[The Treasure of Antiquity. Winckelmann and the Capitoline Museum in Eighteenth-Century Rome]. Part One

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Publications in honor of Johan Joachim Winckelmann

Il Tesoro di Antichità
Winckelmann e il Museo Capitolino nella Roma del Settecento

[The Treasure of Antiquity
Winckelmann and the Capitoline Museum in Eighteenth-Century Rome]

Edited by Eloisa Dodero and Claudio Parisi Presicce

Rome, Gangemi Editore International Publishing, 2017, 384 pages

Review by Francesco Mazzaferro. Part One

Fig. 1) The cover of the catalogue of the Rome exhibition, with a sanguine by Hubert Robert (1733-1808) dated ca 1762, displaying an artist in the Capitoline Gallery.

After the exhibitions in Florence, Naples and Milan, it was the turn of Rome to dedicate a show to Winckelmann (1717-1768) on the occasion of the double anniversary of his birth (350 years) and death (300 years). The exhibition, entitled The Treasure of Antiquity. Winckelmann and the Capitoline Museum in the Eighteenth-Century Rome, took place, in fact, in the Capitoline Museums from 7 December 2017 to 20 May 2018. It was an opportunity to celebrate the German scholar, but also the city that no doubt most influenced his professional life, and also the Capitoline Museums, the first museum ever, among those reserved to art, to be opened to the public (in 1734, twenty years before Winckelmann arrived in the city). At the time, the cultural scene of Rome presented a lively panorama of antiquities collections; in this context, figures of great depth stood out, such as Francesco Bianchini (1662-1729), Alessandro Gregorio Capponi (1683–1746) and Giovanni Gaetano Bottari (1689-1775).

In short, in the first half of the eighteenth century, and still in the years when Winckelmann reached the city, Rome was a cultural centre of excellence: when, on 10 February 1756, the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (1716-1795) wrote to the Count of Caylus (1692-1765) describing his first visit to the Capitoline Museums, he used these words: "The first time that I crossed the entryway of the museum I experienced like an electric shock. I cannot describe the impression I received from such a collection of treasures. This is not a simple study: it is the home of the gods of ancient Rome; it is the high school of philosophers; it is the senate populated by the kings of the East. What can I tell you? A nation of statues lives in the Capitoline Museum; it is the great book of antiquity lovers” [1]. The expression used in the title of the exhibition (i.e. the "Treasure of Antiquities", Italian translation of "Schatz von Alterthümern") was used by Winckelmann in his correspondence with his friend, the librarian Johann Michael Francke (1717-1775), who had remained in Germany , to express amazement and admiration for the Roman museum. In Germany there were already important collections of ancient art (among them - in Dresden - the private collection of Greek-Roman statues of the ruling house, purchased by Augustus the Strong in 1728 from the Chigi and Albani families), but they were not easily accessible to the public, to the point that Winckelmann himself could not see them [2].

Fig. 2) On the left: Pietro Nelli (1672-1730), Portrait of Alessandro Albani, 1721-1729. Engraving by Girolamo Rossi (1682-1762) © The Trustees of the British Museum. In the middle: Marguerite Lecomte (1717-1800), Portrait of Cardinal Alessandro Albani, 1734 @ Wikimedia Commons. Right: Unknown Painter, Portrait of Alessandro Albani, 1729 @ Wikimedia Commons.

In fact, both the collection of Greco-Roman statues in Dresden (at least in part) and that of the Capitoline Museums originated from the same passion for antiquity collecting by the Albani family. It was Cardinal Alessandro Albani (1692-1779) who sold thirty-four of his statues to the ruling house of Saxony in 1728; and it was Pope Clement XII (Lorenzo Corsini 1652-1740) to dispose with a papal legate the purchase of 416 sculptures from the Albani collection in 1734, precisely to prevent them from moving to other capitals, perhaps once again to Dresden (where the reigning house was hunting for works of art from Italy to justify its expansionist aims from a cultural point of view, and would later succeed in acquiring the collection of paintings by the Este family in 1746 and Raphael’s Sistine Madonna in 1754). The antiquities of the Albanis were however so numerous that, when Winckelmann (more than twenty years after the above-mentioned sales) took service with Cardinal Alessandro, as his librarian, he found in his villas and possessions many works to study (many of them would be reproduced in Unpublished Ancient Monuments. And on the verge of death in Triest, Winckelmann named just Cardinal Albani heir of his papers kept in Rome. Therefore, the exhibition and its catalogue reminded us that one of the absolute protagonists of the eighteenth-century cultural life in Europe was a man of the church.

An overview

The introduction [3] of the curators of the exhibit (Eloisa Dodero, scholar of the reception of ancient art in the Rome of the Six-Eighteenth Century and Research Assistant at the Royal Collection of London, and Claudio Parisi Presicce, archaeologist, former Superintendent of Fine Arts of the City of Rome) introduced us Winckelmann on his arrival in Rome in 1755. For the German scholar, it was a moment of true liberation, as he himself wrote to the aforementioned Francke: "In Rome a man who does not look for anything or who has nothing to look for, is better received than an elegant abbot" [4]. These were words of May 5, 1756. A few months before, on December 7, 1755, in another letter to Francke, Johann Joachim described his life in the city: "I live as an artist; I am seen accordingly, also in places where young artists are allowed to do their studies like in the Capitol. Here is the treasure of antiquities, statues, sarcophagi, busts, inscriptions, etc. and you can stay in complete freedom from morning to night” [5]. Johann Joachim also kept a notebook, now held at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris (left as a legacy by Winckelmann to Cardinal Albani with all his papers, it was part of the fund that was seized by the Napoleonic troops during the occupation of Rome and brought to Paris [6]). His consultation at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b100376188/f1.image.r=winckelmann gives us an idea of his research methodology through the villas and palaces of Rome in those months. It should be noted that the notebook was recently published in a critical edition in Italian [7] and in German [8].

Fig. 3) The first page of Johann Joachim Winckelmann's notebook on the villas and palaces of Rome he visited. Source: gallica.bnf.fr @ Bibliothèque nationale de France

In the Eternal City, Winckelmann managed to have access, thanks to the cardinals Archinto and Albani, to all the finds he wished to visit; the link with Albani soon became a close collaboration and friendship. The Roman years were characterized both by an intense study activity and by the scholarly company of young foreign nobles who were arriving in Rome as part of the Grand Tour [9]. Study and acquaintances helped Winckelmann to be appointed, eight years after his arrival, in 1763, as Commissioner for Antiquities in Rome, and to collect the materials to complete and publish his major work in Dresden in 1764, the History of Art of the Ancients (Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums).

Some particularly significant contributions in the second section of the catalogue

In the first part of this post I will consider the most relevant contributions (from the point of view of art literature) contained in the second section of the exhibition catalogue, published by Gangemi Editore International Publishing. The section is dedicated to the history of the Capitoline Museum. In the second part of this post, I will focus my attention on the third section of the catalogue, centred on the relationship between Winckelmann and the Capitoline Museum. Discussing the first and fourth sections of the catalogue, respectively dedicated to the Capitoline Hill and its representation in the Eighteenth Century (section I) and to the lost set-up of the Capitoline Museum (section IV), although very interesting, would go beyond the aims of this post.

Beatrice Cacciotti, 

The Albani Collection in the Palazzo alle Quattro Fontane: «a glorious affair for the Pope and a benefit for Rome» [10]

The essay by Beatrice Cacciotti, archaeologist and scholar of antiques collecting, focused on the Rome of the early Eighteenth century and the creation of the Albani collection. Giovanni Francesco Albani (1649-1721) was elected Pope with the name of Clement XI in 1700; he shared with his nephew Alessandro "the passion for art and his benevolence was repeatedly manifested by accommodating his capricious requests” [11]. The latter - before embarking on an ecclesiastical career in 1718 - "had received a stimulating formation immersed in Arcadian thought and new sciences and had grown up in a lively and cosmopolitan environment, a repository of classical values” [12]. One of the great professionals who helped Alessandro in the purchase of the works was the abbot Francesco Bianchini, his preceptor, whom Ms Cacciotti considered as the real "deus ex machina" for the constitution of the first Albani collection [13]. Bianchini was a leading intellectual, characterised by the idea of a "universal knowledge” [14] and of an "encyclopaedic" interest” [15] ranging from antiquity to astronomy. The first evidence of the interaction between the two, aiming at the creation of the collection was from 1706 (Alessandro was only 14 years old, his tutor 44) [16]. Starting from 1712, Bianchini induced the Albanis to finance archaeological campaigns in Anzio [17] and those excavations would become one of the major sources for their collection. At the end of ten years of hectic activity, Bianchini documented the collection in a first Index compiled in 1717 (albeit incomplete, because it included sixty busts and heads, twenty-five sarcophagi and reliefs, but not statues). Ms Cacciotti pointed out that the inventory also made possible to understand where the finds had come from (in addition to the excavations of Anzio): "The reviewed marbles had previously belonged to noble owners (Colonna, Carpegna, Giustiniani, Pamphili), to private citizens (the lawyer Vincenzi, the cavalier Fontana, Carlo Cairoli), religious orders (the Fathers of the Charterhouse of Santa Maria degli Angeli), merchants and antique dealers (Francesco de' Ficoroni, Marco Antonio Sabatini, Domenico Amici, Antonio Borioni, Giovanni Giusto Ciampini), to the Conservatories of Rome and the family itself of Alessandro” [18]. Undoubtedly the purchase of the pieces from such a large number of owners was greatly facilitated by the fact that the buyer was, in the final analysis, the nephew of the Pope, and that the latter worked to prevent the works from leaving Rome with a series of edicts. Alessandro's acquisitions actively supported that policy, allowing Roman families in search of liquidity to sell their assets without being transferred abroad [19]. The Pope himself contributed with donations [20].

Fig. 4) Pietro Rotari (1707 - 1762), Portrait of Francesco Bianchini, 1729 @ Wikimedia Commons

In 1721 Alexander was appointed cardinal and settled in the Palazzo alle Quattro Fontane, acquired by his elder brother Carlo only two years before. There the cardinal physically brought together his collection. British visitors testified in 1720-1721 that the collection was still being located in the building. A second inventory, which this time also included the statues, was compiled on the initiative of Richard Topham (1671-1730), one of the greatest English collectors, towards the end of the decade and is now kept in the Eton College library [21]. The number of busts had risen from sixty to over three hundred, that of the sarcophagi from twenty-five to forty. Ms Cacciotti found further confirmation that the works originated from the major Roman private collections of the previous two centuries, namely those belonging to the Della Valle, Cesi, Caetani-Ruspoli, Aldobrandini, Giustiniani, Pamphilj and Verospi-Vitelleschi families [22]. The statues were only forty two, but some of them were considered of primary importance, already reproduced by important artists in the previous centuries (including many Northern European Mannerists in Rome, but also prominent figures such as Rubens), and most often contained in main repertoires of prints produced from the 16th to the early 18th century (Achille Stazio, Giovanni Battista de' Cavalleris, Pietro Santi Bartoli, Paolo Alessandro Maffei and Domenico de Rossi). Bianchini should be also given merit for the interest in a group of works from ancient Egypt [23] and the particular attention to the epigraphic material (almost five hundred artefacts, as "primary source for 'proving' the ancient history" [24]).

Fig. 5) On the left: The Capponi Library Catalogue, published in 1747 (one year after his death) to promote the sale of the book fund. Source: https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/berti1747/0007. On the right: Ferdinando Fuga (1699-1782) and René-Michel Slodtz (1705-1758), Monument of Alessandro Gregorio Capponi in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in Rome, 1746 @ Wikimedia Commons

Ms Cacciotti’s article concluded with a reference to the risks of an alienation abroad of this enormous patrimony, due to the nonchalance with which Alessandro Albani had multiplied his purchases reaching to the brink of insolvency. Already in 1724 there appeared to have been negotiations with the tsar Peter the Great, the king of Spain Philip V and the king of France XV [25]. In 1728 (as already mentioned) a nucleus of thirty-four statues was sold to Augustus the Strong in Dresden. It was Pope Corsini (Clement XII), the successor of Pope Albani to intervene to prevent such a remarkable collection from leaving Rome. The new Pope instructed Alessandro Gregorio Capponi, another leading figure in the culture of his time, to conduct negotiations for the purchase of the collection by the pontifical administration. The agreed price (66 thousand ecus) was much lower than the market value, signalling the political-institutional value of the transaction. Also in this case we are not speaking about a dull bureaucrat. As Capponi was a great collector of books and manuscripts, he left a very remarkable library to his death. The funeral monument he commissioned for his tomb to Ferdinando Fuga (1699-1782) and René-Michel Slodtz (1705-1758) revealed the modernity of his tastes, with motifs that seemed to anticipate neoclassicism. As director of the Capitoline Museum, he kept a diary that has already been reviewed in this blog. 

Saskia Wetzig 

The Albani antiquities in Dresden [26]

Saskia Wetzig is an ancient-sculpture scholar at Dresden's art collections. In her short article, she documented how the collection acquired in Rome in 1728 from the Chigis (160 statues) and the Albanis (34), and arrived in the city only in 1730, remained exposed in the hall of representation of the sumptuous baroque building of the Palais im Großen Garten only 17 years long. Among these works, the Roman exhibit showed a statue of Andromeda, which had belonged first to the Orsini and then to the Albani family (it appeared in the second inventory of the Albani collection commissioned by Richard Topham) before being transported to Dresden. There, according to a quite normal practice in our time (but heavily criticised later on), the statue was 'completed' by adding an unaffected head (also from the Albanis) [27]. The approximately two hundred Greek Roman statues were then piled up in a series of warehouses on the occasion of the celebration of a court wedding in 1747 and, somehow, there 'forgotten'. Winckelmann himself, as mentioned, could not see them. Johann Joachim recalled in this regard in 1767: "The greatest treasure of antiquities is in Dresden [...] But I cannot describe the pinnacle of beauty because the best statues are in a temporary warehouse, packaged as herrings, visible yes, but certainly not observable” [28]. Paradoxically, following the flood of the Elbe in 2002, the statues have been moved to warehouses and still cannot be visited today (a new layout is planned in 2019). 

Fig. 6) Christian Gottfried Nestler (1778-1832), View of the Palais im Großen Garten (Palace in the Great Garden), Dresden, 1779

The Palais im Großen Garten was located on the outskirts of Dresden, in the middle of a park, and served as the summer residence of the Ruling House. Upon their arrival from Italy, the ancient statues were placed inside, while the park housed a collection of statues of German baroque artists. The catalogue of the exhibition showed a plan of the upper floor with an indication of the position of all the statues; the inventory of the time confirmed their location and the origin of each piece. The trade relations on the subject of art between the house of Saxony and the Albanis remained intense even after 1728. A few years later, some Roman frescoes which had been found during the excavations promoted by Alessandro Albani in his possessions of Anzio, arrived in Dresden [29]. When the Crown Prince of Saxony (Frederick Christian) went to Italy for a study trip (but also to treat himself), he resided in Palazzo Albani at the Quattro Fontane, exactly where the cardinal Alessandro's collection was preserved, and brought back to Dresden some finds he was able to admire in the archaeological excavations of Tivoli and Portici. A new inventory, prepared this time by the Italian sculptor Lorenzo M. Mattielli (1687-1748), another of the many Italian men of art and culture who lived in Dresden, documented gifts received and purchases made in that occasion.

Carole Paul 

The Capitoline Museum: the first large public museum in the Europe of Enlightenment [30]

The American scholar, specialized in Italian art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, wrote about the establishment of the Capitoline Museum, the first public museum of the modern age. She however explained that in Italy there had been a precedent, exactly in the Capitoline Hill: "In fact, the oldest municipal collection of the modern age was established in 1471 by Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere (1471-1478) in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, seat of the three city magistrates and the administration of the municipal government” [31]. Clement XII (Pope Corsini) decided to transfer the collection from Palazzo dei Conservatori to Palazzo Nuovo (and therefore from one side of the square to the other). His successor Benedict XIV (Pope Lambertini) broadened the collection of statues and purchased the Sacchetti and Pio di Savoia paintings collections between 1748 and 1750, which thus constituted the Gallery of Paintings (opened in 1751, this time in the Palazzo of the Conservatori). Finally, at the Palazzo dei Conservatori, the Academy of Nude was opened in 1754, with a significant opening - in the Rome capital of the Papal State - to the needs of the artists [32]. Shortly before the arrival of Winckelmann in the city, therefore, the Capitol Hill had became a centre dedicated to art, a must for anyone who went to Rome to admire its heritage.

Fig. 7) A room of the Capitol Hill, 1865, Cornell University Library @Wikimedia Commons

And it was precisely the increase in tourism - in addition to the need to preserve heritage and keep it in Rome - one of the three reasons for opening the Capitoline Museum: "Another incentive coincided with the growth of cultural tourism in Italy, as Rome was considered the main destination of every journey. (...) It is no coincidence that the documentation relating to the foundation of the Museum highlighted the educational value of the institution, thus meeting the needs of the Grand Tour audience, consisting of amateurs, foreigners and young people” [33]. This was made possible by the spreading even in Rome of "the influence of the Enlightenment values [that] led the ruling class to make more accessible the educational opportunities” [34].

Fig. 8) Capitoline Museums, The Hall of Philosophers. Source: Pinterest

The scholar explained that the museum's exhibition criteria were inspired by new criteria of rationality: "Although in the Capitoline Museum the marble sculptures were divided according to traditional typologies and themes - busts, statues, herms, urns, reliefs, inscriptions-, the rooms of the Museum were less crowded and less richly decorated than those of the private galleries, in order to make the identity of the Museum as a collection of antiquities absolutely clear. While in the private collections sculptures and paintings were often exhibited together, in the rooms of the Capitoline Museum no painting was hanged and the presence of modern sculptures was almost completely excluded, with the exception of the portraits of the patron popes. [..] In the Capitoline Museum (...) the busts of the imperial series were arranged according to a strict chronological order and displayed in a room dedicated to them, placed on simple shelves, with the aim of inviting visitors to reflect not only on the individuality of the portraits and the quality of resemblance - especially when multiple portraits of the same character were placed next to each other - but also on the development of Roman history” [35]. To be noted, this approach was entirely in line with Winckelmann's historiographical approach, and his reading of the history of art according to style profiles.

Ilaria Sgarbozza 

Winckelmann, the Palazzo Nuovo in Campidoglio and the practice of the museum in the mid-Eighteenth Century [36]

Ilaria Sgarbozza, an Eighteenth-Century and early Nineteenth-century art history scholar in Rome, focused on the life of Winckelmann as soon as he arrived in Rome. Upon the recommendation of Mengs, the scholar registered at the Capitoline Museum as an artist and began an assiduous attendance: "Winckelmann's life as an artist in the early Roman months, noted in letters to his friends, appeared to conform to a well-established tradition: first copying from the ancient in the opening hours of the day, then lunch, a second session of activity - in some cases 'exercise from the nude' -, stop in a cafe and finally return home, with possible sharing, in small groups, of work played. Of the daily life described above, the Capitoline collection was the fulcrum, «freely available to all artists from morning to late evening», attended by the German scholar «almost every day»” [37]. The attendance of the halls of the Museum reinforced in Johann Joachim the belief that it was not possible to progress in understanding the history of art if not benefiting from "direct observation and almost physical relationship with works of art” [38].

Fig. 9) The title page of the first volume of the Capitoline Museum catalogue, published under the direction of Giovanni Gaetano Bottari in 1748. Source: http://dlib.biblhertz.it/Bottari-MuseoCapitolino-1#page/6/mode/2up

The fact that the Capitoline Museum was freely accessible differentiated it from all private galleries (which could only be visited by permission and behind the inevitable payment of a tip to the custodians) and the Vatican Library (whose access and use rules were very strict). Winckelmann (like many other visitors, first of all Montesquieu) repeatedly complained about having to put his hand in his wallet to visit the most relevant sites in Rome [39]; he also testified how, for many weeks, he was forbidden access to Vatican manuscripts; at the Museum of Portici he could do nothing if he was not accompanied by caretakers who prevent him from taking measures and copying the finds, despite having obtained a special permit.

The usability of the Museum was increased by the publication of a series of catalogues. Ms Sgarbozza distinguished between the official catalogue (in four volumes) and a 'pocket' guide. The first three volumes of the official catalogue were published between 1741 and 1755 by Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, another of the intellectuals active in Rome, and Giovanni Domenico Campiglia (1692-1768), draftsman and painter. The fourth volume of the official catalogue (1782) was edited by the archaeologist Niccolò Maria Foggini (date of birth and death unknown). As for the pocket guide, it was released for the first time in the Holy Year 1750 and was republished in 1770 and 1775. Its author was the Antiquity Commissioner Ridolfino Venuti (1705 -1763), Winckelmann's predecessor in that position.

I would like to point out that the exhibition catalogue also featured an article dedicated to Giovanni Domenico Campiglia, signed by Flavia Pesci, entitled "Giovanni Domenico Campiglia designer for the Capitoline Museum” [40].

Fig. 10) The first edition of the pocket catalogue of the Capitoline Museum, published in 1750. Source: https://archive.org/details/museocapitolinoo00luca/page/n7

End of Part One

Go to Part Two (Forthcoming)

NOTES

[1] Il Tesoro di Antichità. Winckelmann e il Museo Capitolino nella Roma del Settecento. Edited by Claudio Parisi Presicce and Eloisa Dodero, 2017, 384 pages. Quotation at page 108.

[2] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 13.

[3] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp. 9-16.

[4] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.9.

[5] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.11.

[6] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.198.

[7] Raspi Serra, Joselita - Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Ville e palazzi di Roma, Trascrizione del manoscritto originale di S. Oloff Montinari. Traduzione dal tedesco di G. Montinari, Roma, Edizioni Quasar, 544 pagine.

[8] Winckelmann, Johann Joachim - Ville e Palazzi di Roma: Antiken in den römischen Sammlungen. Text und Kommentar, a cura di Sascha Kansteiner, Brigitte Kuhn-Forte e Max Kunze, Magonza, Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2003, 410 pagine.

[9] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.10.

[10] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.73-86.

[11] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.73.

[12] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.73.

[13] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.76.

[14] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.76.

[15] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.81.

[16] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.75.

[17] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.79.

[18] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.75.

[19] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.76.

[20] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.78.

[21] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.74.

[22] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.76.

[23] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.78.

[24] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.79.

[25] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p.82.

[26] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.87-93.

[27] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.97-98.

[28] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.92.

[29] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.90.

[30] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.105-110.

[31] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.105.

[32] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.109.

[33] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.106.

[34] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.107.

[35] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.107.

[36] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.111-117.

[37] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.111.

[38] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.111.

[39] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.112.

[40] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp.127-135.