Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION
Josef Glowa
The role of art in the cultural competition between Germans and Italians in the sixteenth century: Johann Fischart’s response to Vasari’s Vite (1568)
Published in
Simiolus
Netherlands quarterly for the history of art
Volume 37 2013-2014 Number 3-4 pp. 187-203
Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro
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| Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of a young Venetian woman, 1505, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum Source: Wikimedia Commons |
In 1568,
the scholar Onofrio Panvinio published in Rome the work entitled XXVII Pontif. Max. Elogia et Imagines
(Praise and Imagines of 27 Popes), a collection clearly inspired by the Elogi degli uomini illustri (Portraits of illustrious men) by Paolo Giovio, which had been released fifteen years
before. One German printer of those days, Bernhard Jobin, realized its
potential commercial value and decided to republish it, commissioning the
artist Tobias Stimmer (1539-1584) to realize new woodcut portraits from the original
copper engravings and asking the literate and scholar Johann Fischart (1546?-1591?) to translate the praise from Latin into German and to write an initial introduction.
Stimmer and Fischart worked (and would further work together) to finalise
several publications, in most cases under the guidance of Bernhard Jobin.
Fischart wrote the introduction, which, however, was published under Jobin’s
name. I do not know why that text today is (apparently unanimously) attributed
to Fischart and not to Jobin. Certainly, reasons for not showing the name of
the real author may have well existed: Fischart was a staunch Calvinist, who
did not hesitate, for example, to take tough public positions in contrast to
the Spanish intervention in the war of the Eighty years against the independence-seeking
Netherlands. One can perhaps guess that the collection of images of the Popes, released
in 1573 under the name of Accuratae
effigies pontificum maximorum (Accurate Images of the Popes) with an introductory
dedication to the Catholic Bishop of Basel, was written for entirely pecuniary reasons;
in the same vain, the real author may have preferred not to see his name appearing
on the title page.
All of this
would not affect the history of art literature, except that the introduction of
the work, in fact, did not dwell on the Popes, but rather focused on the art of
painting and was undoubtedly part of the broader phenomenon of the so-called anti-Vasari
reaction (and in a very early stage, since we were in 1573). The author of the
introduction railed against the author of the Lives, guilty of dismissing the role of the German artists compared
to that of the Italian ones. We owe to Josef Glowa if the original German text
of the initial pages had now been reproduced in this journal, together with its
English translation (the first one ever).
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| Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece (first state), 1512-1516, Colmar, Unterlinden Museum Source: Wikimedia Commons |
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| Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpeice (second state), 1512-1516, Colmar, Unterlinden Museum Source: The Yorck Project via Wikimedia Commons |
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| Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece (third state), 1512-1516, Colmar, Unterlinden Museum Source: Wikimedia Commons |
The relationship with Vasari's Lives
Fischart spoke
of the competition taking place among the 'three
great nations of our day' (Italy, France, Germany) to affirm the
superiority of its art against the others. In particular, he specifically mentioned
Vasari's Lives, recently published in
1568 (he was therefore referring to the Giunti edition) in which the writer from
Arezzo would have deliberately done everything to support the thesis that the
origin of art was in Italy and only there lived noteworthy art makers. Did
however Fischart actually read the Lives?
I got some doubt, since he mentioned that the work was a treatise in two
volumes (while the Giuntina was in three volumes, it was the Torrentiniana of
1550 to be structured in two tomes). However, he may have perhaps consulted a
version in which the second and third volumes were bound in one tome. Rather,
he showed that he knew the text superficially, with a series of omissions or
incorrect citations. The omissions (e.g. the failure to mention the chapter on
Flemish artists) may have been intentional and explained by the desire to aggravate
the claim of partiality against Vasari; the quotes of wrong or even non-cited dates
from Vasari’s Lives make me however think
that his knowledge of the text was indirect. In other words, he might have been
taking views which were suggested to him by a third person; or, something also
possible, he might have seen and read the Lives
during his Italian stay, years before drafting the Accurate Images. In fact, he attended the University of Siena and
might have actually noted at that time what he deemed to be the most
significant excerpts from the original text, without having the work at hand.
In any case, Fischart’s example demonstrates, once again, the role of the Lives as reference book for the whole of
Europe (for better or for worse) at the time of their publication [1].
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| Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors, 1533, London, National Gallery Source: Google Arts and Culture via Wikimedia Commons |
Fischart and Lampsonius
Fischart
was a very famous scholar and poet at his times. His most famous work was the Geschictklitterung, a free adaptation of
the Gargantua by François Rabelais. Moreover
- as already mentioned – he also authored a whole set of pro-Calvinist literary
polemical texts against the Catholics (especially the Jesuits). A few reflections
of this polemical spirit are also visible in this Introduction, in which one cannot ignore the manipulation of some
historical facts. A typical example is a quote from a work published in 1572 by
Hieronymus Cock (actually his wife; Cock was already dead) containing the
praise of the Flemish painters written by Dominicus Lampsonius, in order 'to prevent such injudicious judgment' (p. 194) (he obviously refers to Vasari's theses). However, if we read the Portraits of famous Flemish painters by
Lampsonius [2], it will be easy to notice that there is no statement against
Vasari. We know well, moreover, that Lampsonius provided valuable data to
Vasari himself for the preparation of the chapter on the Flemish painters in
the second edition of the Lives; the sample
which he studied is preserved today in Brussels and includes a manuscript poem of
Lampsonius in praise of Vasari. Never tastes might have been more different
than between Fischart and Lampsonius. Fischart listed a number of names of
artists representing the best of German art, and put Hans Holbein of Basel and
his friend and publishing partner, Tobias Stimmer, on the top of all. In the
case of Stimmer, the explanation is simple; as for Holbein, what mattered was no
doubt the fact of originating from Basel, i.e. of coming from the same city of
the dedicatee. To praised them, the author wrote: "They continue to display true skills regarding the proper way of painting, as
evidenced by their public works of art, and they are abstaing from the
foreign Italian manner of painting (which most today are still mimicking)"
(p. 197). The meaning of the sentence is evident: it is a harsh condemnation of
so-called 'Romanism', i.e. of the customary journeys to Rome to study ancient
painting and mannerism, resulting in returning home with an 'international
Mannerist style' [3].
It should
be said that Lampsonius would have never supported such a thing. He was a
convinced follower of the Roman style, and, while praising the value of local art
in some fields (such as landscape painting or engraving), recognized without
any problem the Italian superiority in the field of history painting. He advocated
the merit of the journeys to Rome, to the point that in the case of Jan van
Scorel wrote, in the Praise:
"I will always be remembered because as the
first, with my example, I taught
to the Flemings that good painters have to go
see Rome:
it cannot in fact be considered worthy of the
name of an artist
the one who did not consume a thousand brushes
and colours
and did not paint pictures in that country" [4]
It is
evident that Fischart manipulated a previous publication (just published the
year before) to strengthen his theses.
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| Hans Holbein the Younger, Henry viii, 1539-1540, Rome, Galleria di Palazzo Barberini Source: The Yorck Project via Wikimedia Commons |
Distinctive aspects of the German reaction
against Vasari
What
difference existed between Fischart’s anti-Vasari reaction and all the previous
or subsequent negative assessments against him, which occurred in Italy? Without
any doubt, it was the fact that the controversy of the German author, to
today’s eyes, revealed a 'proto-nationalist' nature; probably the dynamic, in
'500, was however very similar also in the cases of Venice, Florence, Bologna,
who were part of different states. It must be said that the dispute of the
scholars from Venetia and Lombardy against the Florentine focused mainly on two
points: one of a chronological nature (who was the first reviving arts in
Italy) and the other of a theoretical and stylistic aspect (the Tuscan drawing against the Venetian colour). Judging by the words of Fischart, it does not
seem that scholars from Germany ever managed to develop a juxtaposition of the
latter kind. It remains the chronological question. Fischart asked a rhetorical
question to Vasari and wondered, about Cimabue, whether he "does not think that such fine paintings are also found in other nations, in particular among the Germans.
[...] Can one not look back even more than two hundred years, even to the times of Emperor
Frederick I, Barbarossa and find paintings as good as those made by his proud Cimabue? We certainly can find and see them even today in old convents, churches and monasteries" (p. 195). It should also be said
that the sense of the historical development of Fischart is probably different
from that of Vasari. The Arezzo-born scholar talked about a dead art in the
Dark Ages of the Middle Ages, of a rebirth of art thanks to the intervention of
Greek painters first and then the Tuscans; for Fischart, instead, a basic
continuity legitimated, in some way, Germany as the heir of the tradition of the
Roman Empire not only on a political level, but also in art terms.
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| Tobias Stimmer, Portrait dell'alfiere Jacob Schwytzer e di sua moglie Elsbeth Lochmann, 1564, Kunstmuseum Basel Source: The Yorck Project via Wikimedia Commons |
The Fortune of Fischart
Very famous
in his day, Fischart was soon forgotten, and with him also the preface to the Accurate Images (which was certainly not
his most significant work). The text was studied again at the beginning of 1800
by Johann Dominicus Fiorillo, one of the fathers of the German art history (who,
in fact, assigned them to Jobin). According to Glowa, it was certainly no
coincidence that the comment by Fiorillo was made public in 1806, i.e. the year
in which the Confederation of the Rhine was created, a confederation of satellite
states supporting France, which lasted until 1813 and was a direct consequence
of Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz and the Treaty of Pressburg. As an 'art
critic', Fischart was valued as representative of a national redemption and, in
this light, he benefited from some celebrity in the first half of the
nineteenth century. It should finally be said that, in general, the knowledge
of the introduction to the Accurate Images
was limited. Schlosser – for instance – ignored it in his Die Kunstliteratur (Art Literature). On Fischart, he only quoted only
a didactic poem of his entitled Die Kunst
(Art) at page 360, and nothing else.
NOTES
[1] On the
handwritten responses to the Lives,
please see Giovanni Mazzaferro, The Annotated Specimens of Vasari's 'Lives': an Inventory.
[2] See, in
this blog, the review to From van Eyck to Brueghel. Writings on Arts by Dominicus Lampsonius, curated by Gianni Carlo
Sciolla and Caterina Volpi, Torino, UTET, 2001.
[3] See, in
this blog, Nicole Dacos, Journey to Rome.The European Painters in the Sixteenth Century, Milano, Jaca Book, 2012.
[4] See. From van Eyck to Brueghel... quoted., p.
98.
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