Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION
El Greco.
Il miracolo della naturalezza.
Il pensiero artistico di El Greco attraverso le note a margine a Vitruvio e Vasari
[El Greco. The miracle of naturalness. The artistic thought of El Greco through the margin notes to Vitruvius and Vasari]
Edited by Fernando Marías and José Riello
Roma, Castelvecchi, 2017
Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro. Part Two
 |
| El Greco, Burial of count of Orgaz, 1586-88, Church of Santo Tomé, Toledo Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Go Back to Part One
El Greco and Vasari
As part of the sample of margin annotations to Vasari's Lives, the footnotes of El Greco fall (rightly so) under what is known as the anti-Vasari reaction, or the range of statements by even famous commentators aimed to highlight the partiality of the Arezzo-born Italian writer to the benefit of Tuscan art and to the detriment of that of Lombardy and Venetia. Other examples of anti-Vasari commentators are well-known: Federico Zuccari and Annibale Carracci among all.
The
annotated sample of the Lives by El
Greco (now kept at the National Library of Spain) has a particular collecting
history, for which reference is made to the census of the notations alreadypublished on this blog. It also presents three margin notes that El Greco
himself assigned to Federico Zuccari (it is also confirmed by a check I personally
made with the margins notes of the latter in another example preserved in
Paris). Others attributed instead them to a pupil of El Greco, Louis Tristan (1586-1624).
From here Xavier de Salas (the first to study these notes) has concluded (in an
unconvincing way, in my view, but I will talk about this later) that the Lives were donated by Zuccari to El
Greco during the stay of the former in Toledo (1586) and then were in turn sold
by Doménikos Theotokopoulos to his disciple.
 |
| El Greco, Burial of count of Orgaz (detail), 1586-1588, Church of Santo Tomé Source: Wikimedia Commons |
The
acrimony of the note maker against Vasari is really excessive; it is revealed
dozens of times and raises in the modern reader a wave of human sympathy for
the aggressed, who of course had no way to defend himself (he was already dead
since time). I'm not going to enumerate all circumstances: rather, it seems to
me quite appropriate to speak of the opinions expressed on some selected painters,
i.e. the painters from Venetia, as well as Correggio and Michelangelo.
 |
| El Greco, The Nobleman with his hand on his chest, about 1580, Madrid, Prado Museum Source: Wikimedia Commons |
The venetian painters
The
interest of El Greco for Venetian painting was manifest and can be proven in
all pages of the Lives. Let us see
some examples, starting from Giovanni Bellini, whom Vasari included into the
second part of his work, the one in which he included the artists of the so-called
'dry' and not yet modern manner:
"I saw the paintings of Giovanni Bellini and I
compared them with these of the author [Vasari]; the latter are the old, and in truth
the former are more valuable than all what Vasari ever painted" (p. 235).
El Greco was
outraged when Vasari cited Paolo Veronese only in passing in the collective
life of Verona painters, speaking of Giovanni Caroto; he called Veronese "a better [master] than all the Florentines"
(p. 266). The outrage was reiterated in a second quote (p. 285).
El Greco
spent some praise vis-à-vis Sebastiano del Piombo (p. 273), but he did not seem
extremely convinced. However, he saw his success in Rome, after Raphael's death
and with the support of Michelangelo, as a defeat (of which he rejoiced) of the
"Florentine party".
With
Veronese Vasari was particularly unfortunate, because he attributed to him the
four allegories painted above a window of the Great Council Hall in the Doge's Palace in Venice; immediately Doménikos commented:
"From this you can see, then, that he does
not recognize the manner of one from the other, since (...) these are from
Tintoretto and he assigned them to Veronese, two manners which are as different
as it would be hardly possible" (p. 295).
And then he
made an unconditional statement of esteem vis-à-vis Tintoretto:
"The best (worst) painting of Tintoretto will be as
graceful as the best painting of the Venetian Battista and Giorgio Vasari will be
clumsy. The picture that Tintoretto has made for the hospital of San Rocco (in Venice)
is the best painting in the world today, since we have lost Titian’s Battle (of
Cadore or Ghiara d'Adda). I say the best for the many and various things that
concur in it, both in terms of nudes as of colours, that cannot be found
otherwise if not in some good works by Titian" (p. 296).
We were in
the biographical medallion of Battista Franco also called Battista Veneziano,
the most praised Venetian painter by Vasari, and considered a 'traitor' by El
Greco.
Titian, of
course, was seen as the best colourist worldwide; therefore, the entire
biography that Vasari devoted him was punctually counterpointed by a series of
marginal notes to challenge the reliability of Vasari's statements. He is
reproached to have diminished Titian’s role because of the 'insufficient' (mancante) drawing. I also think it is
worth to mention here a previous situation where, according to Vasari, Titian,
visiting Rome, would have seen Peruzzi’s Stories
of the Medusa at Villa Chigi, remaining astonished because he was unable
to believe they were painted. El Greco retorted:
"You should not use these devices with Titian;
all of this is cowardice. To deceive Titian, it would be only possible to
change his sight".
It is not
only an occasional statement: it is probably in the "sight" that El
Greco recognized and summed up the grandeur of Titian. Already in the first
part of this review it was found that El Greco would like (but declared himself
unable) to specify in words how a painter sees things, and that the roots of
the creation of beauty were in seeing (a 'prudent' seeing, based on
experience). To assume for a moment that Titian might be 'deceived', while
seeing something, meant to question El Greco’s whole theoretical framework.
If ever doubts
remained, it is in fact possible to recall a note to Vitruvius, where El Greco
claimed that, while architecture had not yet had anyone who reached perfection,
painting already presented many examples of excellence, including the "venustas of Titian’s colours".
In the
biography of Titian, Vasari also spoke of Jacopo Bassano, and El Greco recalled,
about his paintings of small size, that "in that format is to admire his colour and in the animals there is no
one who did them better; Jacopo achieved much and so the whole world wants to
imitate him" (p. 329). There are complaints about the small space and
the certain not overly laudatory judgment of Vasari with reference to Palladio
(p. 334), whose fame - according to El Greco - resonates around the world along
with the name of Titian.
The
attitude of El Greco, then, is clear and unequivocal. The best painting is in
Venice, and Vasari deliberately misrepresented things, trying to deny the
obvious.
 |
| El Greco, Annunciation, 1597-1600, Madrid, Prado Museum Suorce: Web Gallery of Art via Wikimedia Commons |
 |
| El Greco, Fabula, 1600. Prado Museum Source: On-line gallery of Prado museum via Wikimedia Commons |
Correggio
While
Titian and Tintoretto were the two great Venetian painters, Antonio Allegri da
Correggio was El Greco’s preferred painter in the Lombard area, especially
because of the famous dome of the Cathedral of Parma:
"Take for granted that, at that time when he
did this work, he got more than any other, because no one else showed at that
time such ferocity without depending from antiquity, in the way it is seen instead
in most of the things of Raphael of Urbino" (p. 239),
where "ferocity" means the pride and
beauty of work. There is, of course, more praise (such as for the figure of Mary
Magdalene in the Madonna della Scala, "unique
figure in painting" (p. 240), but generally Correggio is used as a
comparison with respect to other figures of other contemporary artists. One,
for example, is Parmigianino (whom El Greco judged great drawer, but bad
painter):
"... since Parmigiano knew nothing on painting and
even less compared to Antonio da Correggio, and the same as of Parmigianino can
be said of many of those whom Vasari raised up to heaven "(p. 236).
And, again
with reference to a passage on Francesco Mazzola:
"Antonio da Correggio has exceeded them all
in what is grace, in general, and in his drawings" (p. 264),
where
"everyone" seems to imply all Florentine artists praised by Vasari. The
contrast Correggio vs. Florentine artists comes back in a note to the biography
of Girolamo da Carpi:
"... I mean that, in truth, the fresco tribune
[of Correggio] in the cathedral of Parma is worth more than all the paintings
of Florence ..." (p. 288).
The
comparison involves (as indeed we saw four notes above) also Raphael, who was
valued lower than Allegri:
"this makes clear who was Antonio Correggio,
since he died eight-year younger than Raphael and in his things exceeds Raphael
so much than the latter seems elder in most of them" (p. 251).
 |
| El Greco, Laocoonte, 1610-1614, Washington, National Gallery of Art Source: https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/asset-viewer/WQGAoHxyYQDzkQ |
Michelangelo
El Greco’s
relationship with Michelangelo was, by far, the most controversial and also the
one which has been studied the most since Xavier de Salas has found the sample
of the Lives. Michelangelo was
considered a genius, a great artist, a great sculptor and great architect, but a
bad painter. We have already mentioned, in the first part of this post, the story by Giulio Mancini that El Greco would have invited the Pope to break down
the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel and offered him to better redo them (a
proposal which would have caused him to leave Rome and to move to Spain). The
greatness of Michelangelo as an artist and as a sculptor was already supported
in El Greco’s notes to Vitruvius, where Doménikos displayed his own, personal,
comparison between the arts and put painting above sculpture:
"One thing is the imitation of colour, which
I consider the most difficult since it is about deceiving the wise with
apparent things (like nature works) [...] So you see in the drawings having a single object, like in
sculpture. Michelangelo achieved all perfection in sculpture, which has nothing
to do with the colours, and not only Michelangelo, who is however unique in
this particular way of (drawing?) nudes" (p. 85).
Michelangelo
also seems to correspond to the perfect ideal of architect, who is not based on
precise ratios and measures, but only on
"drawing and drawing again" (p.
161),
or on invention,
imagination and venustas, on which we have already spoken.
Or, when Michelangelo
is quoted as saying that "all those who discussed about measures were
big stupid and unfortunate" (p. 168).
Yet, when El
Greco switched to painting (and we are now turning to the annotations to
Vasari's Lives) the judgment was merciless:
"... not by chance Michelangelo could neither
make hair nor imitate flesh; moreover, one cannot deny that he is not able to
achieve those delicacies which only oil colours can provide" (p. 264).
The outrage
was great when Vasari was praising him and saying that he "had reached the perfection of art, because
he had excluded from his works landscapes, trees, buildings and other varieties
and gracious things of art, to which he paid no attention, perhaps because he
did not want to lower his genius to these things." The gloss of El
Greco was unequivocal: "Oh, so a great
impudence!" (pp. 306-307).
All in all,
it was a love and hate relationship. Michelangelo was not a great painter
because he emphasised drawing and not colour. This may seem today a
contradiction (after all, once the restoration of the Sistine Chapel was completed,
there was fierce criticism because of the too shrill colours). However, it made
perfect sense in the mind of El Greco; to him, the vault of the Chapel and the
Last Judgment looked like a single, vast, black and white piece, with a
completely artificial colour scale, rejecting the imitation of nature.
 |
| El Greco, The Vision of St. John (or The Opening of the Fifth Seal), 1608-1614, New York, Metropolitan Museum Source: http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/g/greco_el/ |
Dating
I held almost to the end the question of the dating of footnotes. I kept it for almost last because, after all, once it is proven that El Greco’s annotation were consistent with his art, the need to identify certain dates for the writing of the margin notes becomes, in my opinion, secondary. I am pleased that the authors, in this regard, remained vague, offering a dating that could go from 1586 to 1600 for the margin notes to Vasari, and between 1592 and 1593 for those to Vitruvius. After having viewed eighty specimens of Vasari (in the Torrentiniana or Giuntina editions) I am convinced that most of the margin notes were added even over decades, after more or less systematically repeated readings and re-readings.
I held almost to the end the question of the dating of footnotes. I kept it for almost last because, after all, once it is proven that El Greco’s annotation were consistent with his art, the need to identify certain dates for the writing of the margin notes becomes, in my opinion, secondary. I am pleased that the authors, in this regard, remained vague, offering a dating that could go from 1586 to 1600 for the margin notes to Vasari, and between 1592 and 1593 for those to Vitruvius. After having viewed eighty specimens of Vasari (in the Torrentiniana or Giuntina editions) I am convinced that most of the margin notes were added even over decades, after more or less systematically repeated readings and re-readings.
In this
regard I would, however, object to one of the last myth that resists, i.e. that
Vasari's Lives in the hands of El
Greco have been donated by Zuccari during the stay of the latter in Toledo in
1586. The (undeniable) fact that Zuccari and El Greco were both in Toledo in
1586 is fixed with certainty by Salas; however, it does not in any way imply
that there has been a gift. First of all, I am convinced that if there had been
a gift, something would be written in the sample in question (for example, a
thank you message, or even a confirmation by Zuccari of the originality of his own
notes, which was certified only by El Greco). Let us above all consider that it
is not at all certain that the two had not previously met in Italy; or, perhaps
more likely, it is possible that the sample belonged to one of Zuccari’s
disciples, who followed him in Spain and remained there afterwards (for
example, Bartolomeo Carducci). There is no other source, moreover, stating a
particular esteem or friendship between Zuccari and El Greco. The truth is that
there is no prove in this respect.
Personally
(and I hope to be able to write on it in the future) I am convinced that Zuccari’s
most significant note to Vasari (the one in which he told of his brother
Taddeo who, on the way back to San Vado, had hallucinations and confused stones
in the bed of a river for works of Polidoro and Raphael) may be very early,
perhaps in the early 1570s. What is certain is that it was part of a strategy: on the
one hand, Zuccari wanted to revenge himself against Vasari, guilty of the failure
to transpose the indications given him by Federico about Taddeo; on the other hand,
he wanted to promote the image of his brother, but, ultimately of his family,
which Federico declined for at least twenty years and had a perfect visual
match in a drawing (no. 14) now in the Getty Museum Collection and dated,
hypothetically, in the last decade of the century [4]:
An imprecision
Finally, I
would like to signal an inaccuracy (which, of course, in no way detracts from
the strengths of the excellent work of the authors). At page 340, it is
attributed to El Greco a correction according to which the term gratioso (gracious) is to be replaced
with gradito (well accepted). We are
in volume III, p. 941, in the section devoted to the description of the
apparatus for the wedding of Francesco de' Medici and Giovanna of Austria, in a
section which – as we know since the early twentieth century – was not written
by Vasari, but by Giovan Battista Cini. That correction is not by El Greco. In
fact, it is identical for calligraphy in all copies of the Giuntina I have seen.
It is therefore an 'editorial postscript ', probably (I would say certainly)
made in the woodblock of the page [5], and therefore dates from December 1567,
when the printing of the work was completed. To identify these cases is, of
course, possible only if one may compare many specimens between each other.
NOTES
[4] See Julian Brooks (editor), Taddeo and Federico Zuccaro. Artist-Brothers in Renaissance Rome, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007, p. 21.
[5] Since, in the past, I reviewed in a very severe manner the commentary by Lucia Collavo on the margin noted of Scamozzi to Vasari, I am here obliged to take formal note that, as far as I know, she was the only one to have noticed this. See Lucia Collavo, L’esemplare dell’edizione giuntina de Le Vite di Giorgio Vasari letto e annotato da Vincenzo Scamozzi in “Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte”, 29 (2005), p. 60 n. 42.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento