[Art literature as an experience of Italy]
Edited by Helmut Pfotenhauer
Villa Vigoni Series, Number 5
Tübingen, Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1991, 327 pages
Review by Francesco Mazzaferro - Part Two
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| Fig. 11) Johann Friedrich Eich, Portrait of the writer Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse, 1779 |
We continue describing
the most significant contributions to the study of art history sources, contained in the proceedings of the German-Italian
conference on "Art literature as an experience of Italy" held at
Villa Vigoni, on the Come Lake, in 1990. The second part deals with art
literature from the second half of the eighteenth century until the early
twentieth century.
Gottfried Boehm,
The 'Description of the Images' by Wilhelm Heins
The 'Description of the Images' by Wilhelm Heins
Gottfried Boehm (1942,-) taught art history in
Bochum, Gießen and Basle. Along with the aforementioned Norbert Miller, he was
the main editor of the five volumes of the Library of artistic literature (1992-1995).
His contribution to the conference at
Villa Vigoni focused on the proto-Romantic writer Wilhelm Heinse (1749 -1803).
In the German art literature, he marked a fundamental step, inaugurating the
genre of the literary description of the paintings (with the collection of the Düsseldorfer Gemäldebriefe of 1776-1777
[40], a series of fictitious letters to a friend, describing the paintings in
the Düsseldorf gallery). From the point of view of the history of taste, Heinse
was the big opponent of Winckelmann, as he harshly attacked the latter’s obsession
with the male statues of Greek antiquity [41], while showing veneration for the
colours of the Venetians and Rubens.
Boehm's writing is all dedicated to the lexical
study of some Heinse’s letters. As a writer on art, Heinse intended to describe
the pleasant effect that the paintings may have on the viewers, aiming at
creating through his texts a trait
d'union between the surface of the painting and the eye of the viewer admiring
it [42], and managing in some cases to even communicate the feeling of sexual
excitement for the beauty of the bodies. For him, paintings were not objects,
but sources of energy and pleasure. The description was very detailed, and
focused not on the action displayed, but on the relationship between all the
parts of the picture (figures, objects, landscapes) and the whole. The goal was
to run the reader along the same cognitive path which the eye of a viewer would
follow, analysing the construction of the painting and deriving from it an
impression of naturalness [43].
Giorgio Cusatelli,
Canova as an "art theorist"
Canova as an "art theorist"
Giorgio Cusatelli (1930-2007) was one of the
most important Italian scholars of German literature (and for many years the director
of the publishing house Garzanti). We owe him a brief writing on Antonio Canova
(1757 -1822) as an art theorist, which opens explaining that the sculptor – although
he expressed the view that artists should not originate aesthetic thought and
considered therefore classicism as a style and not a thought [44] – was a much cultivated artist. His Thoughts on Fine Arts, published
posthumously by Melchior Missirini in 1824, revealed his Aristotelian approach,
with which he opposed Winckelmann’s Platonism, and rejected the thesis of the
latter on the primacy of Greek sculpture and the Hellenistic classicism of
Thordvaldsen [45].
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| Fig. 12) Antonio Canova, Venus Italica, 1804-1811 |
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| Fig. 13) Bertel Thorvaldsen, Venus with apple, 1813-16 |
In fact, some of the proto-romantic features of
Canova explained why he had been criticized in Germany as insufficiently
classicist, especially by Carl Ludwig Fernow [46].
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| Fig. 14) Carl Ludwig Fernow, Roman studies, 1806 |
Friedmar Apel,
C.G. Carus’ Italian acrobatics. Art experiences and organization of a middle-class life in the 19th century
The German scholar Friedmar Apel (1948,-)
dedicated his contribution to a little known personalities outside Germany: the
physician and painter Carl Gustav Carus (1789 -1869). Author of a very broad
scientific production (with works in different fields of medicine), Carus left us
1,500 paintings and also writings in the field of artistic literature [47]. His
program was “marring science and poetic
spirit” [48]. In his Nine Letters on
Landscape Painting (Neun Briefen über
Landschaftsmalerei [49]), he
proposed the theme of the sameness between the divine and the landscape; he stated
that the world of real things and the one of the ideas was unified by the
essential nature of measurement units (area, line, point). The pictorial
depiction of the landscape would therefore be nothing but a representation of
the spirit of the world [50] and would allow human beings to vanish into the immensity of the divine
[51]. His "Journey to Germany, Italy
and Switzerland in the year 1828” [52] relaunched the theme of the
synthesis of art and science, as well as between religion and landscape. The
travel diaries in Italy also revealed a dichotomy between his admiration for
art and the constant negative bias on the Italian reality of the period. He
was, nevertheless, one of the few German travellers to take an interest of
Italian contemporary art, commenting among other things the work "The last farewell of Romeo and Juliet"
by Francesco Hayez [53].
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| Fig. 15) Carl Gustav Carus, Pilgrim in the rocky valley, about 1820 |
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| Fig. 16) Francesco Hayez, The last farewell of Romeo and Juliet, 1823 |
Germany and Italy. The meaning of pre-Raphaelite paintings in the artistic conceptions of Friedrich Schlegel
Professor Claudia Becker teaches sociology of mass media in Padeborn. Her contribution revealed us the philosopher and literature critic Friedrich Schlegel in the perspective of an art critic. The writings that he included in his magazine "Europe" in Paris during the Napoleonic era were central to this activity [54]. From the French capital Schlegel attacked the pro-classicist Propyläen magazine, inspired by Goethe in Weimar, placing himself in the proto-romantic prospect of Wackenroder and of the Sturm und Drang. At the Louvre, Friedrich Schlegel had the chance to admire the most complete collection of paintings that one was ever able to see, from the Middle Ages to modern times, concentrated in Paris thanks to the policy of requisitions by Napoleon [55]. This huge art collection allowed him to historicize his tastes. In his articles (published in 1803), he criticized as a romantic the Carraccis [56], Guido Reni and Domenichino [57], and considered the school of Bologna as the origin of the Italian art decadence; his favourites were the primitives, i.e. the Italian artists of the late middle age and of the fifteenth century [58], and especially Bellini, Perugino, Mantegna and Masaccio, of whom he appreciated "the severe forms and the relations of the purity" [59]; the latest painters he considered worthy of his consideration were Titian, Correggio, Giulio Romano and Andrea del Sarto [60]. With Schlegel, the cult of Raphael shifted from the triumph of the great classical paintings, above all the Transfiguration, which was discussed at the Louvre as the most beautiful painting in history (Mengs, Goethe, Hegel), to the intimacy of the Madonnas, especially the Madonna with the Blue Diadem for the delicacy of its colours (it is now considered a minor work, performed by Raphael with the students of his school) [61]. Moreover, in contrast to the existing doctrine in Napoleonic times, Schlegel believed that true art should have a religious subject; thus, he created the programmatic basis for the Nazarenes who would form the Brotherhood of St. Luke in Rome in 1809.
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| Fig. 17) Raphael and Gianfrancesco Penni, Madonna with the Blue Diadem, 1510-1511 |
Art Literature in Florence in the late nineteenth century: the writings of Karl Hillebrand and Adolf von Hildebrand
Lucia Borghese Bruschi teaches German language
and literature at the University of Florence. Her paper was dedicated to the
aesthetics production of the historian Karl Hillebrand (1829-1884), the writer
Isolde Kurz (1853 -1944) and the sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand (1847 -1921).
The three were active in Florence in the late nineteenth century. Compared to
the capitals of the European culture of the time, the city of Florence was
characterized by small size, a more relaxed pace of life and - as von
Hildebrand wrote to his parents in 1867 - was a real paradise on earth [62]. The
three formed an ideologically conservative group, rejecting the assertion of
the bourgeoisie, the values of the French Revolution, the uprisings of 1848,
industrialization, photography and all new image-reproduction technologies:
Isolde Kurz idealized Florence as the last bastion of an aristocratic and
traditional society, that rejects the industrial processes which were ongoing in
the German empire [63]. She celebrated
Florence because it was not ruining with smoke the elsewhere polluted air of
the big cities.
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| Fig. 18) Adolf von Hildebrand, The hunt of the Amazons, 1887-1888 |
It is perhaps surprising that a conservative mind
like Hillebrand triggered the first negative reaction to the discovery of the primitives.
In those years, it was developing in Florence and Europe a real 'romantic' cult
for Fra Angelico; he opposed to it, in 1860, the argument that the faces and
types in his paintings were all the same, like if they were the result of a
mechanized process. In short, Beato Angelico reminded Hillebrand of the
standardisation of mass industrial production [64]. Even the upper room in the
cloister of Santa Croce, then attributed to Giotto and now to Taddeo Gaddi,
seemed degraded by the first hints of an alienated mass tourism (alas, he did not know
that the few visitors in 1860 would certainly not be considered now anymore as an
alienating factor in town, in comparison with current numbers). In short, the art
of the primitive was associated with the defects of the modern world
(standardization, anonymity), and the only cure seemingly was to return to Raphael,
Leonardo and Titian [65]. In 1873, Hillebrand published an anonymous pamphlet (Twelve letters of a heretic in terms of
aesthetics [66]) in which he proclaimed the
Apollonian art of Adolf von Hildebrand as art regeneration and recovery of its
naturally aristocratic identity.
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| Fig. 19) Taddeo Gaddi, Tree of Life, The Last Supper and sacred stories, about 1355 |
Also the sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand had a horror of the modern world and its relativism. The solution was for him to
return to a theology of art. He lived retired in the cloister of Saint Francis
of Paola [67]. Isolde idealized him as naive man, unexperienced of the things
of the world, who did not care for anything outside of art. For him, "art is an absolute" [68]. In 1893 he published a writing on
the problem of form, entitled "The
problem of form in figurative art" [69]. The text had great diffusion, being published
in French in 1903 and in English in 1907, in Hungarian in 1910, in Russian in 1914,
and finally in Italian in 1949. Any form must escape the play of light, avoid
photographic outcomes and not give rise to any effect: the viewers have to identify themselves with the form, not the other way around. The form must
indeed be designed in such a way that the aesthetic effect of the work cannot
be subject to any change due to external causes [70].
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| Fig. 20) Adolf Hildebrand, Standing Young, 1881-1884 |
"Historians of art", "Connoisseurs" and "Museum officials": the German colleagues of Adolfo Venturi at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century
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| Fig. 21) The volume of Giacomo Agosti on Adolfo Venturi |
The essay by Giacomo Agosti, Professor of
History and methodology of art criticism at the Brera Academy in Milan, was
dedicated to the relationship between Adolfo Venturi (1856-1941) and the
German-speaking world. Agosti devoted to Venturi an essay in 1996 entitled The birth of the history of art in Italy ("La nascita della storia dell'arte in Italia2) [71]; moreover, he also curated the catalogue
of his correspondence [72]. The young art historian from Modena published at
the age of 26, in 1882, the catalogue of the Royal Estense Gallery in Modena [73] and immediately showed to have higher qualities
than any other Italian art critic. His study led him, very young, in contact
with Hubert Janitschek (1846-1893), who was also still a young professor at
the University of Strasbourg and Director of the local art gallery. It was the
beginning of an intensive cooperation with the German-speaking world, which
took a break only at the beginning of World War I (when the son Lionello
volunteered as officer).
Prior to Venturi, the counterparties in our
country of the major directors of galleries and university professors in the
German world, as Henry Thode (1857-1920) and Franz Wickhoff (185 -1909), had
been especially the connoisseurs, most notably Giovanni Morelli (a physician, but also a man of great
artistic culture and great familiarity with the German language) and GiovanniBattista Cavalcaselle (often considered instead by the Germans more a
practitioner that a man of profound art culture). With Venturi, for the first
time, the German world was confronted with a modern professional, able to
handle the administration of fine arts (since 1888, he was heading the Central
Directorate of Antiquities and Fine Arts in Rome) [74]. For his part, as
Borchardt recognized in 1904 [75], Venturi promoted the awareness in Italy of
the major European monographs on Italian art, including many German studies: he
spread among Italian scholars the essays on Michelangelo by Blanc [76], Grimm
[77] and Justi [78], the monograph on Giotto by Thode [79], the one on Mantegna
by Kristeller [80], and then the works by Schmarsow on Donatello [81] and by Vischer
on Signorelli [82]. Venturi also ensured the support of many German-speaking
scholars for his "Historical Archive of Art". His interest in the
German art criticism, however, was limited to the assessments made by German
scholars on Italian art. Furthermore, unlike what was happening with art criticism
in Germany, for instance with Meier-Graefe and von Seidlitz, he had no interest
in contemporary art. Often forced to deal with a very aggressive policy of
purchases (such as the one by Bode for the Berlin museums), Venturi decided to
involve the directors of foreign museums in a policy of preservation of the
heritage of our country, inviting them to be part of the commissions to
authorizing exports. Thereby, he made them aware of the need not to impoverish
the Italian cultural scene [83].
NOTES
[40] The fictitious letters by Heinse were published
in the journal Teutsche Merkur
between 1776 and 1777.
[41] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, edited by
Helmut Pfotenhauer, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1991, 327 pages. Villa Vigoni Series,
Number 5. Quotation at page 33.
[42] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 22.
[43] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 30.
[44] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 201.
[45] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 198.
[46] Fernow, Carl Ludwig - Ueber den Bildhauer Canova
und dessen Werke, in: Fernow, Römische Studien, first volume, Zurich, Gessner,
1806, pages 11-248.
[47] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 208.
[48] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 210.
[49] Carus, Carl Gustav - Neun Briefe über Landschaftsmalerei,
geschrieben in den Jahren 1815 - 1824. Zuvor ein Brief von Goethe als Einleitung (Nine
letters on landscape painting, written in the years 1815-1824. Preceded by a
letter of Goethe as an introduction), Leipzig, Fleischer Verlag, 1831, 212 pages.
The text is available at
http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/resolve/display/bsb10258110.html.
http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/resolve/display/bsb10258110.html.
[50] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 214.
[51] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 216.
[52] Carus, Carl Gustav - Reise durch Deutschland,
Italien und die Schweiz im Jahre 1828, Lipsia, Fleischer Verlag, In two parts,
1835, pages 362 and 348. Texts
available at the addresses
https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/Vta2/bsb10466541/bsb:BV008750794
and https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/Vta2/bsb10466542/bsb:BV008750795.
https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/Vta2/bsb10466541/bsb:BV008750794
and https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/Vta2/bsb10466542/bsb:BV008750795.
[53] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 220.
[54] Schlegel, Friedrich – Nachricht von den Gemählden
in Paris, in Europa: eine Zeitschrift, 1803, N. 1, pages 108–157. Schlegel,
Friedrich - Nachtrag italiänischer Gemählde, in: Europa. Eine Zeitschrift, 1803,
N. 2, pages. 96–116.
[55] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 228.
[56] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 225.
[57] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 228.
[58] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 228.
[59] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 229.
[60] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 229.
[61] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 230.
[62] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 263.
[63] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 268.
[64] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 265.
[65] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 266.
[66] Hillebrand, Karl - Zwölf Briefe eines ästhetischen
Ketzers, Berlin, Oppenheim, 1874, 127 pages.
[67] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 273.
[68] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 274.
[69] von Hildebrand, Adolf - Das Problem der Form in
der bildenden Kunst, Strasburgo, J.H.E. Heitz, 1893, 125 pages.
[70] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 275.
[71] Agosti, Giacomo - La
nascita della storia dell'arte in Italia: Adolfo Venturi, dal museo
all'università, 1880-1940, Marsilio, 1996, 274 pages.
[74] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 290.
[75] Rudolf Borchardt, The robbed Italy and the foreign
museums, La Tribuna, 29 October 1904.
[76] Blanc, Charles - L'Œuvre et la vie de Michel-ange,
dessinateur, sculpteur, peintre, architecte et poëte, Paris, Gazette des
beaux-arts, 1876, 343 pages. The text is available at
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k932186f.
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k932186f.
[77] Grimm, Herman - Leben Michelangelo's, Hannover,
C. Rümpler, 1860, in two volumes, pages 471 and 598. Texts available at the
addresses
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/grimm1860bd1
e http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/grimm1863bd2.
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/grimm1860bd1
e http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/grimm1863bd2.
[78] Justi, Carl
- Michelangelo: Beiträge zur Erklärung der Werke und des Menschen,
Lipsia, Breitkopf und Härtel, 1900, 430 pages.
[79] Thode, Henry – Giotto, Bielefeld, Leipzig,
Velhagen und Klasing, 1899, 150 pages.
See https://archive.org/stream/giotto00thod#page/n5/mode/2up.
See https://archive.org/stream/giotto00thod#page/n5/mode/2up.
[80] Kristeller, Paul - Andrea Mantegna, London,
Longmans, Green, 1901, 511 pages.
See: https://archive.org/stream/andreamantegna00kris#page/n9/mode/2up.
See: https://archive.org/stream/andreamantegna00kris#page/n9/mode/2up.
[81] Schmarsow August - Donatello. Eine Studie über den
Entwicklungsgang des Künstlers und die Reihenfolge seiner Werke, Breslavia,
1886, Verein für Geschichte der Bildenden Künste zu Breslau, 56 pages.
See: https://archive.org/details/donatelloeinestu00schm.
See: https://archive.org/details/donatelloeinestu00schm.
[82] Vischer, Robert - Luca Signorelli und die
italienische Renaissance, Lipsia, Veit und Comp, 418 pages.
See: https://archive.org/stream/lucasignorelliu00signgoog#page/n8/mode/2up.
See: https://archive.org/stream/lucasignorelliu00signgoog#page/n8/mode/2up.
[83] Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, (quoted) …,
p. 299.
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