coming from outside Milan, in particular that Bernardino Campi who knew great success in the Milanese artistic circles. Personally, I am not entirely convinced (and not just because, in addition to express negative comments, Lomazzo also commended his book about colours, now lost). I prefer to think that also here the counterpart consisted of the other local artists in the guild (which was called, needless to say, School of St. Luke). Ms Tramelli dwells on this at pp. 41-46 and highlights, moreover, that due to the urban structure of the city, all artists actually had their workshops in a very limited area of the town, must therefore have known very well each other, and probably lived in a highly competitive climate. Very likely, Lomazzo, as a man of culture, wanted to stand out from the mass of those whom he did not consider artists (although part of the corporation), but "practical painters".


A man of many contradictions

If the controversy with regard to the lowest level artists is not new, it seems to me rather a surprise that he used some harsh words in respect of those painters who were acting like courtiers, "who despise being called painters, and follow the habits of gentlemen and knights, caring only about gracefulness and fancy clothes. For these reasons they deserve nothing but to be pointed at and to be disdained(p. 31). Implicitly, these statements offer a very severe judgment in respect of court life, and this might even make sense, since Giovan Paolo was for over twenty years the Abbot of an Academy which had egalitarianism as one of its founding principles. However, one cannot forget that the Treatise on Painting was dedicated to Carlo Emanuele of Savoy, Duke of Turin, while the Idea of the Temple of Painting was dedicated to Philip II of Spain. The contradiction is manifest. We should not be surprised. It will certainly nor the first, nor the last we will find in Lomazzo’s Treatise, the contents of which will be discussed in the second part of this post.


End of Part One


NOTES

[1] We can safely say, I think, that Schlosser completely missed the point when speaking about Lomazzo in his Art Literature. First, he proved that he did not have clear views on where to place him. He first said that "we owe to him the greatest and widest treaty of mannerism, his true Bible, the “Treatise on the Art of Painting" (p. 395) and then he added: "Lomazzo gave us a kind of compendium of his greatest work in a shorter writing, with the title “The Idea of the Temple of Painting", which was published in 1590. The title itself announced the prodigiously baroque inspiration"(p. 396).

[2] These were most probably indeed editions aiming at erasing previous mistakes. It should also be said that the title changed between the first and the second edition, passing from Treatise on the Art of Painting to Treatise on the Art of Painting, Sculpture et Architecture.

[3] Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Scritti sulle arti (Writings on the arts), curated by Roberto Paolo Ciardi, Firenze, Marchi e Bertolli Publishers, 1973.

[4] Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Rabisch (Arabesques), edited by Dante Isella, Torino, Einaudi, 1993.

[5] Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Rime ad imitazione dei grotteschi usati da’ pittori (Rhymes in imitation of the grotesques used by the artists), curated by Alessandra Ruffino, Manziana (Rome), Vecchiarelli publisher, 2006.

[6] The Italian reader can now enjoy the modern editions of all titles thanks to the excellent annotated edition of the same (except Rabisch and Rime) published in two volumes in 1973 by Roberto Paolo Ciardi [3]. The Rabisch were published in 1993 by Dante Isella [4] and the Rhymes in imitation of the grotesques used by painters in 2006, thanks to Alessandra Ruffino [5]. For foreign speakers the opportunity to read the texts is much more limited, and encompasses only the Idea of the Temple of Painting. This is not by chance, given that this is the work to which Panofsky referred in 1924. I would like to mention the critical edition by Robert Klein (1974), published in Florence "in the headquarters of the National Institute on Renaissance Studies in Palazzo Strozzi" but with translation and commentary in French; as well as the recent English translation (Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Idea of the Temple of Painting, curated by Julia Jean Chai, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013).

[7] See in this blog the review to its Instructionum Fabricae et Supellectlis ecclesiasticae of 1577.

[8] Incidentally, I would like to mention the negative connotation given to the term 'vagueness'.


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