Enrico Panzacchi. [The Book of the Artists. An Anthology], 1902. Review by Francesco Mazzaferro. Part Three

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Enrico Panzacchi, 

Il Libro degli Artisti. Antologia 

[The Book of the Artists. An Anthology]
Milan, L.F. Cogliati Printing House, 1902, 527 pages

Review by Francesco Mazzaferro. Part Three 

Fig. 53) The leather cover of Panzacchi’s Essays on Art History, in a miniaturized edition without date

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Seventeenth Century

In the undated essay on "Literature and Art in Italy", included in a series of surveys published in 1897, Panzacchi strongly stated the quality of art literature in Italy also during the Eighteenth century, a period in the history of Italian art that was generally considered as an expression of the crisis of society and policy in the country. As we have already seen in the first part of this post, he celebrated the critical work of Francesco Algarotti (he saw him as equal, if not even superior to Diderot) and recalled "the two Bianconis, the two Zanottis and Francesco Milizia" as reference authors for the whole century worldwide. By consulting - in the context of this research - the introduction of an anthology by Giosuè Carducci of the same years, I came across a number of statements that - although applied outside the field of art literature - still seemingly reflected the same aptitude: the Eighteenth century in Italy was considered equal, if not even higher, to that of other countries: "Vico revealed divination and the science of history to Germany by means of Hegel (...). Gravina gave Montesquieu the fundamental sentence: «The meeting of all particular forces constitutes the political state of a nation; the meeting of all wills constitutes its civil status.»" [57]. For Panzacchi’s generation, and for its mission to consolidate the political unification of Italy that had just been achieved, it was crucial to deny that the country was accumulating, during the Eighteenth century, an important delay towards the rest of the world.

And yet, the introductory text to the corresponding section of The Book of the Artists clarified that, for Panzacchi, the only stratagem to argue against the Italian delay in the Eighteenth century was to attribute the same shortcomings to the fine arts of the whole century (including France and other European powers): it was a time of crisis for art, and therefore Italy suffered the same faults as the others. "If, in the Seventeenth century, Italian art was still able to gloriously sustain the comparison with the art of other nations, in the following century the decline could not be masked by any splendour of names, works, and schools. After having sprouted and fruited, the big tree retired and rest. Moreover, the Eighteenth century was neither too happy nor too pure for the other peoples, at least with regard to plastic arts. This was indeed the century of music and encyclopaedia. On the one hand, a frivolous and light-hearted society was in love with pleasures and did not call for any intense mental effort; that society burst with joy in front of easy ariettas and the beautiful voices of the castrati branded by Parini. On the other hand, a whole class of people worked, studied, set up the future, and prepared thereby the terrible upheavals that accompanied and followed the French Revolution" [58]. Panzacchi added two further pages to document the weaknesses of artistic creation in the rest of Europe during the Eighteenth century.

Fig. 54) Giovanni Maria Ciocchi, Fresco with the Glory of St. Michael on the ceiling of the Church of Santa Maria degli Angiolini, Florence, 1715

Considering now the selection of the authors of Italian art literature in the anthology, the contrast between the representatives of the frivolous society and the citizens feeding the Age of Enlightenment was visualised by the contrast between the pages of Giovanni Maria Ciocchi and Francesco Algarotti respectively, opening the section on the Eighteenth century. About Ciocchi’s text, Panzacchi wrote: "We wanted to display a passage of this bizarre book, which in the following sessions is evolving into a treatise of aesthetics. The whole book is as much Baroque as you can imagine" [59]. About Algarotti, he stated instead: "He was one of the most elegant and gracious spirits of his time" [60].

Fig. 55) Giovanni Maria Ciocchi, Painting in Parnassus, 1725

Indeed, the reading of the five pages drawn from Painting in Parnassus, finalised 1725 by Giovanni Maria Ciocchi (1658-1725), reminded us of how disturbing it has become to read the rococo-like style of writing of the time. The difficulty comes from the combination of clearly excessive allegoric themes with a lengthy structure of every sentence. The author wanted, for instance, to make visible the interaction between painting and all other "sciences and noble arts"; to this end, he imagined that painting - represented figuratively by a female person - was greeted by all the disciplines of knowledge (also represented by people) on Mount Parnassus, imagined as a place where poetry, history, philosophy, study, application, philosophy, etc. had their permanent seat. To make clear how important is the interaction between different sources of knowledge for a painter, the author invented an allegorical procession of figures representing the essential components of painting itself: colour, union, arrangement, layout, invention, perspective, geometry and architecture. Finally, painting arrived at the end of the procession: "Painting was dressed not only richly, but with most varied and changing dresses; in her hand, she held some brushes and a palette over which were collected the main colours. She composed art so wonderfully with them, thereby representing itself so delightfully to the world. Her hair was black and adorned with rings, and rather wild, but also little visible, since the temples were surrounded and almost covered by a green branch of laurel oak" [61]. I deliberately chose a brief and comprehensible passage.

The same theme of the interaction of the disciplines was treated by Algarotti (1712-1764), however in a completely different way. He discussed the problem of the relationship between painting and the other disciplines by dedicating to each of them one separate chapter in his Saggio sopra la Pittura (Essay on Painting) of 1756: anatomy, perspective, symmetry, colour, etc. The encyclopaedic predilection of his time was made clear by the fact that, in parallel, the same author produced separate essays on architecture, music, commerce and many other disciplines. Panzacchi reproduced Algarotti’s judgments on Poussin, Lorrain and Titian, as well as on a number of architects. To tell the truth, the two pages chosen by Panzacchi did not seem very weighty.

Both in the pages of Ciocchi and in those of Algarotti, Panzacchi avoided, at least in my view intentionally, any systematic discussion of aesthetic themes. In fact, both Painting in Parnassus and Essay on Painting treated all iconological themes of their time. By selecting other passages, their comparative reading could have offered the reader a reflection on how the relation of arts with civil society and religious institutions was changing. Instead, the anthology simply illustrated the extreme divergence of the two writings in terms of general setting and style.

Panzacchi cited with much more depth the thoughts of the Venetian architect and author of essays Francesco Milizia (1725-1761), who belonged to the last phase of the century. The author of The Book of the Artists wrote: "We have been generous in the reproduction of Militia's passages; he was an essayist who would merit being better known than he is. The reader will judge the value of his views on art from his many abstracts here. (...) His writings are of a pleasant reading, filled with spirit and acumen, even if the impartiality of his judgments is not granted. Or at least, he often expresses his views too brutally and not without animosity" [62].

Fig. 56) Francesco Milizia, On the Art to See the Arts of Drawing according to the Principles of Sulzer and Mengs, 1798

Numerous pages of him were cited; among others, they were drawn from the 1781 Memorie degli architetti antichi e moderni (Memoirs of the Ancient and Modern Architects), the 1784 Principi di architettura civile (Principles of Civil Architecture) and the 1798 treatise Dell’Arte di vedere nelle arti del disegno secondo i principi di Sulzer e di Mengs (On the Art to See the Arts of Drawing according to the Principles of Sulzer and Mengs). The reflections included in the first text had the nature of an aesthetic manifesto about ideal beauty, in its neoclassical interpretation. Unlike what happened in the rest of the anthology, the quoted pages were so systematic that they required the publication of a table on the "Quadro delle parti principali che costituiscono le belle arti del disegno” (Framework of the main parts that make up the fine arts of the drawing) [63]. I found also quite interesting the undated letter by Tomaso Temanza to Milizia,where the two discussed the situation of their respective art writings.

Fig. 57) Ridolfino Venuti, Response to the Critical Reflections by M. Marquis of Argens about the Different Painting Schools, 1755

In the space between the initial citations of Ciocchi and Algarotti on the one hand and the final passages by Milizia on the other one, the texts of this section, bearing witness to art literature in the Eighteenth-Century, gave an idea of confusion. While, between the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, some key themes (I called them 'pillars') existed, around which it was possible to decrypt the simple sequencing of quotations on a chronological basis, here there was simply a disorderly variance of different genres and themes. In a couple of cases, the writings objected to the influence of foreign art. Thus Panzacchi reproduced the 1755 Risposta alle Riflessioni critiche del Marchese d’Argens (Response to the Critical Reflections by M. Marquis of Argens about the Different Painting Schools), a report in defence of the Italian art attributed by Lanzi to Ridolfino Venuti (1705-1763). The Emilian painter and author of treatises Giampietro Zanotti (1674-1765), instead, addressed by letter Bottari in 1762 with a rigmarole to complain about the decadence of Italian art and the excessive French and English fashion in our country: "While, in the past, Italy gave norms and rules to other nations, today the Italian genius has become frustrated. Now, in order to compose and thus to sculpt and paint, we have introduced the strange and barbaric British and French manners. If Bonarroti was now about to paint his Judgment, he would convert his Judge Christ into some Lord. (…) Poor Italy! If I say it wrong, Monsignor, warn me and correct me, but I hope I am not doing it” [64].

Fig. 58) Giampietro Zanotti, St. Francis, without date

In fact, the impression is that Panzacchi's choices of the texts from this century testified to the inertia of that world, still dominated by seventeenth-century themes. In his 1754 Dialoghi sopra le tre arti del disegno (Dialogues over the three arts of the drawing), Bottari (1689-1775) gave the floor to Giovanni Pietro Bellori and Carlo Maratta, who talked about the role of fantasy, drawing inspiration from the art of Salvator Rosa. Always in nostalgic tone, one can also read the quoted pages of the Avvertimenti per lo incamminamento di un giovane alla Pittura (Warnings for the Introduction of a Young Man to Painting), always by Giampietro Zanotti, who returned to the topics of the anti-Caravaggian controversy (against the 'Naturalists') in favour of the Carracci School, and spoke of Lorenzo Pasinelli (1629-1700), his master, and Alessandro Tiarini (1577-1668), all Baroque painters from Bologna.

Fig. 60) Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Portrait of Count Fulvio Grati, 1700-1720

Fig. 59) Luigi Crespi, Self-Portrait, 1775

Also Luigi Crespi (1708-1779) was from Bologna. In a letter to Monsignor Bottari of 1759, he told him about his admiration for (then old) Zanotti and about his intention to inspire himself to Zanotti's writings to include in the third volume of the Felsina Pittrice the life of the Bolognese painter Pasinelli, who as mentioned above was Zanotti's master. In this letter Crespi wanted to accredit himself with Bottari as the central figure of the eighteenth-century scholarly world. However, Pasinelli's biography was eventually by and large copied by the one which Zanotti had written, as mentioned in the recent essay of Giovanna Perini Folesani on Crespi. This adventurer behavior was typical of Crespi and also explains why he was never accepted in the Clementine Academy. The fact remains that Panzacchi did not mention these events, since they would disturb the image of an idyllic life in the life of the Bolognese Academy, his indisputable point of reference. Comparing the works of Pasinelli and Zanotti (one the master of the other), it can be seen that the iconography of much of Bologna art in that century (far from adopting the dreaded French or English influences) remained linked to the themes of Baroque art of one hundred years before. Crespi's father (Giuseppe Maria) will instead renew Bologna painting.

Fig. 61) Giampietro Zanotti, The healing of the blind, without date

Fig. 62) Lorenzo Pasinelli, Saint Cecilia, 1665

Fig. 63) Nicola Passeri, The alms of St. Isabel, 1776

Fig. 64) Nicola Passeri, On the Method of Studying Painting, and of the Causes of its Decadence, 1795

When it comes to witnessing the passage to the neoclassical taste, Panzacchi chose another Emilian artist (from Faenza): Nicola Passeri (1729-1799), painter and author of treatises, as well as a member of the Accademia Clementina of Bologna. His pictures, from an iconological point of view, did not reveal any fractures with respect to Emilian continuity. And yet his treatise Del metodo di studiare la pittura, e delle cagioni di sua decadenza (Of the Method of Studying Painting, and of the Causes of its Decadence) was a dialogue between Mengs and Winckelmann, meaning a change of aestetic coordinates: he was no longer looking at the Carraccis, but at the Greek-Roman world. In the fiction of the dialogue, Winckelmann asked Mengs: "And following nature, coupled with a beautiful and pleasant art, did we not achieve a degree of perfection?" Mengs's fictitious answer did not raise any doubt: "No, dear Wincklemann. One must know how to discern the enjoyable from the deep beauties of the form” [65].

Passeri was also quoted for his Esame ragionato sopra la nobiltà della pittura e della scultura (Reasoned essay on the nobility of painting and sculpture), one of the last epigones 1783 of the old theme of the Paragone (Comparison), and for a study on a "Piano di Regolamenti e Statuti, per formare una Reale Accademia di pittura, scultura ed architettura” (Plan of Regulations and Statutes, to form a Royal Academy of Painting, Sculpture and architecture), published in the annex to the dialogue.

Confirming that he considered him a protagonist of the century by Panzacchi, as he had written in the essay on "Literature and Art in Italy", Panzacchi cited several times Zanotti. Personally, I mainly appreciated Zanotti's sonnet for the restoration of Giambologna’s Neptune by the sculptor and anatomist Ercole Lelli (pupil of Zanotti), completed in 1762.

"And now I see you again, o illustrious and proud statue, which honours and marvels the one who passes. Time runs and also opens and corrodes the bronzes; though, the old age looks now with lack of belief and surprise at the great artwork which has finally been restored.

Here is Neptune, who orders with the trident and shows his first and superb act. Even the goddess of envy sees it and she is distressed because she no longer hopes in her divine abilities. Oh, sublime precious of value rare! What is however impossible for a beautiful glorious spirit, when that spirit knows the ways of fine arts? And you, Nereid, offer garlands to the honoured face of the estimeed master, who repaired the image that was in ruin" [66].

Fig. 65) Ercole Lelli, The Skinned, Anatomical Theatre of Archiginnasio, Bologna 1733-34

Remaining in the field of poetry, Panzacchi offered five sonnets from Modena's poet Giuliano Cassiani (1712-1778), although these were not compositions referring directly to painters. Cassiani was quoted "in absence, or by scarcity, of original poems of artists... in order to appreciate [67] and understand the taste of the age" [68]. It is significant that the choice fell once again on a literate from Emilia. Evidently, there was a conscious effort to search preferentially in the Emilian world to detect any traces of the development of Italian art literature of the century. Certainly, just over one hundred years later, few would think today that Zanotti and Passeri played any central role for art literature of the Eighteenth Century in Italy and beyond. But rereading the anthologies of the past does not only help reflect on past tastes on art, but also to wonder whether there should not be new investigations on art literature for the future.

Nineteenth Century

In the first part of this post we devoted a lot of space to the considerations of Panzacchi on the first Italian Nineteenth Century in his already mentioned essay "The Literature and Art in Italy" published in 1897. We saw that he considered 'art literature' of this period (he was one of the first to use this term), as somewhat disappointing; specifically, he deprecated that the greats of Italian literature (including Monti, Foscolo and Manzoni) were essentially indifferent to art, unlike their French and German contemporaries, were essentially indifferent to art. The only exceptions among the neoclassicals were Pietro Giordani and Gian Battista Niccolini. Even the Italian exponents of romantic literature, unlike French and German romanticists, ignored art themes. Panzacchi warned that he was well aware that other Italian authors (who did not belong, in his view, to the literary world) had written art (he quoted Leopoldo Cicognara, Giuseppe Bossi, Abbot Pietro Zani and Pietro Selvatico). Among the philosophers he mentioned the treatise Del Bello (On Beauty) by Vincenzo Gioberti of 1845, to say, however, that, unlike Du Vrai, du beau, du bien of the French Cousin 1854, "for our artists and the lovers of historical and contemporary art, the book of Gioberti did not produce any effect” [69].

Fig. 66) Vincenzo Gioberti, On Beauty, 1845

Fig. 67) Victor Cousin, Du vrai, du beau et du bien  1853

And thus Panzacchi ended the writing of 1897 with these words: "All offended our arts. Governments neglected them at all or gave poor help with naughty criteria. Nonsensical teaching mixed old and new with decrepit tenacity and with restless lightness. There was no literature focusing on them, as literates preferred to go on their own, abstaining from them superbly and abandoning them to the judgment and government by often pretentious and ignorant journalists and amateurs” [70]. […]

“ The good Luigi Mussini wrote in the year of grace 1848: «Yet artists in Italy are not missing!»” [71]. “But the exclamation of the good Mussini was true then and we can repeat it with more conviction now, after fifty years. Whoever visits our studios finds everywhere often obscure old and young artists. Almost always uninspired, they may love to grumble, but will never be left out of painting. The results of this indomitable (and in many cases truly heroic) steadiness are everywhere a remarkable improvement in art technique and a perseverant pursuit of artistic sincerity, sometimes wandering in controversial efforts, but never without dignity and without fruit. More than the example of the many lucky and triumphant artists among them, I would like to remember those virtuous and valorous young men whose wings were broken by death, when they were about to fly in the boundless glorious air. I would like to remind among them Celentano, Fracassini, Faruffini, Mosso, Busi, Favretto, Serra, Ricci, and Muzzioli, so that young artists might draw from their strong sense of life the concept of the noble duty to be pursued: to carry on the work that their dead comrades were forced to leave unfinished” [72].

Fig. 68) Bernardo Celentano, The Council of the Ten, 1860

Fig. 69) Carlo Grosso, The cell of mentally sick ladies, 1884

Fig. 70) Luigi Serra, The Catholic army enters Prague after the White Mountain victory, 1885.
Fresco of the apse of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome

Fig. 71) Giovanni Muzzioli, The Funeral of Britannicus, 1888

In the anthology, the introductory section of the Nineteenth century was somewhat more abrupt: "The art of this century would require too long an introduction to embrace not one, but many and varied and often confused art movements and ideas. We will confine ourselves to a very brief hint” [73]. He revealed his personal supportive judgment on sculpture of those days (Canova, Bartolini, Dupré, and Vela) while he was exceptionally severe as far as painting was concerned. "In the country of the great past colourists like Giorgione, Titian and Correggio, nobody longer knows the colour and white lead dominates. (...) Camuccini, Agrippa, and Landi were just good imitators of David's school. (...) A French critic, by the middle of the century, called Italy the tombeau de la peinture (the grave of painting)!" [74]

Fig. 72) Luigi Bartolini, The Trust in God, 1834

Fig. 73) Giovanni Duprè, Dying Abel, 1843

This evaluation also led, in the selection of the writings of the early Nineteenth century, to a clear preference for pages related to sculpture: letters from Canova (to Cesarotti, Giuseppe Falier, Cicognara), quotes from Giovanni Dupré's autobiography (about his master Luigi Bartolini and concerning exhibitions in Paris), five pages of tercets from the poet Paolo Costa (1771-1836) from Ravenna to celebrate the return of Laocoön to Rome from Paris, where he had been exposed at the Napoleon Museum, and finally a 1837 sonnet by Giuseppe Giusti to celebrate Luigi Bartolini's Trust in God.

“Almost forgetting her dying body, she abandoned the beautiful kneeling figure and both hands, now abducted by the thoughts on God, the one who gladly forgives.

A feeble pain and celestial calm took shape in the whole person. But in the face already reasoning with God, it flashed the immortal ray of the soul;

And it seemed to say: while every sweet thing deceives me, and I feel like I'm running out of life, still in the young age which I hoped it would be serene,

Lord, my soul turns to full confidence in your paternal soul, and finds comfort in a not earthly affection” [75].

Fig. 74) Filippo Palizzi, After the flood, 1863

Fig. 75) Domenico Morelli, The temptations of St. Anthony, 1878

If the judgment on Italian neoclassical painting remains strident, what did Panzacchi write on most recent Italian art? We saw him having a favourable attitude towards the painters representing Italy at the first Venice Biennial in 1895, although he disapproved of the growing convergence of styles towards the French model. Something similar is also found in the introduction to the section of the anthology. "A noble attempt could then take place in Italy to ensure the resurgence of painting. But we must wait for the second half of the century, with the period that opened with Filippo Palizzi, continued with Stefano Ussi and Domenico Morelli and closed with Giuseppe Segantini, four recently dead artists. It would be unjust to deny the noble efforts made with the Lombards, in particular with Hayez to their head, and similar endeavours in Tuscany, Piedmont, Emilia and Veneto. But in general, one must recognize that the Italian pictorial movement was particularly marked by two defects: the oblivion of its glorious traditions and the naive, inconsistent and servile ease with which it bowed to all the manifestations of foreign art, as soon as they came to us crowned by some vagueness of fashion and success” [76]. Panzacchi included some pages of Le mie memorie (My Memories) by Hayez, published in 1890. Hayez recounted there the meeting he had, still very young, with Pietro Benvenuti (1769-1844), the neo-classical painter.

Fig. 76) Pietro Benvenuti, Portrait of Eleonora Pandolfini Nencini, around 1804

Fig. 77) Francesco Hayez, My memories dictated by Francesco Hayez, 1890

Fig. 78) Francesco Hayez, Meditation, 1851

It was also dedicated to the Meditation by Hayez (also known as L'Italia del 1848 – Italy in 1848), a 1852 sonnet by Andrea Maffei (1798-1885).

"Dear, angelic woman, by what thoughts is your disconsolate soul absorbed,
afflicting you so much, and discomforting you in the finest age of your years? ... Mystery.

The cross that you are holding in hand and that severe
Volume which your eye is looking at,
They say that joy is dead to you,
Nor does the world offer you anything but its true sadness.

Yes, the bible and the cross! Useful advice
At your unfortunate age, when impudent
feelings would prefer the perverse to the good;
Stick your attitude with those marks of redemption,

Dear, angel woman; those marks are for you
A shelter for the pain of the universe" [77].

At the end of the chapter, we find 1880 Luigi Mussini's Scritti d’arte (Writings on Art), some Pensieri sull’Arte "Thoughts on the Art" by Niccolò Tommaseo's (without reference to sources), two letters by Antonio Fontanesi, one by Bernardo Celentano and finally one by the Bolognese painter Luigi Serra, devoted to his “Apparition of the Virgin to the SS. Francis and Bonaventure" of 1882.

Fig. 79) Antonio Fontanesi, On the bank of the Po in Turin, around 1870-1875

Fig. 80) Luigi Serra, The appearance of the Virgin to the SS. Francesco and Bonaventura, 1882

Some beautiful pages of the late Nineteenth century

How to choose the pages of contemporaries in an anthology? For an author, it is often the most difficult aspect of a collection of writings, because there is no historical distance to allow judgment to settle over time. Panzacchi, with a happy choice, presented beautiful pages of Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899) and Telemaco Signorini (1835-1901).

Fig. 81) Primo Levi, The first and the second Segantini, in Rivista d'Italia, 1899

Panzacchi explained that the letters of Giovanni Signorini to Vittore Grubicy de Dragon (1851-1920) and the pages of his Diary were drawn from an essay titled "The First and Second Segantini", just written by the art critic Primo Levi for the Rivista d'Italia (the periodical published by the Dante Alighieri Society) in November-December 1899. Levi's writing was published only a few months after Segantini's death and offered extensive documentation not only of his painting, but of his correspondence with Grubicy.

Levi, who lived between 1854 and 1917, was an essayist and critic of art (also author of monographs on Domenico Morelli and Tranquillo Cremona). He had the same name as the more famous Primo Levi of 'If this is a man', who was obviously born much later (i.e. in 1919). Our Levi was also a journalist and a political commentator, known in his days as a supporter, with his journal "La Riforma", of the aggressive colonial policy of Francesco Crispi in Libya and for his antagonistic attitude towards France in order to secure the Italian interests in Tunisia).

Fig. 82) Giovanni Segantini, Portrait of Vittore Grubicy, 1887

Grubicy was also a non-minor figure in the Italian art scene of those years. He was an art dealer at international level, but also an artist and an essayist (he collaborated with Levi in his paper La Riforma). Vittore was the greatest friend and principal patron of Segantini, who lived on the margins of society (he was stateless and retired in the mountains of the Grisons). He was also his greatest source of commercial success (selling his canvases also outside Italy).

When The Book of the Artists was released in 1902, Segantini's letters to Grubicy and his other writings had not yet been published, except in fragments. The complete edition was curated by his daughter Bianca, first in German in Zurich in 1909 and then in Italian in Turin in 1910 [78]. Bianca’s introduction of the Italian edition of the writings revealed that Panzacchi's anthology had been until then the most widespread text to contain the writings of his father. Bianca told that the idea of publishing the full collection was born in Geneva, when she was reading and translating to a selected audience the passages collected in Panzacchi’s anthology in the private house of the writer Philippe Monnier [79].

Fig. 83) Giovanni Segantini, Writings and Letters, 1910

Segantini’s letters were really short and gave us the impression of a misunderstood artist and a painter with strong beliefs about art, who almost spoke via aphorisms and expressed all the dreams of a rebellious generation. "If modern art will have a character, it will be the search for light in colour" [80]. "Living in the world and feeling the ideas of others slow down and weaken their own" [81]. "I want the painting to be a thought molten in colour. Flowers are made like this, and this is divine art” [82]. "Meanwhile, I think of squeezing nature in a fist and making it a poem; dreamimg is beautiful, while matter kills" [83]. "Yes, the only real life is all in dreams! To dream of an ideal to reach only gradually, but as far as possible, but high, high up to the extinction of matter. Here is the utmost extreme that can make the joy of living” [84].

Fig. 84) Vittore Grubicy de Dragon, Sea of fog, 1885

There were also pieces of a remarkable literary beauty, which explains why Segantini’s texts were being studied and published [85]. Here is a fragment of January 1, 1890 from Savognino: "Morning, I am coming back from a walk. I feel in my heart my usual calm and in the brain something like a distress that is the effect of the wind. Around, everything is sad, the sky is grey, dirty and low, an east wind blows moaning as a far away dead beast, the snow stretches heavily and melancholy as a sheet covering death, ravens are all close to the houses, everything is mud, the snow is unfreezing. This day recalls many others I went through in my childhood; I still feel the same and I am experiencing the same feelings" [86].

Fig. 85) Giovanni Segantini, Bad mothers, 1894

Also the - quite different - prose texts and poems by Telemaco Signorini (1835 - 1901) offer us an impression of immediacy. Here there is no sense of dream and drama - as with Segantini - but only of good fun.

Fig. 86) Telemaco Signorini, Caricaturists and caricatured at Caffè Michelangelo, 1893

His Caricaturists and Caricaturated at Caffè Michelangelo had been published as a book in 1893, after being originally included in Diego Martelli's Gazzettino delle arti del disegno (Gazette of the drawing arts) in 1867. It offered a funny and disenchanted artistic history of 20 years in Florence from the revolutionary years of 1848 to 1867, when Florence was the capital of Italy; Signorini narrated about three generations of painters, sculptors, but also musicians and literates in the Tuscan spirit of kidding (a kidding tradition that originated from the Middle Ages and still survives today). It gave, among other things, a vivid impression of the world of Macchiaioli art movement. Panzacchi noted that the book "is almost untraceable today" (and has remained difficult to buy: only another edition was published in 1952).

Fig. 87) Telemaco Signorini, The morning toilet, around 1900

Texts were often hilarious. Here is an example about Luigi Gordigiani, the romantic music composer (1806-1818): "To make uproar seriously seems like a paradox, and yet thinking of the kind of jokes that characterize Luigi Gordigiani, there is no way to qualify them otherwise. I am telling this story to give you a pale idea. A lady comes out from a Florence house, closes the door and her dress gets stuck in the door; as she is unable to push the doorbell to get open, she waits for someone to pass. She has the bad luck that Gordigiani passed by. «Excuse me, Sir ... could you please ring the doorbell for me? My dress got stuck in the door. » «What doorbell?» He asks. «The third one» Gordigiani does not ring the bell, look at the third floor and then tells her: «Listen, I do not know anyone on the third floor.» «What do you mean? I know them ... it's my home. » «It may well be, but I will certainly not ring the bell. They might be touchy people. One takes too easily commitments, and then, who knows, I do not want to be considered as a mischievous guy ringing bells in the streets.» Other people pass and stop, and while the lady, red for the shame of being locked in the door, and the sting of being denied a favour, turns to others, Gordigiani profits of the people who come together, mixes in the crowd and disappears" [87].

Fig. 88) The 99 artistic discussions of Enrico Gasi Molteni, in the edition of 1886

Signorini's poems were satirical sonnets; they were published for the first time in 1877, under the title Le 99 discussioni artistiche di Enrico Gasi Molteni (The 99 Artistic Discussions of Enrico Gasi Molteni) where the painter used that anagram. They were reprinted in 1886 and, more recently, in 1929. Here is his sonnet "Myopic Amateur".

"You will see it better, if you move a little further, and you will see how better it is from far. It will be like you say, and you will be right to complain, but I do not do it on purpose.

I'm near-sighted; ... and what is it ... a campaign?

-No, it is Florence seen from the hill. This is the main square, here is the Central Post, here the Uffizi and the Loges of the Orcagna.

Attention, it is fresh painting, the paint comes off, be careful. But the other does not listen to me, so it happens by chance that while admiring the painting,

he is so much taken by the passion, approaches too much and in a moment brings Palazzo Vecchio away with his nose” [88].

Enrico Panzacchi’s anthology and the anthologies of Carducci and Pascoli

It has already been said that, beyond its practical ends, Panzacchi's work was the first attempt to create a canon of the sources of art history in Italy in an anthological form. Before him all the collections of texts from art history sources (Bottari, Ticozzi, Gualandi, Gaye, Milanesi, Campori) were actually repertoires of letters and not real anthologies. In fact, they proposed all the texts which their authors were able to found in libraries and/or public and private archives, as they did not aim at proposing a selection on aesthetic or content ground. To understand how Panzacchi came to his innovative editorial initiative, it is useful to have an (albeit brief) reflection on the influence which the evolution of literary anthologies had on our authors in those decades.

The phase that began with the end of the Eighteenth century saw - not just in Italy - the explosion of the genre of anthology as a means of organising knowledge. Prior to that, anthologies had the task of offering poems deemed worthy of reading for the audience's delight, or of documenting the sources to philological scholars. In Nineteenth-century anthologies, however, the story of the literary texts was organized exactly according to the same conceptual categories with which - in the same years - museums and art galleries were organized to exhibit the best of artworks in chronological order. Historicism was prevailing, not only as a tool for codifying knowledge and interpretation of reality, but also to actively change collective identities.

Fig. 89) Gilles Corrozet, Parnasse des poètes françois modernes, 1571

While anthologies existed in modern times since the Parnasse des poètes françois modernes in 1571, it was only in the Nineteenth century that the figure of the anthologist as a distinct cultural operator was born, at the same time when the museum curator developed as a profession. In Italy, a fundamental contribution to the spread of the anthology as the principal instrument of the literary divulgation came from Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907) and Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912), the most famous Italian poets of that age, both active as professors of Italian literature at the University of Bologna (where Pascoli took Carducci’s place after his death). As for Carducci, for example, one should recall his anthologies “L'arpa del popolo: scelta di poesie religiose, morali e patriottiche” [89] (The Harp of the People: Selection of Religious, Moral and Patriotic Poems) of 1855, “Letture italiane, scelte e ordinate ad uso delle scuole del ginnasio inferiore” [90] (Italian Letters, chosen and accommodated for the schools of the lower gymnasium) of 1883 and “Letture del risorgimento italiano” (Readings on the Italian Risorgimento) of 1896 [91]. The same year when Panzacchi published "The Book of the Artists" Giovanni Pascoli released his anthology “Sul limitare. Poesie e prose per la scuola italiana” (On Limiting. Prose and poetry choices for the Italian school) [92]. Finally, in 1910 Pascoli published "Fior da fiore: prose e poesie scelte per le scuole secondarie inferiori” (From Flower to Flower: Prose and Poems Chosen for Lower Secondary Schools") [93].

Fig. 90) Giosuè Carducci, Italian readings, chosen and accomodated for the use of inferior gymnasium schools, 1892

Fig. 91) Giovanni Pascoli, On Limiting. Prose and poetry chosen for the Italian school, 1902

The subject of the differences between the anthologies of Carducci and Pascoli was object of studies. Think of Ermanno Paccagnini's contributions on "Carducci as an Anthologist” [94], of Giuseppe Pessi on "Pascoli as an anthologist and his relations with Carducci and D'Annunzio” [95], and last but not least of Stefania Martini’s "From Carducci as anthologist to Pascoli as anthologist” [96]. For the amount of indirect references, I also found interesting Mariangela Lando's essay on "Anthologies and literary stories in the teaching of Italian in classical schools from 1870 to 1923: an inquiry” [97], and the volume "The literary canon in the school of the Nineteenth century. Anthologies and manuals of Italian literature” [98] edited by Renzo Cremante and Simonetta Santucci. It is obviously impossible to dedicate all necessary space to the theme, but one can certainly list some points.

For Carducci, the anthology - in the succession of chosen passages - was a form of storytelling [99] which, through a narration rigidly based on chronology [100], was due to set the fundamental methodological canons for reading the past [101]. The goal was educational, and closely related to the national cause, as in the case of the Readings on the Italian Risorgimento [102]. This collection on the national unification process opened with a letter from the Neapolitan enlightened historian Pietro Giannone (1676-1748) titled "Warnings to the Italians about virtue and military discipline" and concluded with "My prisons" by Silvio Pellico (1789-1854). Thereby, the anthology narrated the period between 1750 and 1870, tracing three phases: the first one, between 1750 and 1789, characterized by "forty years of peace, reform and preparation", the second one, between the French Revolution and 1830, on "forty years of contrast, confusion, expectations" and finally the third one, between 1830 and 1870, focused on “forty years of resuming efforts, implementation and delivery."

Fig. 92) Giosuè Carducci, Readings on the Italian Risorgimento, 1896

Fig. 93) Giovanni Pascoli, From Flower to Flower, 1910

With his anthology of 1900, Pascoli innovated instead Carducci’s anthological canons, at least in three ways. First, while Carducci clearly differentiated anthologies in literary genres (he produced poetry anthologies, such as The harp of the people, or prose anthologies, such as Italian readings and Readings of the Italian Risorgimento), Pascoli mixed the genres. Secondly, with his On limiting Pascoli introduced the form of the thematic anthology of literature, associating literary texts around the themes of form ("Epic and historical aspects", "Parabola, allegories, legends", "Tales and novels" and "From the modern novel") and content ("In prison", "Thoughts and affections", "Paintings and sounds", etc.). While the anthology was conceived as universal (it included the literature of the ancient Greek-Roman world as well as the modern one), the author therefore renounced to cover all periods and authors and to trace a story: from 'a co-authored story telling' the anthology was therefore transformed into a 'co-authored essay'. Pascoli's symbolic world thus interrupted the 19th century tradition of historicism. With "From Flower to Flower" Pascoli took a further step, proposing a collection of texts completely free of any categorization, and bound exclusively to aesthetic criteria. In fact, he proposed a selection of passages that, from a thematic and symbolic point of view, made up a varied collection of literature. Any anthology therefore was due to become a true mosaic, which allowed teachers to choose where to start and when to finish during their lessons, in full freedom and following their personal inspiration. Last but not least, Pascoli (even though very cautiously) went beyond the only national dimension, introducing both traditionally regional themes (although only in Italian, and not in vernacular) and texts of foreign literature (Goethe, Hugo and Shelley) [103]. The opening to foreign literature was confirmed in 1910 (with quotations from Heine, Hugo, Lessing, Tennyson, and Wordsworth).

Panzacchi, in many respects, was an intermediate anthologist between the two. He shared with Carducci the chronological and narrative model, as well as the strictly national approach. From Pascoli he welcomed the combination of prose and poetry. The first feature put him in the mainstream tradition of the nineteenth-century (if Panzacchi were a painter, we would talk of him as a history painter); the second one reminded us of his love for Wagner's total art.

The national reading of art literature

Panzacchi’s anthology canonized Italian art literature according to a national spirit, also perfectly in line with the studies on Italian literature in those years, which were part of a program of linguistic unification of the country [104]. Indeed, to be clear, his program was really nationalistic, being all inspired by the theme of achieving the revenge of Italian art vis-à-vis the world. Not surprisingly, commenting on a long passage of Massimo d'Azeglio's Memoirs, in which the painter-politician (he was prime minister) complained that contemporary artists neglected Italian landscapes and preferred those from outside Italy, Panzacchi commented: "These generous words could apply to certain recent exhibitions, in which several Italians committed to re-create Scandinavian and Scottish environments” [105].  At the end of the introduction to the Nineteenth-century in the anthology, one can also read: "Hopefully, the 20th century will repair that many deficiencies, and Italian painting will not wait too long for its revenge in the face of the world. Already some good sign for good hope is not lacking” [106].  From this point of view, Panzacchi was really a "bad master": in the end, if this was his programme in 1902, it cannot be really surprising that, ten years later, the next generation preached futurism as an art renewal movement which was not only iconoclastic against the painting of the past, but also approved of war against other Europeans as part of its aesthetics.

Obviously, this was a path that did not only characterise Italian culture. And yet, in those years, not always anthologies were being used for this nationalistic purpose: indeed, there is today a stream of studies [107] on how 'translation anthologies', spreading from the Eighteenth century to the present, have become one of the main tools for making good literature global and to facilitate cultural mediation among the linguistic areas of the world. For example, in the field of art literature, the German anthology of Guhl in the mid-nineteenth century was largely made up of German translations from other languages (and made known to the public of Prussia Italian texts never translated into German until then).

It should also be said that, for the opening of Italian art criticism to foreign art, one had to wait until 1912, with the Tenth International Congress of Art History in Rome, organized by Adolfo Venturi and dedicated to "Italy and Foreign art". Venturi involved the greatest names of the time, from Heinrich Wölfflin to August Schmarsow and Aby Warburg. Adopting an international approach did not impede him to care for national art history: on that occasion Venturi launched the "Program for an edition of all sources of the history of Italian art" [108]. With all respect for Panzacchi's anthology, Venturi’s a program - though never realized, unfortunately - had a much wider breath.

Finally, I would like to signal a significant manipulation of a text, which proves that Panzacchi's anthology belonged to a predominantly nationalist world. It was the letter of "Antonio Canova to Count Leopoldo Cicognara in Venice” of 2 October 1815 [109]. The sculptor from Possagno told his friend that he had eventually succeeded in the very difficult task of recovering many of the works which Napoleon had seized from the Papal States in Italy. An international incident had broken out around his attempt, endangering the operation. Russia threatened in fact to use weapons to prevent returning those masterpieces from France to the states of origin.

Canova wrote, with relief: "And it would really be a scandal if everyone had recovered their artwork, and Rome alone had been excluded from that group. I am therefore authorized by the Allied Powers to recover the greatest and the best part of our paintings and sculptures. I say the greatest and the best part only, because I was forced to leave here several of them, but I could choose which ones." [110] The letter was obviously lending to national pride: Canova was the hero who brought Italian art back home.

The full text of the letter (published by Vittorio Malmani in 1890 [111]), also contains a post scriptum that Panzacchi did not reproduce. In it, Canova first complained that he had never received the necessary documentation from Rome, then explained that the administration of the Papal States behaved in a completely irresponsible manner and finally clarified that he was able to recover the works only thanks to the bayonets of Austrian, Prussian and British soldiers.

"The first sculptors are in my hands, in fact in an Austrian barrack; the best pictures I have been able to recover, either from Rome or from the Papal States, are being just being prepared for transportation back to Italy. I was able to recover them without any precise documentation, as it would have been instead necessary (I am still waiting for it). If something has been left or lost, the fault was not mine. It was the fault of those who sent me to Paris without any hope for me to achieve a result, and without a single document to support my cause. And yet the best is being brought back, and all by force of Prussian, Austrian and British bayonets, because these three powers particularly protect us, and England is paying the costs of transportation from Paris to Rome” [112].

It is clear that this part of the letter was not in line with the national narrative and was therefore left out. Austria was seen in those years as the historic enemy of united Italy: to recall that in 1815 Canova wrote of feeling more protected by the imperial army (of which he was subject) than by the papal administration would not have done well to the moral of the Italians.

NOTES

[57] Carducci, Giosuè - Letture del risorgimento italiano, scelte e ordinate da Giosue Carducci (1719-1870), Readings on the Italian Risorgimento, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1896, 505 pages. Quotation at the pages vi e vii. See: https://archive.org/details/letturedelrisor00cardgoog

[58] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), pp. 393-394

[59] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 402

[60] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 404

[61] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 26

[62] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 429

[63] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 430

[64] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 410

[65] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), pp. 444-445

[66] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 411

[67] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 449

[68] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 418

[69] Panzacchi, Enrico – La letteratura e l’arte in Italia (Literature and art in Italy), in: Nel campo dell’arte. Assaggi di critica, Bologna, Ditta Nicola Zanichelli, 1897, pages 73-93. Quotation at page 90.

[70] Panzacchi, Enrico – La letteratura e l’arte in Italia, (quoted), p. 92

[71] Panzacchi, Enrico – La letteratura e l’arte in Italia, (quoted), p. 91

[72] Panzacchi, Enrico – La letteratura e l’arte in Italia, (quoted), p. 92

[73] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 449

[74] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 450

[75] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), pp. 475-476

[76] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), pp. 450-451

[77] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 483

[78] Segantini, Giovanni - Scritti e lettere (Writings and letters), edited by Bianca Segantini, Turin, Milan and Rome, Fratelli Bocca, 260 pages. See:

https://archive.org/details/scrittielettere00sega

[79] Segantini, Giovanni - Scritti e lettere (quoted), page vii, (from the introduction by Bianca Segantini).

[80] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p.510

[81] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p.511

[82] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p.512

[83] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p.513

[84] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p.514

[85] Giovanni Segantini, Venticinque lettere (25 letters), edited by Lamberto Vitali, Milan, All'insegna del pesce d'Oro, 1970, 77 pages.

[86] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 513

[87] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 518

[88] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 526

[89] Carducci, Giosuè - L'arpa del popolo: scelta di poesie religiose, morali e patriottiche cavate dai nostri autori e accomodate all'intelligenza del popolo (The Harp of the People: Selection of Religious, Moral, and Patriotic Poems by Our Authors, and Accommodated to the People's Intelligence), Florence, Tipografia galileiana di M. Cellini, 1855, 285 pages.

[90] Carducci, Giosuè e Brilli Ugo, Letture italiane, scelte e ordinate ad uso delle scuole del ginnasio inferiore (Italian readings, chosen and ordered for the use of the schools of the lower gymnasium), Bologna, Nicola Zanichelli, 1883, in 5 volumes.

[91] Carducci, Giosuè - Letture del risorgimento italiano, quoted.

[92] Pascoli, Giovanni - Sul limitare, prose e poesie scelte per la scuola italiana (On Limiting. Prose and poetry choices for the Italian school), Milano, Remo Sandron, 1900, 644 pages. See: 

https://archive.org/details/sullimitareprose00pascuofthttps://archive.org/details/sullimitareprose00pascuoft

[93] Pascoli, Giuseppe - Fior da fiore: prose e poesie scelte per le scuole secondarie inferiori (From Flower to Flower, Prose and poetry chosen for lower secondary schools), Milan, Remo Sandron, 586 pagine. See: https://archive.org/details/fiordafioreprose00pasc

[94] Paccagnini Erminio, Carducci antologista (Carducci as anthologist), in: Carducci filologo e la filologia su Carducci. Proceedings of the Conference (Milano 6-7 novembre 2007), Milano, Mucchi Publishers, 192 pages. See: 

https://books.google.de/books?id=yi9PWoAwrG8C&pg=PA83&dq=antologista&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwic9eL89J_TAhWDIJoKHQEMCaAQ6AEIRzAJ#v=onepage&q=antologista&f=false

[95] Pecci, Giuseppe - Il Pascoli antologista e le sue relazioni col Carducci e col D'Annunzio (The anthology of Pascoli and its relations with Carducci and D'Annunzio), Faenza, Fratelli Lega, 1958, 36 pagine.

[96] Martini, Stefania, Da Carducci antologista a Pascoli antologista (From the anthologies of Carducci to those of Pascoli), in: “Studi e problemi di critica testuale”, 66, Aprile 2003, pagine 129-162

[97] Lando, Mariangela, Antologie e storie letterarie nell’insegnamento dell’italiano nelle scuole classiche dal 1870 al 1923: una ricognizione (Anthologies and literary stories in the teaching of Italian in classical schools from 1870 to 1923: an inquiry), PhD Thesis. See: 

http://paduaresearch.cab.unipd.it/8074/1/Lando_Mariangela_Tesi.pdf

[98] Cremante, Renzo e Santucci, Simonetta – Il canone letterario nella scuola dell'Ottocento. Antologie e manuali di letteratura italiana (The literary canon in the school of the nineteenth century. Anthologies and manuals of Italian literature), Bologna, Clueb, 2009, 516 pages.

[99] Lando, Mariangela, Antologie e storie letterarie (quoted), p. 394

[100] Lando, Mariangela, Antologie e storie letterarie (quoted), p. 396

[101] Lando, Mariangela, Antologie e storie letterarie (quoted), p. 398

[102] Lando, Mariangela, Antologie e storie letterarie (quoted), p. 398

[103] Lando, Mariangela, Antologie e storie letterarie (quoted), p. 17

[104] Lando, Mariangela, Antologie e storie letterarie (quoted), p. 378

[105] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 476

[106] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), p. 451

[107] Seruya Teresa; D´hulst, Lieven; Assis Rosa, Alexandra; Lin Moniz, Maria - Translation in Anthologies and Collections (19th and 20th Centuries). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2013. 287 pages. Kittel, Harald -International anthologies of literature in translation, Gottinga, Erich Schmidt publisher, 283 pages.

[108] The text of Venturi’s programme is available (in Italian only) at the internet address: 

https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiQ1NSt4L7TAhVJPxQKHTJ3Cs4QFggmMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Flettere.aulaweb.unige.it%2Fmod%2Fresource%2Fview.php%3Fid%3D3084&usg=AFQjCNGlkmP5sn7sv59uyJajf-ubbBs1BQ&sig2=mzYplaNJtjipGEnc6L17zw

[109] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), pp. 455-456

[110] Enrico Panzacchi - Il libro degli artisti … (quoted), pp. 455-456

[111] Un'amicizia di Antonio Canova: lettere di lui al conte Leopoldo Cicognara, edited by Vittorio Malamani, Città di Castello, S. Lapi, 1890, 192 pages.

[112] Un'amicizia di Antonio Canova (quoted), pages 58-60.

https://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.com/2016/03/giuseppe-campori20.html