Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Giulio Mancini
Considerazioni sulla pittura
[Considerations on Painting]
Published for the first time by Adriana Marucchi with a commentary by Luigi Salerno
Two volumes, Rome, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1956-1957
Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro. Part One
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| Caravaggio, Good Luck, 1593-1595, Rome, Capitoline Museums Source: https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/asset/5AHkWwltiohLvQ |
Lionello Venturi on Giulio Mancini
“It is not my intention to propose precepts
belonging to the art of painting and its mode of operation, since this is not
my profession, but also because this has already been treated by Albrecht Dürer
and Pomponio Gaurico in their books on the proportions of the human body, and
later by Vinci, Vasari and Lomazzo and most recently by Zuccaro, an extremely
gifted man in this profession, but to consider and propose some warnings with
which a man who has a passion for similar studies can easily express a view on
a painting which has been offered to him, and consequently then, if serving some
princes with the same passion, can assist them in this business both when
purchasing the paintings and, after having bought them, when deciding on how to
place them in the appropriate places, according to the lights, materials, epochs
and the manners how they were made" (vol. I, p. 291). With these
words, written around 1614, Giulio Mancini (1559-1630), personal physician of
Pope Urban VIII since 1623, begins the 'Discorso
di pittura' (Speech on Painting), or the 'short' version of his 'Considerazioni sulla pittura' (Considerations
on painting), as I am going to better explain below. And one can immediately
appreciate the great novelty of the work: the 'amateur' of painting, i.e. the
precursor of the nineteenth century 'connoisseur' makes his entrance onto the
scene of art literature and becomes the protagonist hereof. Not only for this
reason, the 'Considerations on paintings’
are a fundamental work: the text inspired writers of later centuries, sometimes
being copied without even being mentioned, in dozens of occasions. This is even
more amazing when one considers that the work of Mancini was never published,
but only had a wide circulation in manuscript form.
The
two-volume edition, promoted by Lionello Venturi, edited by Adriana Marucchi
and commented by Luigi Salerno, is - astonishingly - the only printed version
to date. If you consider that it dates back to 1956-1957, it is understood that
today Mancini's work is known only by 'excerpts' (the life of Caravaggio, that
of Annibale Carracci, the advice on how to buy and sell paintings [1] etc.).
Moreover, it is mentioned in all the history books of art criticism as a
fundamental work, but, in fact, either you own it at home or you need to find
it in a public library. We owe to Michele Maccherini, who discovered the
correspondence between Giulio and his brother, additional elements of knowledge
on the figure of Mancini and his work. They are published in bits and pieces within
generally collective works devoted to Caravaggio: it is a typical case where
the fame of one of artists has obscured the overall system of a work hosting
several biographies (although Mancini dedicated only around two or three pages
to Caravaggio).
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| Caravaggio, The Conversion of Saint Paul, 1601, Rome, Santa Maria del Popolo, Cerasi Chapel Source: Wikimedia Commons |
To minimise
the risk of mistakes, I would like to refer first of all to the presentation that Lionello Venturi (who strongly wanted this edition) wrote for the first volume of
the work edited by Ms Marucchi. I am proposing some abstracts hereafter:
"The book of Giulio Mancini entitled Alcune
Considerationi Appartenenti alla pittura come di Diletto di un Gentilhuomo [n.d.r. Some
considerations belonging to painting which may please a gentleman] is the essential source for knowing the
tendency of taste, aesthetic ideas and historical-artistic interests of
contemporary Rome in the time of Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci.
Mancini was a physician, and a forerunner of
the kind of art lover who would be later called the "amateur". His
culture embraced not only the art of his time and the classical art, but also
the Christian archaeology and the Middle Ages; it encompassed not only the
Italian painting, but also that of the French, Flemish and Germans. Once again,
Rome was the centre of international artistic life, and yet Mancini was able to
speak of both the European painting of the ancients and the moderns, and to even
understand the value of young people, a so rare quality in art critics. He
wrote about Nicholas Poussin when he was only thirty-three or thirty-four, and about
Pietro da Cortona, when the latter was just thirty. He was the first biographer
of Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci and El Greco, and identified among the living
painters Rubens, Honthorst, Ribera, Saraceni, Tempesta, Reni, Albani,
Domenichino, Guercino, etc.
Why have the 'Considerations' not yet been published so far? Starting with the contemporaries and
continuing thereafter, all the scholars have understood them as a valuable mine
of information and have looted them, first without naming them, and then by publishing
some passages [...] But the main
reason was the serious difficulty of the publication, as Adriana Marucchi knows
well. She had to solve the problem with immense personal efforts, despite the
modern facilities of photographs and microfilms. In fact, she had to work on twenty-two codes. Between 1614 and 1621,
Mancini wrote his work, but then he added further news until his death in 1630,
incorporating step by step news in ever renewed manuscripts. To find the best drafting
and complete it with the variants was a difficult endeavour, which has been
fulfilled with particular expertise.
Equally valuable and inspiring was the
commentary that Luigi Salerno drafted. It is worth simply mentioning that he
identified the ancient and modern sources of Mancini’s concepts, found the
reported texts, and identified the unknown or poorly known painters, and their merely
mentioned works, even when they were located in very different places from
where they currently are [...]. It is here necessary to cast a retrospective
glance to the interest aroused by the "Considerations" since they were written. Fabio Chigi, one of
the most authoritative sources for the Sienese art (c. 1625), based himself on
Mancini’s work. [Giovanni] Baglione
(Vite - Lives - 1642) knew the manuscripts of Mancini as one can prove about Antonio
Tempesta, even if, in some way, he buried the news he got from Mancini under a
much larger apparatus of information. The profit that Bellori drew from Mancini
is more noticeable; he placed margin comments inspired from Mancini on two
samples of the Lives of Baglione in the
two copies kept in the National Library of the Academy of Lincei. Malvasia and
Baldinucci resorted to quoting Mancini, while Monsignor Giovanni Bottari used him
for his edition of Vasari's Lives in
1759-60. The first one that made use of more than one manuscripts of Mancini
and published extensive extracts was Father Guglielmo della Valle in his Lettere Sanesi [Letters
from Siena] (1782-86)..." (Vol.
I, pp. IX-XI)
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| Cavalier d'Arpino, Fight between Horatii and Curiatii, Rome, Capitoline Museum, 1612-1613 Source: https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/asset/gwGh2tSWqeQodQ |
The structure of the Considerations on Painting
As Venturi explained,
the real problem to establish a reliable text of the work was that twenty two
versions of it were known in 1956. According to an interpretation given by Sir
Denis Mahon, they can be broadly divided into three groups: a short version
(which was given the title of Discorso di Pittura - Speech on Painting
- and from which I drew the first lines of this
review), an 'intermediate drafting' and a 'final drafting', divided into two
parts. The production time would roughly go from 1614 for the short version to
1621 for the final one, with the caveat that Mancini continued to update the
text pretty much until his death. Together with some versions of the manuscript
of the Considerations on Painting, it
was at times also displayed the Viaggio per Roma (Trip to Rome), which was a veritable art guide
of the city (one of the first ones), dating from the early twenties of the
seventeenth century. I am not speaking here on this text, as I wish to review
it separately. Ms Marucchi’s edition presents the 'last' version. Its first
part, in particular, is transcribed from the so-called S sample, i.e. the L.V.11 manuscript of the Public Library of
the Intronati in Siena; the second part originates from the sample M (Venice,
Biblioteca Marciana, Italian IV, 47 (5571)), because it was considered more
complete. The apparatus of the notes still provides all the variants of the
other specimens. The Appendix presents
the Journey to Rome.
It is clear
that all the manuscript copies testify a status of the work process which was
still far from a publication ready to be printed. It is worth noting that,
compared to the original text, the curator made certain (very reasonable) editorial
choices, for example by splitting the first part into ten chapters (by topic); it
is such a reasonable solution that today the ten chapters are cited as if they had
been designed by Mancini. It is absolutely not the case.
Normally, and to
simplify, it is usually said that the two tomes of the considerations
respectively contain the theoretical section (part one) and the historical one (the
part two). This is also not fully correct. Recalling the intentions declared by
Mancini, a real theoretical part does not exist. The first part reveals,
instead, the need to offer a classification of the fundamental aspects for the
amateur and for those collecting works of art. Let us review together those
criteria:
"Whether it is painting and how many species of
it exist; the requirements for the quality of any of them;
the nations which painted them;
the epochs when they made their paintings,
according to the degree of perfection or imperfection of the art, and so according
to the age of painting in any nation which has been painting until our times;
and the various ways in which it was painted;
and, since painting is an imitation as we will
say, how many things are imitated by the painter;
and finally the rules to recognize their
goodness and their prices and to place them in their places."(p. 12).
These words
make evident the author's taxonomic efforts. Efforts which in my view can be
compared (although it seems highly unlikely that Mancini knew it) with the 1565
Inscriptiones by Samuel Quiccheberg,
considered the first treatise on museums (or, rather, on the Wunderkammer). One cannot help but
notice that both Quiccheberg and Mancini were doctors. Is it a coincidence or is
it due to a similar mental training? I would opt for the second hypothesis: it
is about the same Aristotelian influence.
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| Cavalier d'Arpino, Coronation of the Virgin, 1615, Roma, Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Of course,
it is clear that, in dealing with various issues, Mancini also touches aspects
of a theoretical nature, but they always remain, so to speak, in the background
compared to the main purpose, and, if anything, they can be detected only at
the margin. Theoretical issues are addressed, for example, at the beginning of
the second part, when Mancini offers his Considerazioni
intorno a quello che ha scritto il Lomazzo sulla pittura (Thoughts about what Lomazzo wrote on painting - this is also a title added by Ms Marucchi) [2]
or (to a lesser extent) the Considerazioni
intorno ad alcune cose o tralasciate o non ben dette dal Vasari (Considerations
around some things either overlooked or not well explained by Vasari). From
here on, the Sienese physician somehow changes his approach and provides guidance
on biographical aspects of artists who were omitted by Vasari, or lived after
him, or were even still living. It is not trivial to take account of this fact,
because many have written that Mancini (naturally together with Giovanni
Battista Agucchi) was the first to theorize the existence of four art schools
corresponding to particular geographic areas of Italy (the Lombards, the
Venetians, the Tuscans and the Romans). This is certainly true. Nevertheless, his
text remains a 'transition' work, with some decisive advancement compared to
the past, but also with clear references to the tradition. Therefore, the
biographies contained in the second part refer mainly to Siena and the Roman world
in a broad sense (i.e. including the artists who worked in the Rome area,
regardless of their origin). The particular emphasis given to the Siena artists
should be read as expression of a manifestly local interest. The Siena-born Mancini
claims for himself the merit of having dealt with the biographies of the
Sienese artists, also entering into controversy with Vasari: "And, if this narrative may well seem a bit
too boring and out of place, however, I considered it useful to propose it to
those who have a passion for this type of art [literally: i virtuosi di
questo gusto, the virtuous of this taste] by
collecting and presenting them the worthy painters of their own homeland [literally:
i virtuosi di lor patria in questa professione, the virtuous of their homeland
in this profession] with the necessary respect
and passion [literally: con carità conveniente, with convenient charity]. In this way, I would like both to enrich the
world of this memory, and afterwards not deprive any artist [literally: i virtuosi, the virtuous] of their proper glory and honour" (p.
212). The Sienese physician is not always kind to Vasari, the historian from
Arezzo; it is difficult to say to what extent this reflects a 'common view' spreading
in those years (think of the very negative margin notes of either Annibale Carracci or Zuccari to Vasari's Lives), or a careful reading of the text from Vasari.
On this, moreover, it is worth pointing out a fact that seems incredible, but
is nevertheless confirmed when one reads all the passages of the Vite quoted in the work): Mancini did not
know the Giunti edition of the Lives (1568), but worked only on the
Torrentiniana (1550). For instance, he wrote on p. 231: "One should say something of Vasari, who,
even though he did not write his own life, however included several references
to it in the Lives of Michelangelo and Francesco Salviati, so that one knows it
in full". Mancini, in short, did not know that Vasari wrote his
autobiography in the second edition of the Lives,
and therefore ignored in full its existence. I feel therefore that his
criticism on Vasari is not the result from a careful reading of the Lives, but a reflection of the attitude
of the painters of his times, who, fifty years later, challenged the author to
have overlooked or diminished the artistic value of the artists outside of
Tuscany.
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| Annibale Carracci, Pietà, 1599-1600, Naples, National Museum of Capodimonte Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Caravaggio, the Carraccis and the Cavalier d’Arpino
In his
excellent commentary at the beginning of the second volume of the Considerations, Luigi Salerno clearly
shows that the great value of Mancini is that he wrote immediately after the
first decades of the seventeenth century, thereby providing a 'first-hand' impression
of the Roman artistic circles at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth
century. On this, as well known, Mancini made the famous division between the
four main schools, which will be used for centuries (since Bellori in his Lives): (i) Caravaggio, (ii) the
Carracci, (iii) the late mannerism of Cavalier d'Arpino and (iv) the residual,
covering all those who had worked in their own way. On Caravaggio, he said:
"This school, in this way of
operating, is very observant of truth, and keeps it always in front of it when
it is working" (p. 108). He identified, as shortcomings of this school,
the inability to adequately express the feelings, and the compositional
deficiencies that prevented it to give the best, when it had to do with 'history'
painting: "It is good for a single
figure, but I do not think […] they have value in the composition of history
and the explanation of affections, as they depend more on invention than on the
observation of things".
Mancini also captured the intimate contradiction of this school of 'excessive
realism': "What is specific to this
school is that they represent the light in combination with a source of light
originating from above without
reflexes, as if the light entered
from a window in a room whose walls are painted in black; in this way, everything bright becomes very
bright and everything dark very dark, and this give relief to the painting, but
not in a natural way". Although this observation is very acute, it was
not taken up by Bellori, to my knowledge: the 'realism school' was not 'real';
and it was not so because ‘the beautiful’ must adequate to ‘the ideal’ (an
argument which however Mancini proves to share, as we shall see below), but
because it actually reproduced a situation in a 'not natural way', i.e. in an 'impossible'
way.
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| Annibale Carracci, Glory of Christ with saints and Odoardo Farnese, 1597, Florence, Palatina Gallery Source: Wikimedia Commons |
The
Mannerist school of Cavalier d'Arpino "owns
spirit and property by nature, with good composition and with grace, in
particular for the heads. Although it does not look so precisely at the natural
like the school of Caravaggio nor it display the same severity and firmness of
the models like the school of the Carraccis,
nevertheless it has the vagueness that suddenly snatches and delights the eye,
and I remember I have heard Agostino Carracci saying about it: it is good,
because there is ecstasy and delight" (p. 109). Not directly discussing
the experience of the late Mannerist Cavalier d'Arpino, Mancini put into
question one of the stylistic elements of Mannerism, when he refuted the
theories of Lomazzo, negating the need to build up a figure like a 'serpentine line' (vol. I, pp. 161-162) following
the teachings of Michelangelo.
That of the
Carracci "with Guido [Reni], Albani,
Domenichino, and those living in Bologna" is, without doubt, the 'preferred school': "This school
has as, its own feature, the intelligence of art, the expression of grace and affection,
the property and composition of history, having brought together the way Raphael
painted with that of the Lombards, because it sees the natural, owns it, seizes
the good, leaves aside the bad, improves it, and gives colour and shadows with
natural light, with movements and grace". It is the triumph of the Bolognese
painters, who, unlike Caravaggio, know how to 'compose stories' and narrate 'feelings'
using a 'natural light' and not as impossible one, as that of Michelangelo
Merisi; they can do it always looking at nature, 'taking the good', and 'leaving
the bad' and improving it. All ingredients of the theory of ‘ideal beauty’ are thereby
already served at the table (although not spelled out rigorously as Bellori
would do later on).
End of Part One
NOTES
[1] See Cristina De Benedictis, Roberta Roani, Riflessioni sulle Regole per comprare collocare e conservare le pitture di Giulio Mancini, Firenze, Edifir, 2005.
[2] See in this blog la recensione a Barbara Tramelli, Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’Arte della Pittura. Color, Perspective and Anatomy. https://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.com/2016/07/federico-zuccari5.html
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