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venerdì 14 aprile 2017

Giovanni Mazzaferro. Mary P. Merrifield and the First English Translation of Cennino Cennini's 'Book of the Art': the press reviews. Part One


Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Giovanni Mazzaferro
Mary P. Merrifield and the First English Translation of Cennino Cennini's Book of the Art: the press reviews.
Part One
Fig. 1) Front-cover of the First English Translation of Cennino Cennini's Book of the Art (1844)

The historical framework

At the end of 1844, Mary Philadelphia Merrifield produced the first English translation of the Book of the Art by Cennino Cennini [1]. The work was published in London by Edward Lumley, 56 Chancery Lane, and dedicated to Lady Follett. She was the wife of Sir William Webb Follett (1796-1845), one of the most famous British lawyers of those days. The title page read verbatim: “A Treatise on Painting, written by Cennino Cennini in the year 1437; and first published in Italian in 1821, with an introduction and notes, by Signor Tambroni: containing practical directions for painting in fresco, secco, oil, and distemper, with the art of gilding and illuminating manuscripts adopted by the Old Italian Masters”. The English text was thus translated from the first printed edition (princeps) of Giuseppe Tambroni (1821), at that time the only Italian version of the work; that text was already much criticized since the release, because it was based on the transcription of a 1737 copy of the Laurentian manuscript preserved in Florence and not directly on the latter (dated 1437).

The historical juncture is known: after the Westminster Palace had burned completely in 1834, English authorities decided to rebuild it completely, raising it in Gothic style and decorating it with frescoes. The then British artists, however, had no familiarity with this technique; therefore, a special Royal Commission of Fine Arts started work with the task of promoting the knowledge of how to operate on the wall and, more generally, of reviving the fortunes of British art, meant to grow in parallel to the ascent of Empire's fortunes. The Commission was chaired by Prince Albert, consort of Queen, but the central figure of the same was without doubts Charles Lock Eastlake, the future director of the National Gallery. In early 1842, the Commission (i.e. Eastlake) presented the first Report on its work. As we can read in the parliamentary records [2], it was a very short text, followed by a lengthy series of attachments, whose first five ones were by far the most important. Hereafter is the list of their titles:
  • Annex 1) Notice respecting a competion in cartoons (these were the terms for the completion among British artists for the realization of preparatory cartoons for Westminster Palace);
  • Annex 2) The general object of the Commission considered in relation to the state and prospects ot the English School of Painting (in essence, this attachment explained that British artists knew little about fresco and authorities had to do everything possible to recover the knowhow on these techniques).
  • Annex 3) Statements of Director Peter von Cornelius relating to the proposed decoration of the Houses of Parliament. The Commission (in practice, Prince Albert, who was German) called Peter von Cornelius to London. He was one of the prominent figures of the Nazarene world, which had rediscovered the fresco technique, first in Rome and then in Germany. While the British art world greatly feared that the task of decorating such a symbolic place of power might be entrusted to a German artist, in fact Cornelius called himself out, providing however some advice on the matter.
  • Annex 4) Various communications on Fresco Painting. This attachment offered information gathered from various sources on the topic.
  • Attachment 5) Methods of Fresco-Painting described by writers on art. Among others, this attachment (written personally by Eastlake) also contained excerpts of the translation of Cennino’s treatise as published by Tambroni. Eastlake stated that a complete translation of the work would be desirable.
Accommodating the appeal by Eastlake, the little-known Mary P. Merrifield provided to perform the translation and, two years after, to publish it.


Fig. 2) "Vergin and Child by Squarcione in the possession of the Lazara Family at Padua".
Drawing by Mary P. Merrifield after Giovanni Rosini, Storia della pittura italiana esposta coi monumenti
Source: https://archive.org/stream/atreatiseonpain00cenngoog#page/n8/mode/2up
Fig. 3) "Virgin and Child by Raphael, formerly in the possession of the Staffa family"
Drawing by Mary P. Merrifield after Giovanni Rosini, Storia della pittura italiana esposta coi monumenti
Source: https://archive.org/stream/atreatiseonpain00cenngoog#page/n24/mode/2up
Fig. 4) "Virgin and Child by Lippo Dalmasio"
Drawing by Mary P. Merrifield after Giovanni Rosini, Storia della pittura italiana esposta coi monumenti.
Source: https://archive.org/stream/atreatiseonpain00cenngoog#page/n90/mode/2up

The book reviews

Today the Internet is allowing us to make research that only a few years would have been totally unthinkable. I undertook the task to try understanding the reactions in the British press, once the translation was presented by the unknown Mrs. Merrifield. Surfing the net, I found five reviews (I cannot rule out there may have been others). They were are anonymous, but I managed to identify with certainty the authors of two of them. First of all, it is worth noticing that the book did not go unnoticed and was widely presented to the general public in the course of the first months of 1845 by all main magazines of the specialised press (apart from The Art Union, where it was only mentioned). These were (in chronological order) the magazines where the comments appeared to Cennino’s translation: 

Fig. 5) Table out of the text, in colour, placed before the beginning of the text of Cennino’s original

Elements in common

Four of the five reviews (except the one written in Athenaeum) had a generally positive tenor. All, moreover, had common elements, starting from the general qualification of the work as 'curious' and therefore interesting, beyond the possible practical consequences of Cennino’s text. In fact - as we shall see – Cennino’s indications were mainly discussed in relation to oil painting and the 'secrets' of the old Italian masters, rather than in terms of what regards fresco. There was also a substantial disinterest in tempera (as it is known, it would be Christiana Herringham, author of the second English translation in 1899 and co-founder of the Society of Painters in Tempera to recall the English interest in this technique). Leaving the discussion of oil painting, every reviewer did not fail to quote one or more intriguing passages of the work (such as those in which it was said that studying the measures of women did not make sense because there was no perfection in their bodies, or those giving instructions on how to make casts of living people).

Cennino’s image for the English reader was largely shared, reflecting what Tambroni wrote 1821 and also Merrifield took over in her introduction: a pious and naive man, moved by strong religious feelings, but also an unfortunate painter, forced to write his work at the age of about eighty years while he was jailed in the Florentine prison of Stinche (only with the edition of the Milanese brothers it was understood that the indication of the date '1437' and the location 'Ex Stincharum' was affixed by a copyist and was not original). Of course, Cennino’s bitter fate had nothing to do with morality, which was beyond reproach, but was tied to debts owed to the difficulties encountered in the course of his artistic activity. From here, reviewers dwelled on the sad fate of many art creators, who in life had a hard time making ends meet; more daring, others made statements on the 'genius' of those men, who were ahead of their time and were rarely recognized by the people, and were therefore appreciated only after death. Cennino would therefore have been a genius anticipating the future, even though, from an artistic point of view, his main merit was to witness the past techniques of Giotto, in whose ranks he operated by his own admission (this was obviously a reference to the part of the treatise in which Cennino declared himself a disciple of Agnolo Gaddi, who was a student of Taddeo, who in turn was a pupil of Giotto).


Figura 6) "Vurgin in glory by Raphael"
Drawing by Mary P. Merrifield after Giovanni Rosini, Storia della pittura italiana esposta coi monumenti.
Source: https://archive.org/stream/atreatiseonpain00cenngoog#page/n106/mode/2up
Fig. 7) "Presumed portrait of Raphael as a young boy drawn by his father Giovanni Sanzio"
Drawing by Mary P. Merrifield after Giovanni Rosini, Storia della pittura italiana esposta coi monumenti.
Source: https://archive.org/stream/atreatiseonpain00cenngoog#page/n146/mode/2up
Fig, 8) "Virgin and Child by  Correggio"
Drawing by Mary P. Merrifield after Giovanni Rosini, Storia della pittura italiana esposta coi monumenti.
Source: https://archive.org/stream/atreatiseonpain00cenngoog#page/n198/mode/2up

The Gentleman’s Magazine and The Westminster Review

Let me first of all focus on the two reviews that, in many ways, were the least significant: the second and the fourth. Nevertheless, they also had something interesting. Surely, these were the two shortest texts. In The Gentleman’s Magazine the author (or the authoress) admitted candidly to have never heard about Cennini, Tambroni or Merrifield before. Nevertheless, the reviewer congratulated the translator for preface and notes, which indicated the accuracy of her research and the knowledge acquired in the field. All of this made great honour to Mrs. Merrifield. The reviewer did not miss to criticise with some spicy and parochial humour the German fresco techniques (that the Nazarenes), whose Munich's works, just ten years after their execution, would be in fact already disappearing.

The notes in the Westminster Review were even more interesting, because they might suggest (this is just a guess) a more complicated publishing history of the work than one would expect. The tone of the review - mind you - was absolutely positive, except for the illustrations. It should be noted that the illustrations of the work (for an indication by the translator see p. XXIII of her preface) were performed by Mrs. Merrifield herself producing lithographs drawn from the Storia della Pittura esposta coi monumenti (History of painting shown with the works) by Giovanni Rosini (1776-1855), published in Italy since 1839. Personally, I have some doubts that all pictures were made by Merrifield, since they are looking quite disparate (you can see them all accompanying this post). On this, the anonymous reviewer of the Westminster Review wrote: “Great expense has been incurred in the getting up of the work in its present form, and the ornamental arabesque of the title page is extremely beautiful, but the drawing of several of the succeeding outlines is faulty. This is especially the case with the plate of Dante’s portrait [cfr. fig. 9], where the expression of the mouth is quite lost. Plate No. 5, by Coreggio [sic! See fig. 8] has merit, but less owing, perhaps, to the skill of the engraver than the excellence of the original composition” (p. 126). The book did not have an index of tables (which were all outside the text) and therefore it is not easy to make checks. The indication of Correggio’s work, for example, did not seem correct, since it was the eighth picture in the work and not the fifth one.

Fig. 9)  "Lost portrait of Dante, drawn by Giotto in the ancient Chapel of the Podestà of Firenze."
Drawing by Mary P. Merrifield after Giovanni Rosini, Storia della pittura italiana esposta coi monumenti.
Source: https://archive.org/stream/atreatiseonpain00cenngoog#page/n224/mode/2up. 

The curious thing is that digital reprint published by Kessinger Publishing in 2008 contains all the images but one, compared to the one which can be viewed at https://archive.org/details/atreatiseonpain00cenngoog (a scanned picture from the sample at the Oxford university). The missing image is that of Dante. It might be a coincidence (a torn page, for example), but also indicate the author's choice to remove at a later time the picture which had been criticised by the reviewer in the Westminster Review.

Fig. 10) "Virgin and Child by Agnolo Gaddi, Camposanto of Pisa"
Drawing by Mary P. Merrifield after Giovanni Rosini, Storia della pittura italiana esposta coi monumenti.
Source: https://archive.org/stream/atreatiseonpain00cenngoog#page/n230/mode/2up
Fig. 11) "Virgin and Child by Giotto"
Drawing by Mary P. Merrifield after Giovanni Rosini, Storia della pittura italiana esposta coi monumenti.
Source: https://archive.org/stream/atreatiseonpain00cenngoog#page/n238/mode/2up

Lord Egerton in The Quarterly Review

The by far most prestigious review on Merrifield’s translation was written in the Quarterly Review by Lord Egerton, an official belonging to the liberal wing of the Tory party, but above all a great lover of arts. We are certain that Egerton drafted the text, because Mary reported a specific event in a letter written from Venice to her husband on January 11, 1846: when she was at the Imperiale Regio Istituto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Imperial Royal Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts, at that time in the Ducal Palace), she met an Englishman reading the Quarterly Review. She mentioned him that her book had just been reviewed in that magazine. The gentleman asked to see the issue including the review; the article drew the attention of all others present at the Institute, so that Ms Merrifield was asked to translate it into Italian. This is when Merrifield wrote verbatim: "The review of Lord Egerton will therefore be translated into Italian" [3].

Egerton - as already mentioned - was a member of that Royal Commission for the Fine Arts, which in its first report of 1842 had stressed the importance of recovering the ancient sources on artistic techniques. Egerton’s review was, in essence, Eastlake’s response (i.e. the response of the Secretary of the Commission) and more generally of the British government. Although intentionally written without emphasis, it was still an enthusiastic response. Egerton stated that he could not remember any other work which had been released in such an appropriate time. It was a most useful work, because it contained authentic information on the methods used by the decorators in the Pisa Camposanto (not only in the Anglo-Saxon world the Camposanto in Pisa was the symbol for Trecento fresco painting, as in fact there was no mention of the place within the work). Apart from a couple of protagonists of the British art world, perfectly able to take advantage of the Italian edition (and here were mentioned Eastlake and the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon), all others were now made able to access Cennino’s teachings "by feminine interposition and accomplishment”. This requires some explanation. In the artistic and literary world of Victorian England, there were roles that were permitted to a woman and some that were not. Translating was a permitted and widely attended task. In this respect, one can quote several cases. Elizabeth Rigby (Eastlake’s future wife) translated into English Passavant’s Tour of a German Artist in England, with Notices of Private Galleries, and Remarks on the State of Art (in 1836), the second edition of the Handbook of Painting: the Italian Schools by Franz Theodor Kugler in 1851, the Treasures of Art in Great Britain by Gustav Waagen in 1851 and Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain (always by Waagen) in 1857. Jonathan Foster translated Vasari’s Lives in 1850. Finally, Margaret Heaton translated the first edition of Kugler’s Manual in 1842 [4]. Merrifield’s endeavour was then fully inserted into a well-established tradition, but it seemed to go beyond the mere repayment of a linguistic fact, as Egerton himself wrote: “The English translation is further recommended by notes which evince much research and knowledge, and by graphic illustrations [editor's note: the same criticized by The Washington Review only a few months later] drawn on stone by Mrs. Merrifield, which tempt us to say to her in the words of Cennini’s 13th chapter, there applied to drawing with the pen: “Do you know what will be the consequence of this practice? I will make you expert, skilful, and capable of making original designs”. This lady is not, we believe, an artist by profession, but her outlines prove her to be one by love and accomplishment, and her notes show a familiarity with the mysteries of the painter's laboratory, which the rapid coverers of modern canvas in their breathless haste for exhibition seldom condescend to acquire” (p. 79).

Among all reviewers, Egerton was the only one with full awareness that the section due to have the greatest impact on the local art world was the third one, dedicated to the fresco painting. According to him, Cennino’s instructions, in principle, fitted well with the methods outlined by other personalities and gathered in the Commission's first Report. He was however surprised that Cennino did not distinguish, within the plastering of the walls, between the first raw hand (arricciato) and the truly intonaco. He recommended however the reader to carefully compare information provided by the Siena artist (for him, obviously, the author of the work - in old age and in absolute poverty – was imprisoned in the penitentiary of Stinche) with the Commission's Report and with the contemporary practices of the Munich school, i.e. the Nazarenes. According to him, the main difference between Cennino and others was the fact that the first recommended to never overlap colours: Cennino’s challenge was to harmonize colours with each other without physically mixing them up.

The discussion on oil painting opened, of course, with the debate on the birth right of the technical discovery. The question - to be honest - was put forcefully by Tambroni in his introduction; he considered that Cennino’s misfortune has been determined by the fact that Vasari had not taken him seriously, and had therefore not noticed that the Siena artist spoke of oil techniques. For Tambroni, in short, the discovery was not due to Van Eyck, but was an Italian endeavour. What's more, the Italian editor argued that Theophilus Presbyter (who had written much before) was nothing but a Lombard who had moved to Germany; he was the one who had spread the oil practice there. Egerton, however, was not particularly interested in issues of primogeniture. He was convinced that, over the centuries, the secret of perfect processing oil had gone lost because of wars, epidemics and other misfortunes like that. What was the lost secret? Even here, he referred to Vasari, where the latter wrote (about van Eyck) that he found linseed and walnut oil “boiled with his other mixtures, made the varnish, which he, as well as all the other painters of the world, has so long desired”. The secret, then, was in the vehicle, and in particular in "his other mixtures" of which we know nothing definite.

It should be mentioned, at this point, that the secret of oil painting, and in particular the 'Venetian secret' was a real mania that infected all of England since the end of the eighteenth century. This mania exhibited academia to blatant fool, like the one which involved the President of the Academy Benjamin West in 1795. West was convinced by a mentally unstable girl that she owned a manuscript containing the 'Venetian Secret', delivered by a certain Mr. Barri to her grandfather [5]. Despite that failure, as we see, half a century later, there were still many to believe that there was a secret. The obvious difference between the state of conservation of oil (or presumed oil) paintings by the old masters and modern artists (such as Joshua Reynolds) fuelled the hypothesis.

Egerton then did not underestimate the importance of the long apprenticeship (twelve years) recommended by Cennino to become full-fledged painters. The first six of these twelve years had to focus on the material preparation of colours, tools, paintings and more. Mind you: that of 'long' discipleship was a theme that all academies across Europe felt very appropriate. Ideally, they gave themselves the role of taking the heritage of the workshops where the craft was taught. Egerton felt so much in line with this that he first used an argument typical of the British Conservatives, often used in support of the Industrial Revolution (“A formidable catalogue of mechanical processes for six years, which the modern discovery of the division of labour has spared to the student”). However, he felt necessary to add: “We believe, however, that the intimate acquaintance with the materials and instruments of his art, which he [Cennino] purchased at so large a sacrifice in the fourteenth century, contributed much to the durability of his work”.

The long review was actually combined (in a not particularly affective way), in a second part, with a discussion on Haydon’s Lectures on Painting and Design, also published in 1844. Unfortunately, this second part did not add anything to those who - like me - were interested in Cennino and the translation by Ms Merrifield.


End of Part One
Go to Part Two 


NOTES

[1] On the figure of Mary Philadelphia Merrifield, I would like to refer in this blog to Giovanni Mazzaferro, Mary Philadelphia Merrifield: The Lady from Brighton who loved colours (and related post listed there); on Cennino, I am referring to the posts listed in the section of this blog entitled Cennini Project.

[2] The Report is available in Parliamentary Papers, Volume 25, Reports from Commissioners, Session 3 February - 12 August 1842 and can be read here: 

[3] Ten booklets of transcripts of letters from Mary P Merrifield to her husband, John, 4 Grand Parade, Brighton, and her parents, during her trips to Venice via Dieppe, Paris, Turin, Milan and Padua in 1844-45 and 1845-46. The trips were commissioned by Robert Peel's government and undertaken with her son Charles in order to research the make-up of early pigments and Italian methods of painting. Notebook 4, letter of 11 January 1846. The notebooks are kept at The Keep Brigthon. I hope to publish their Italian translation in the next future.

[4] See: Susanna Avery-Quash and Julie Sheldon, Art for the Nation. The Eastlakes and the Victorian Art World, London, The National Gallery Company, 2011 (especially pp. 50-80) and Julie Sheldon, The Letters of Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2009, p. 24 n. 31.


 


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