Barbara Tramelli
Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’Arte della Pittura.
Color, Perspective and Anatomy
Color, Perspective and Anatomy
Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2017 (but 2016)
Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro
Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro
Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
Part One
[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).
![]() |
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.
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'.
Questo commento è stato eliminato da un amministratore del blog.
RispondiElimina