[Art literature as an experience of Italy]
Edited by Helmut PfotenhauerVilla Vigoni Series, Number 5
Tübingen, Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1991, 327 pages
Review by Francesco Mazzaferro - Part One
Thomas Cramer,
 |
| Fig. 1) The proceedings of the conference "Art literature as an experience of Italy" held at Villa Vigoni in 1990 |
The conference "Art literature as an
experience of Italy” [1]
was held in 1990 at Villa Vigoni, the public centre for German-Italian studies
on the Como Lake, which the two states had created just a few years earlier
[2]. The book I am reviewing contains its proceedings, released by Niemeyer publishers
in Tübingen in 1991, with the support of the Villa Vigoni Association and the
Ernst Heinrich Heimann Foundation of Munich [3]. The meeting was organized as a
reflection on the theme of Kunstliteratur
(art literature). In fact, it served as a brainstorming session to prepare the
publication of the Bibliothek der Kunstliteratur (Library of art literature) [4] as from 1992, an ambitious publishing project
of the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag,
expected at first in eight volumes, but then completed with the fifth tome in
1995. Of that Library, Pfotenhauer
indeed curated the second and the third volumes, respectively on Early classicism. Positions and oppositions:
Winckelmann, Mengs, Heinse and on Classic
and classicism. In addition, the speakers at the conference in Villa Vigoni
also included the two general editors of the Library, i.e. Gottfried Boehm and Norbert Miller, and Thomas Cramer,
one of the editor of the first volume.
 |
| Fig. 2) Carl Gustav Carus, Raphael and Michelangelo with an eye to the Church of St. Peter in Rome, 1831 |
The intention of the conference was to
highlight the interest in Italy as the constant theme of the German-speaking
art literature across the centuries. Frankly, I do not think that the objective
was fully achieved. There is no doubt that the proceedings include highly
interesting papers, and I will devote due attention to them hereafter. And yet,
I should like to say that, as a whole, I was disappointed by the reading. Let
me first explain why.
Browsing the series of interventions with the
tradition of German art literature in mind, one cannot help but notice
important gaps on the subject, even in the historical period (the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries) to which the event at Villa Vigoni devoted more
attention. So, the conference did not discuss the German translation, between the end of
1700 and beginning of 1800, of the main texts of Italian art literature, such
as, for example, the Life of Benvenuto
Cellini written by himself in 1803, with Goethe's translation, and the Lives of Vasari, converted into German by Ludwig
Schorn in 1832. It also missed any reference to the series Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik des Mittelaltersund der Renaissance, edited by Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg, the founder
of the Vienna School. Starting in 1871, that series hosted the German
translation of many basic texts of the Italian art literature: Alberti, Biondo,
Cennini, Condivi, Dolce, Filarete, Leonardo and Pacioli. There was no mention of
Julius von Schlosser, the prince scholar in this matter, who coined the term Kunstliteratur as distinctive
appellation of the discipline. Well, Schlosser had an absolute reverence for
Italy and his work would in itself be sufficient to confirm the hypothesis to
be checked in the conference: at the origin, art literature in all linguistic
areas in Europe (and not only in the German one) had objectively a central core
around the Italian studies. Likewise, it would be foolish to ignore the
increasingly universal (and therefore less and less Italian) scope of art
literature, which eventually became prevalent with writings of artists of the
last two centuries. In the proceedings I also did non detect any reference to the numerous anthologies of artists’ letters, published in Berlin over the past two hundred
years, which testified to the interest not only of German scholars, but also to the passion of a wide audience in the Germanic world for the Italian art literature of the
Renaissance and Baroque. And, as admitted by the curator, there was no specific
analysis of the literary essays of Winckelmann [5] (and - I would add - Mengs), although they were
often cited in various papers. Finally, I missed almost any traces of Dürer and Sandrart, to talk
about relevant German texts of previous eras.
 |
| Fig. 3) Carl Gustav Carus, Memory of Rome, 1839 |
These important gaps could have been offset by
a rigorous conceptual framework, which would allow outlining and consolidating
the most recent study orientations about art literature in the German world. By
itself, it would be no surprise if such studies followed a different path from those
of earlier generations of scholars in the field. To grasp the methodological
question remains actually crucial, because the definition of Kunstliteratur was not accurate even in
the seminal work of Schlosser of 1924. Therefore, I have read the volume edited
by Helmut Pfotenhauer with the intention to continue my considerations on the
very nature of Kunstliteratur. Art
literature is - at least in my opinion – a genre always and everywhere present
in the Western world. That genre has seen the artists in the broad sense (and
therefore painters, sculptors and architects, but in recent times also a
variety of other art creators) often taking up the pen either to ensure their
memories for posterity, or to communicate in writing among each other or with
other protagonists of the art world, or finally just to fix their thoughts on
paper, sometimes with the intent to play a role in the public debate and
sometimes independently of any immediate plan of publication of their writings.
Art literature coincided therefore with the communication strategy of the
artists, according to their personal preferences and the forms of their time.
In the introductory essay, Pfotenhauer proposed some undoubtedly interesting methodological hints, inspired by semiotics and
centred on the study of symbols and structures in art literature, like the literary
representations of the art (for example, the literary description of works of
art, i.e. the ekphrasis, and that of the landscape), and the combination of
creative tools (writing, painting, sculpture). "A conference on art literature must be asked in principle two issues:
the importance of the words to the pictures (...) and of images to the words"
[6]. Therefore, the focus should
not be on the authors (artists and writers), but on the tools (pictures and
words) that they use. The choice of the words is always intentional and
meaningful, starting with the selection of the title of the artwork: thereby, the artist allows
the identification of its subject, especially at a time when their
reproducibility is still made difficult by the unavailability of techniques
[7]. But the meaning of the text goes far beyond the mere identification of the
theme of the artworks: "It is,
therefore, necessary to understand the meaning of the literary, and of
linguistic training in art creation as well as in the science which governs its
study" [8], i.e. art criticism and art history.
In the introduction, Pfotenhauer recognized
that the issue is complex. The conference included interventions on the
writings of some scholars (e.g., the proto-romantic Karl Philipp Moritz [9]) according to
which the word cannot add anything essential to the work of art, since the
latter should speak for itself. In most conference papers, however, the ekphrasis
is considered topical, because it allows the art writer to reproduce the
impression of the direct vision of the work in the reader, while achieving two
goals in parallel: first, it avoids too general, theoretical and abstract considerations,
and, second, it remedies the costs and technical difficulties of
reproducibility in printed works. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the writing on art in Germany defined new typical forms of literary
genres, such as the travel memoir, the dialogues on art, the poetry on art, the
novel inspired by fictional artists and finally the fictitious letters as a
description of artwork [10]. "What
is important is that, in most cases, the visual arts in this perceptual horizon
could have not delivered their full effect without art literature. The latter
often went beyond a form of indirect and linguistic reproduction of artworks
and often became a manifestation of a literary work by itself"
[11].
Did the Villa Vigoni conference help
developing such an ambitious theoretical approach? I'm not really sure. It must be said that the
volume did not really propose a precise definition of art literature (nor did the
five volumes of the Library of art
literature in the following years). Moreover, the dialogue between word and image occupied
- all in all – the attention of only a few contributors. The prospect of the interventions
was, in fact, basically that of a research mainly focused in the field of
history of language (and vocabulary), and the attention turned on the texts as
a literary description of the artworks; this may also have been the obvious
result of the selection of participants, as speakers and discussants were mostly
scholars of German literature. Finally, it must be said that Pfotenhauer curated
(together with Boehm) another collection of essays on ekphrasis in 1995,
perhaps thereby certifying that his main interest - rather than on art
literature itself - focused on the literary description of art [12].
 |
| Fig. 4) Johannes Georg Sulzer, General Theory of the Fine Arts, 1792 |
The conference in Villa Vigoni also expanded
its interest in the field of the literary description of landscapes, to which it
also attached equal or perhaps greater attention than that of artworks. There
is no doubt that the period under review was the one when landscape was reserved
the most specific interest in aesthetics. As a result, the central essay by
Norbert Miller discussed topics like the literary portrayal of nature in proto-romantic
literature, the inclusion of gardening among the fine arts since 1792 with the
"General Theory of the Fine Arts" (Allgemeine Theorie der Schonen Künste) by Johann Georg Sulzer
(1720-1779), the growing differentiation between the French gardens for noble
use only and the English public parks for the middle class [13], the recourse
to the rhetorical description of the parks in Goethe's Elective Affinities, the meaning of the term picturesque to define the landscape in artistic and literary terms starting
with Diderot, the landscape aesthetic theory in the English literature of the
eighteenth century and finally the visions about the nature by the pre-Romantic
writer Jean Paul. The theme of the literary description of landscape prevailed
also in a short report by the Italian Maurizio Bossia on the description of
nature in Tuscany in the travel journals [14] between 1760 and 1840.
 |
| Fig. 5) Daniel Chodowiecki, Natural and sought attitudes of life, 1779 |
In fact, it seems to me that the real theme of
the conference was not art literature by itself, nor the relationship between
Italy and Germany, but that of the description of art (and landscape) in German
literature, in a phase of change of the aesthetic taste in Germany. It was the époque
starting with Winckelmann’s rediscovery of the classical world, and ending with
the full affirmation of romantic feelings, i.e. between 1750 and 1830. It is at
this stage - Pfotenhauer wrote – that Germans switched to a more careful and pondered
contemplation of artworks (especially of statuary), compared to the
substantially 'charlatan' attitude of previous years; he cited in this regard
two famous prints by Daniel Chodowiecki (1726-1801), the first illustrating the
conceptual attitude in the face of a statue, and the second its thoughtless
discussion [15]. In those years, it were born in parallel both the first germs
of art criticism and those of Kunstliteratur,
which – according to a definition different from the one deriving from
Schlosser – was in his view a new literary genre based on ekphrasis [16]. In
those same years, the dialectic between word and image was reinforced by the diffusion
of the technical means to print illustrations in literary texts.
What it is ultimately the role of Italy and
more specifically (to return to the title) of "Art literature as an experience of Italy"? In the above
described context of an increasing theoretical reflection on aesthetics,
accompanied by new forms of literary description of the works of the artists,
the German world started wondering whether there was still a real need to
travel to Italy in order to fully understand art fundamentals. The conclusions were
very different: Lessing was the leader of those who did not believe it at all
necessary any more (and in fact he never travelled to Italy), while
Winckelmann, Herder, Heyse, Moritz, Goethe and many others sought the ultimate
reasons of aesthetics in our country, and documented it with writings that - according
to Pfotenhauer – have exactly become the historical core of Kunstliteratur in German language. The
reading of Italy, offered by the travellers, were at times diametrically
opposed. Winckelmann was only interested in classical antiquity. For Goethe,
the arrival in Rome was instead a source of spiritual rebirth. Herder was a
careless visitor and full of prejudices [17], especially against Rome [18],
whose antiquity bored him [19]. He did not appreciate Italian painting and detested even more the
classicism of German artists in Rome [20]; and yet he was an enthusiastic
admirer of the Greek-Roman statues [21], and especially the ones displaying
unclothed women, to which he devoted attention admiring the sensuality of forms
[22]. Moritz - who was also inspired by the classic concept of 'beautiful' [23] - was nevertheless an absolute admirer of Michelangelo's paintings and an
equally stark detractor of classical statuary [24]. None of them was however an
artist; and therefore Italy's experience confirmed the concept of art
literature as literature about art, rather than literature by the artists.
 |
| Fig. 6) The volume Écrire la peinture: De Diderot à Quignard, by Pascal Dethurens (2009) |
What general conclusions can be drawn? In the
first half of the nineties of the last century, there has certainly been a stimulating
attempt in the German culture of recovering attention for the genre of art
literature, also using new conceptual categories, like those of semiotics, but
it was done in a way which I would say very messy. The main insight was that one
had to study the link between word and image, and to refer to symbolic forms
(such as the ekphrasis and description of the landscape). There would have been
nothing wrong, if scholars had developed a fully new alternative line of
thought on Kunstliteratur, which
diverged from the positivist or idealist conceptions that had respectively prevailed
in Vienna and Berlin in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, at
least in my opinion, the theoretical elaboration has remained undetermined. The
conference of 1990 showed shortcomings which I consider still unresolved with
the publication of the Library of art
literature in five volumes between 1992 and 1995, and probably led to the
surrender to publish the last three volumes originally foreseen for the Library. Elaborating a new broader
theory would have been on opportunity to expand the concept of art literature
also to contemporary art, and to get out of a discussion only linked at the
time of classicism and romanticism. A broad definition of ‘art literature’ is,
among other things, also suitable to the French-speaking world, as evidenced
both by the anthology of Paul Éluard in the Fifties (already reviewed in this
blog) and the more recent "Écrire la peinture: De Diderot à Quignard"
by Pascal Dethurens, about which we will speak in a forthcoming review. It would
therefore have been possible to reach a new modern and European idea of
the concept of Kunstliteratur, taking
into account the different traditions. Nevertheless, the impression is that
this was a missed opportunity, and that perhaps the only issue on which strong
conclusions have been reached was that of the analysis of the ekphrasis as
literary form.
Despite these nuanced considerations, it seems
useful to refer below to the most effective contributions in the volume.
Experience of Italy and national humanism in the sixteenth century.
 |
| Fig. 7) The title page of Hodoeporicon itineris Italici, a journey to Italy in verse by Georg Sabinus, 1535 |
Thomas Cramer (1938 -) was professor
for ancient German literature at the Technische
Universität of Berlin, and one of the editors of the first volume of the Library of artistic literature (Renaissance
and Baroque). He presented a survey dedicated to the writings of German Art in
1500, and in particular studied the information and opinions they reveal on
Italian Renaissance. The central thesis of his contribution to the conference
is both interesting and surprising. At the height of the Renaissance, the
Italian world would have not at all attracted the German one for the quality of
the works of art or architecture that one could visit in our country, whether
they were contemporary or from the past; instead, Italy would have exercised an
undeniable fascination through the reading of the literary texts of Latin
authors, both from classical antiquity and Italian humanism. The Italian image
in Germany in 1500 would thus not be artistic, but almost exclusively literary.
In respect of Italian artworks, the German world (especially, but not
exclusively, the Protestant one) would have in fact expressed many
reservations. "Although it is
surprising, we must get used to thinking that at least until the beginning of
the sixteenth century, the Italian cities (perhaps with the only exception of
Venice) did not seem so remarkable to German travellers, neither concerning the urban sets nor
the architectural works in their complex" [25]. In 1487, the humanist Konrad Celtis
[26] did not hide his
disappointment at the present conditions in Rome, so different from those
described in ancient texts [27]; in his epigrams, he instead celebrated the literary
roots of our country. Also the subsequent texts of other authors did not harbour great enthusiasm for the works of art. So the travel guide in Italian verse
by Georg Sabinus (1508-1560) [28] contained only a description of the basilica
of Saint Mark in Venice [29], while widely recalled the humanists Ficino and
Bembo and contained citations of Petrarch and Cicero [30]. Bartholomäus Sastrow
(1520-1603), the mayor of Stralsund (a small town in Northern Germany) recalled
in his autobiography [31], written in 1595, the journey he had made to Rome forty years before and
noted: "In addition to the seven
major churches, there are other 150 large and small ones, as well as
monasteries and hospitals; I have not visited all these buildings, but where I
was in most cases I did not see anything special" [32] A few years later it was the turn
of architect and town planner Heinrich Schickhardt (1558 -1635) [33], for which
religious reserves due to Protestantism cannot apply, as he was a Jesuit: he
described his trip to Italy only in very summary terms, including the visit of
art cities such as Florence and Pisa [34]. And yet, it must be said that his
works in Germany, as the designs for the city of Freudenstadt completed in
1604, clearly reflected a setting inspired by Italian Renaissance.
 |
| Fig. 8) Heinrich Schickhardt, Drawing of Freudenstadt, 1604 |
Cramer took the view that also the writings of
Walther Ryff (1500 - 1548) could confirm his thesis that the German world
assigned to literature, and not directly to the observation of art, a central
role in the knowledge of Italy. In our country, Ryff is known as Rivius; he was a physician,
philosopher and theorist of architecture.
 |
| Fig. 9) Walther Ryff, The first book of the Treatise of architecture 1547, dedicated to the perspective |
Ryff published in 1548 the German translation
of Vitruvius [35], after having published a treatise on architecture to
interpret his teachings [36] the previous year and, before that, the Latin text of De Architectura [37] in 1543. Well, Ryff - although he
was aware of all the major Italian architectural texts of the time - had never
travelled to Italy [38]. His knowledge not only of the theories of the Italian
architectural theorists, but also the works of Italian art that he described
(including those of about twenty painters and sculptors of Italian Renaissance)
was all based on the transmission of knowledge through written texts (for
example, he cited the Giotto mosaic of the Navicella in St. Peter's on the basis of the description given by Leon
Battista Alberti in De Pictura). Ryff
had most likely not seen any of those works (even with etchings), and not even
considered it necessary, being content of their description. It is a
confirmation, according to Cramer, of the centrality of the role of literary texts
in the spreading of the culture in the German world of those years (a primacy,
in my opinion, which is in fact confirmed by the translation of the Bible by
Luther as the founding act of the Reformation and of modern German language).
 |
| Fig. 10) The German version of the Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius, translated by Walther Ryff 1548 |
For example, Ryff recommended the reader to be
inspired by Virgil's Aeneid texts in order to achieve statues with the same
quality as the equestrian monument to Gattamelata by Donatello, assuring them
that the reading of the Latin text would be more useful than travelling to
Padua. Cramer wrote, perhaps exaggerating: "The fine arts are repealed in the same moment as they are described.
For this reason, the novice artist is not recommend, as in eighteenth and
nineteenth century, to visit Italy to see objects and models. It is much better
to read the literature " [39].
End of Part One
NOTES
[1] It may look really surprising, but the volume
does not contain anywhere the exact date of the conference, which according to
various sources was held in 1990.
[2] The villa belonged to the Frankfurt patron
Heinrich Mylius (1769-1854), a personal friend of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and of
Alessandro Manzoni. Since the early nineteenth century, it was therefore a
meeting point between the two cultures. In 1983 the last owner, Ignazio Vigoni
junior (1905-1983), left it by testamentary bequest to the Federal Republic of
Germany, with the precise instruction that it would be destined to a public
research centre to strengthen the cultural relations between Italy and Germany.
This was followed by an agreement between the two governments, signed by
ministers Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Giulio Andreotti on April 21, 1986.
[3] The text was republished by De Gruyter in 2011.
See
[4] Bibliothek der Kunstliteratur, edited by Gottfried
Boehm and Norbert Miller, Frankfurt am Main, Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, in
five tomes (1992-1995).
[5] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, edited by Helmut
Pfotenhauer, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1991, 327 pages. Villa Vigoni Series, Number
5. Quotation at page 5.
[6] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
pp. 1-2
[7] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 1
[8] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 1
[9] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 67
[10] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 2
[11] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 2
[12] Beschreibungskunst – Kunstbeschreibung. Ekphrasis
von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart [Art of description – description of art. Ekphrasis from antiquity to
present], edited by Gottfried Boehm and Helmut Pfotenhauer, Padeborn, Wilhelm
Fink, 1995, 642 pages. The index of the collection of the writings can be found
at http://d-nb.info/943749271/04
[13] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 116
[14] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 192
[15] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
pp. 2-3
[16] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 3
[17] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 42
[18] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 43
[19] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 45
[20] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 62
[21] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
pp. 46-48
[22] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
pp. 52-54
[23] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 79
[24] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
pp. 71-75
[25] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 10
[26] Fünf Bücher Epigramme von Konrad Celtis, edited by
Karl Hartfelder, Berlino, Calvary, 1881. The text is available at https://archive.org/stream/fnfbcherepigram00unkngoog#page/n6/mode/2up.
[27] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
pp. 12-13
[28] Sabinus, Georg - Georgii
Sabini Brandeburgensis Hodoeporicon itineris Italici, 1535. The text is available at
[29] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 9
[30] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 14
[31] Bartholomäi Sastrowen Herkommen, Geburt und Lauff
seines gantzen Lebens : auch was sich in dem Denckwerdiges zugetragen, so er
mehrentheils selbst gesehen und gegenwärtig mit angehöret hat", edited by
Friedrich Mohnicke, Greifswald, in der Universitäts Buchhandlung, 1823-1824, 3 volumes.
The first volume (1823)
is available at
The second volume (1823) is
available at
[32] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 7
[33] Schickhardt, Heinrich - Beschreibung einer Reiss,
welche der Durchleuchtig Hochgeborne Fürst und Herr, Herr Friedrich [...] im
Jahr 1599 [...] auß dem Landt zu Würtemberg in Italiam gethan [...], Tübingen,
Cellius, 1603, 106 pages.
[34] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 9
[35] Ryff, Walter Hermann - Vitruvius Teutsch.
Nemlichen des aller namhafftigisten vn[d] hocherfahrnesten römischen Architecti
vnd kunstreichen Werck zehn Bücher von der Architectur und künstlichem Bawen,
Basilea, Sebastian Henricpetri, 1575
[36] Ryff, Walter Hermann - Der furnembsten,
notwendigsten, der gantzen Architectur angehörigen Mathematischen vnd
Mechanischen künst, eygentlicher bericht, vnd vast klare, verstendliche
vnterrichtung, zu rechtem verstandt der lehr Vitruuij, in drey furneme Bücher
abgetheilet (Detailed
report on the fundamental principles of mathematics and mechanics that apply to
architecture, and extensive and precise lecture on teaching a proper
understanding of Vitruvius, divided into three books), Nuremberg, Truckts Johan
Petreius, 1547. The text is available at
[37] M. Vitruvii ... de architectura libri decem, ad
Augustum Caesarem accurati & conscripti: & nunc primum in Germania qua
potuit diligentia excusi, atq[ue] hinc inde schematibus non iniucundis
exornati, Argentorati (Strasburgo), Knobloch per G. Machaeropiaeum, 1543. The
text is available at https://archive.org/stream/McGillLibrary-103439-198/103439#page/n9/mode/2up.
[38] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 16
[39] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 18
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