CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION
Francesco Mazzaferro
The Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura, scultura ed architettura by Giovanni Gaetano Bottari
Part One
 |
| Fig. 1) Anonymous, Giovanni Gaetano Bottari’s portrait, 1775. Rome, Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/7308366226 |
The Raccolta as a primordial
anthology in the field of art literature
In my view, there cannot be any
doubt [1] that at the origin of the still uninterrupted series of anthologies
of writings by artists - many of which we have reviewed in this blog - there was
the publication in 1754 of the “Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura, scultura ed architettura: scritte
da' più celebri professori che in dette arti fiorirono dal secolo XV al XVII”
(Collection of
letters on painting, sculpture and architecture: written by the most famous
professors who flourished in these arts from the fifteenth to the seventeenth
century”) [2]. The reason of the primordial nature of the Raccolta for the history of art anthologies is twofold: on the one
hand, it inaugurated a new genre, that of the collection of artists’ letters,
which remained extremely popular until the beginning of the XX Century; on the
other hand, almost all the first anthologies of art literature in the XIX
century had Bottari’s Raccolta as one
of the main sources.
 |
| Fig. 2) Tomb and epitaph of Giovanni Battista Bottari in the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, 1775. The epitaph was composed by Pier Francesco Foggini, his closest friend and associate both in issues of religion and art. Source: http://www.borgato.be/MISCELLANEA/ROMA_TRASTEVERE-SGI-SRU/html/1775.html#Testa |
Giovanni Gaetano Bottari (1689-1775)
was undoubtedly the first to discover the value of the letters written by art creators
not only as direct testimony - without any mediation of art critics - of the
artist's life and thought, but as documentation of the artists' craft. Since
the 16th century, many repertoires of letters of illustrious men had been
already printed, but despite the proclamation of the nobility of art,
collections of letters had never (not even partially) specifically been dedicated to
the letters of painters, sculptors and architects (although attempts by Malvasia were
documented already in the second half of the seventeenth century [3]). One of
the great difficulties in compiling a selection of artists' letters (unlike a
collection of letters drafted by writers or men of government) has always been
that most painters, sculptors and architects are writing letters discontinuously
and frequently for reasons totally unrelated to aesthetic considerations:
therefore, only a scholar like Bottari, who had privileged access to libraries
and archives (and a vast network of correspondents), had sufficient time and
resources to trace a sufficient number of texts and even plan the publication of one
volume and its subsequent extension into a series of tomes. Obviously, the form
in which the letters were proposed to the reader by the Florentine monsignor was
a reflection of the erudite culture of the eighteenth century: therefore, the
anthology was an extraordinarily large collection, structured according to
criteria that today look like exclusively as a compilation, and whose primary
goal seems to simply publish everything the curator found in libraries. On the
other hand, exactly in those years the first modern anthologies of texts (whether
literary or otherwise) were published in France and everywhere else in Europe,
and often had the same form of vast and disorderly repertoires, in multiple
volumes, with a documentary purpose and without the ambition - which would
instead be the focus of nineteenth-century anthologies - to codify knowledge in
a compact corpus of texts contained in a single volume. The anthologies of the XVIII
century were therefore perhaps a moment of transition between erudition at the
beginning of the century and the first appearances of an organised encyclopaedism
in the middle of the century. Bottari's deep ties with the French and Dutch
Jansenist religious world allowed him to witness the birth outside of Italy of
a new culture - precisely that of Enlightenment's encyclopaedism - of which he was
not a part and that he rather disputed (he wrote a Criticism of Montesquieu’s Esprit de Lois in 1750), but which was
already influential in the writings of one of his most important correspondents: Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694-1774).
 |
| Fig. 3) Charles-Nicolas Cochin (drawing) and Augustin de Saint-Aubin (engraving), Portrait of Pierre-Jean Mariette, 1765. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Bottari's work was a real
undertaking, occupying the author for many years (1754-1768). We owe Bottari
the publication of 1027 letters for a total of 2180 pages. If we add the pirate
edition edited by Luigi Crespi 1773, the letters grew to 1045 and the Raccolta extended to 2386 pages. There
is obviously no doubt that Bottari was a child of the erudite culture of his
time (especially, the one which developed in Tuscany in the early decades of
the eighteenth century) and that in the name itself of erudite curiosity (which
led him to devote himself not only to art , but also to literature, linguistic,
medicine, sciences and especially to theology) he collected - both directly and
through correspondents, especially in Tuscany and northern Italy – a vast series
of epistolary materials addressed from or to artists, or concerning art (in
part never published by him, but included by Ticozzi in the new edition of the Raccolta in 1822-1825). And yet he
managed over time the publication of this panoply of letters, first with a
single volume in 1754, then in a project of an edition in two books in 1757 and
finally in the edition of successive volumes every two to three years. Thereby,
he pursued two objectives that were going beyond simple erudition. On the one
hand, he wanted to complement and narrate differently - giving a voice directly
to the artists – those ‘lives of the artists’ he actually mastered very well:
in fact, he had a very accurate knowledge of Vasari's Lives - of which he would be
commentator between 1759 and 1760 – but also of Malvasia's Felsina pittrice and many other texts
of authors writing artists’ lives in previous centuries and at his time. On the
other hand, he intended to document, using the instrument of the letter (in an
epoch that assigned that task to letters or even 'pseudo-letters', as evidenced
by the concept of République des Lettres),
the aesthetic discussion of his time. The Raccolta,
with the passing of the years, thus became an instrument of debate on recent
and contemporary art.
Bottari gathered and brought out the
letters with great attention, also revealing a great sense of commerce. In 1754
(first volume) and in 1759 (third volume) he published two collections of
epistolary texts which were perfectly reflecting the content of two further books
being published by him at the same time: respectively the Dialogues above the three arts of drawing (1754) and the critical edition
of Vasari's Lives (1759). In these two
cases, his collections of letters focused on Renaissance and Baroque art. In
1757 (second volume) and in 1764 (fourth volume) he first opened the collection
to the aesthetic discussions of his time and then focused it on them. The
fifth (1766) and the sixth volume (1768) were instead intended for the
publication of not yet published missives – which were probably already
available to him since years – or of new entries in his collection of letters.
Of course, Bottari wrote on and
dealt with art, but was not an art historian. Actually, he made the personal
acquaintance of the first great art historian, namely of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), who arrived in Rome in 1755 (one year after the
publication of the first volume of the collection of letters), but the two
actually had very different ideas of classicism as an aesthetic category and of
art itself. Bottari did share with Winckelmann neither the convention of the
primacy of Greek art compared to the Roman one - not by chance, he was indeed a
friend and protector of one of Winckelmann's intellectual rivals, namely
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), i.e. a supporter of the primacy of
Roman art over the Greek one - nor a thorough sense of stylistic development. Winckelmann,
for his part, considered Giovanni Gaetano’s Dialogues
of 1754 as an insignificant work. It is noteworthy from this point of view that
Bottari's entire original collection of letters did not include any
correspondence with Winckelmann nor any of the numerous letters he sent to
third parties in Italy or elsewhere. Simply, Giovanni Gaetano had a different
project from Johann Joachim: the former was not part of the birth of art
history (even if Lanzi, the first Italian art historian, quoted him 45 times in his Pictorial History 1795, as explained below), but was the
primigenial author which gave rise to a different form of documentation of art
literature. This is the reason why I believe his Raccolta was the proto-anthology of art literature. The fact that
Bottari was neither the first historian of art nor the first modern art critic,
but simply the first anthologist (of course, sui generis) of artistic
literature has certainly helped to lessen his historical value in the eyes of
the moderns.
Over the last five years I have read
many anthologies. Even in the necessary diversity of form among them (from the
erudite-universal compilations of Bottari to the thematic-specialised
collections dedicated above all to contemporary art in our days) the writing of
an anthology seems to have been characterized by three characteristics over time. In the first
place, it has almost never been curated by those art historians who were moving the
profession in new directions: the documentary effort of selecting texts (even
when it succeeded in the goal of codifying knowledge) seems to weaken the
ability to synthesis. Secondly, the anthological form has often developed in a
diagonal sense with respect to the purpose of art criticism: the anthology was
in fact giving voice to the artists precisely to prevent that their original
views would be buried by that of the critics. Finally, in the selection
criteria of the anthologized works, the anthology has always been an expression of
the dominant culture of its time: erudition, enlightenment, idealism,
positivism, and so on. It is this (perceived) impersonality of the anthologist
that has thus reduced the perception and visibility of Bottari, as almost all
his successors, to date. And yet, a crucial merit cannot be denied either to
Giovanni Gaetano or to anyone who followed his tracks: without them the
transmission of the sources of art history would have been extremely difficult.
 |
| Fig. 4) Agostino Masucci, Portrait of Clement XII, 1731. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
The figure of Giovanni Gaetano Bottari
It is really surprising that - at
least for what I could find - no volume had never been dedicated exclusively to
Bottari and his vast production as essayist. The main source I have used, or
the item dedicated to him by the historian Giuseppe Pignatelli in the Biographical Dictionary of Italians, is
from 1973 and may perhaps be aged. In conclusion, the author of the Dictionary entry
concluded: "Heir of two tipically Italian traditional avenues of
traditional of historical culture, the grammatical one of
Florence’s Crusca and the antiquarian one of Counter-Reformed Rome, Bottari
remained substantially foreign to the renewal of the European culture and even
to Muratori’s historical method; but he was able to give a useful contribution
in providing his favourite tradition with efficient work tools; in stubbornly
fighting for the protection of medieval works of art; in forming a harmonious
library in every part of it, such as the Corsiniana Library of Rome, for which
he also summarily ordered and described the fund of the manuscripts. To the
prestige that surrounded him when alive must have contributed, finally, his a bit
antiquated taste of art connoisseur and the charm of the editions he edited,
some of which, illustrated by excellent engravers, are notable examples of
elegance in the eighteenth-century Italian publishing scene” [4].
 |
| Fig. 5) Girolamo Ticciati, Bust of Clement XII, 1731, Source: Wikimedia Commons |
In conclusion, that of Pignatelli was
an image of Bottari as a very cultivated man, however immersed in dusty studies, within a sleepy and
bigoted Rome that had lost for ever the pace of history. Frankly, notwithstanding
the authority of the biographer and his deep knowledge of numerous figures of the Italian church in
those years [5], I feel this picture needs to be updated. In fact, also in
light of the most recent studies [6], Bottari’s Rome (that under the popes
Clement XII and Benedict XIV) looks like to me instead as a culturally very
lively and extremely more tolerant environment than many other regions of
Europe in those times (it is not by chance that Rome attracted key artists and intellectuals
from the Protestant world, such as Mengs and Winckelmann). Of that "illuminated"
(though certainly not enlightened) Rome - which not only offered a unique
availability of ancient monuments and private art collections, but also inaugurated
in 1733 the first public museum in the world and the first academy of nude in 1754 -
Bottari was one of the protagonists.
I intentionally wrote that Bottari was
an exponent of an 'illuminated', but not 'enlightened' world. This also applies
to the aesthetic field. Giovanni Gaetano was an illuminated man because, as the
Raccolta was progressing, he felt the
need to give more and more space in the various tomes to the debate on arts of
his days and did not refrain from hosting also dissident views. If the first
version of 1754 was totally focused on artists between the mid-sixteenth and
mid-seventeenth centuries, the last volumes were similar (by content) to a
periodical publication on the topics of current discussion of the new century.
Yet Bottari was not part of Enlightenment, because he did not see fundamental
reasons for modifying the world in which he was living.
This does not mean that, as
Pignatelli did, the meaning of Bottari's reflections on art must be devalued
because he was not able to grasp the message of Enlightenment. Indeed, we will even
identify in Giovanni Gaetano some almost pre-Romantic accents (when he spent so
much time on the desperate story of figures like Domenichino, who were
prototypes of the 'accursed' artists which would be so loved by the romantics,
as an expression of both the personal dependence of the art creators on the
whims of the powerful and the inability of the public to understand them). Of
course, it was a totally unconscious proto-romanticism, which originated in
Jansenist moralism and in the idea of man's dependence on divine grace. After
all, if we had asked Johann Heinrich Füssli whether he was a pre-romantic (as
everyone considers him today) or not, he would not have even understood the
question.
 |
| Fig. 6) Johann Heinrich Füssli, The artist's despair before the ruins, 1778-80. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Pignatelli explained that Bottari was
a Florentine of vast culture (also because of his education that crossed
theology, physics and mathematics), and that accordingly during his 86 years of
life he dealt both with theological issues (he was a cleric), scientific topics,
literary criticism and finally art issues. Here we will not dwell on his
many editions of medical and scientific treatises (he even wrote about
earthquakes and commented on medical matters) and we will fly over his very
wide production on the religious-theological theme. What is certain is that
Giovanni Gaetano was not only a scholar, but also a man of action. Already
twenty-seven years old he directed the grand-ducal printing house in Florence
(he would take care of books during his entire life) and – after entering the
clergy – soon manifested his religious orientations, very adverse to the Jesuit
order (which he considered too 'wordly' and therefore compromising with sins) and favourable to the much more rigid Augustinians. Bottari was, therefore, a rigorist since his youth.
 |
| Fig. 7) Agostino Masucci, Portrait of Clement XII and cardinal Neri Maria Corsini, about 1730. Source: http://www.cahiersdesarts.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/05.jpg |
Bottari devoted his soul and body to
demonstrate the compatibility between the Catholic Church's doctrine and
Jansenism, a religious and philosophical movement that originated in the work
of the Dutch theologian Cornelius Otto Jansen (1585-1638). Jansenism developed
in Northern Europe (with centre at the abbey of Port Royal in France, but also
for example an important nucleus in Utrecht) and was very present also among
the Italian scholars of his time. Actually, the texts of Jansen had already
been condemned by the Inquisition one hundred years before, that is in 1641,
but Bottari was convinced that this was a misunderstanding and that they could
be made easily compatible with the church's doctrine.
 |
| Fig. 8) The fourth edition of the Vocabolario della Crusca (1729), curated by Giovanni Gaetano Bottari. Source: https://libreriaprandi.it/vocabolario-degli-accademici-della-crusca/ |
In Florence Giovanni Gaetano was at
the service of the Corsini family and collaborated from his early age at
typographic projects of great prestige promoted by them, as the edition of De Etruria regali by Dempster (1719-1726) and - together with Antonio Francesco Gori,
at the start of the Museum Florentinum
(1731-1734). In the Florentine years he also focused on literature (with
studies on Boccaccio and many other authors) and became part of the Accademia della Crusca, even taking care
of the fourth edition of the Italian Vocabulary (1729-1738). It is in those
years that he was sponsored by Rosso Antonio Martini (1720-1809), who in
addition to addressing him to the Crusca
and encouraging him to support the project of continuation of a Raccolta Di Prose
Fiorentine (Collection of
Florentine Prose, published between 1716 and 1745), would be one of the main sources of the collection of artists'
letters. But the attention of Giovanni Gaetano was not limited to good Italian:
he was, as we shall see, very attentive to the Latin literature of the modern
age.
 |
| Fig. 9) The frontispiece of the Sacred sculptures and paintings extracted from the cemeteries of Rome, already published by the authors of Underground Rome and now brought out again with explanations by Giovanni Gaetano Bottari (1737). Source: https://www.gonnelli.it/it/asta-0022/bottari-giovanni-gaetano-sculture-e-pitture-sa.asp |
When Lorenzo Corsini (1652-1740)
became pope in 1730 as Clement XII, Bottari moved to Rome to assist the
cardinal Neri Corsini (1685-1770), another exponent of the family, close to Jansenism.
Giovanni Gaetano attracted the benevolence of the Pope himself, who first assigned him a
university appointment at the Sapienza University in theological matters, then
gave him the task of setting up his private library and then promoted him to
second custodian of the Vatican Library. Also for Pope Corsini, he began writing
and publishing richly illustrated volumes with engravings on Rome (in
particular on underground Rome).
 |
| Fig. 10) Pierre Subleyras, Portrait of Pope Benedict XIV Lambertini, 1741. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
 |
| Fig. 11) Anton Raphael Mengs, Portrait of Clement XIII, 1758. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
With the appointment of Pope Clement
XIII (1693-1769) in 1758, after a few years of indecision, a phase of
great conflict and radicalization began. At the beginning Giovanni Gaetano
obtained other unexpected successes: between 1758 and 1761 he even managed to
publish (though in Naples) the Jansenist catechism and many programmatic texts
of French theorists. I would like to note that precisely in those years he issued his commented edition of Vasari's Lives.
At the age of seventy, Bottari was at the peak of success. And yet, his fortune
would soon turn to the worst: the Holy Office renewed the condemnation of the Jansenist
doctrine in 1761, Cardinal Luigi Torrigiani (1697-1777), the new Secretary of
State, sought (in vain) on that occasion to remove Giovanni Gaetano from Rome,
and Clement XIII published in 1765 a note of commendation to the hated Jesuits.
The following year, in 1766, Giovanni Gaetano suffered from a first stroke that
weakened him. The Raccolta was
perhaps one of the few activities that he continued to pursue. He died nine
years later, in 1775, passing the last years in poor health, and after a second
attack in 1773 (it was also the year of the pirate edition of Crespi) that led
him in conditions of non-self-sufficiency.
Bottari, Jansenism, books and history sources
Not much has been said on Bottari as
a Jansenist theologian, author of many writings and animator of the Roman
circles in favour of this theological orientation of French origin (which was
centred on a different interpretation of guilt and grace from sin and on the
struggle against the order of Jesuits), as well as a supporter of theological
rigor, of a moralization of customs and attitudes that would be more spiritual
and less tied to luxury in the curia. However, there is one aspect that I would
like to mention here, to which Romana Palozzi has dedicated attention in her
article "Msgr. Giovanni Bottari and
the circle of Roman Jansenists” [7]: the books were "the Jansenist weapon par excellence"
and Bottari - who edited the rich library of the Corsini and made his entire
career in Rome as a librarian until eventually becoming the first custodian of
the Vatican Library under Benedict XV - created a network of exchanges of
volumes between Italian and foreign libraries that above all served the
objective of the battle of religious renewal. To the point that Ms Palozzi
reached the conclusion that when, at the death of Giovanni Gaetano, this
structure of correspondents disintegrated, the entire Roman Jansenism could not
but disappear.
 |
| Fig. 12) Antonio David, Portrait of Cardinal Neri Corsini, 1730. Source: Wikimedia Commons. |
Ms Paolozzi added: "We have already seen the interest of Bottari
and his friends for the various publications that were released in those days;
they were trying to get, if possible, all of them: and when they did not come
to buy them directly due to lack of means or limitation of copies, they tried
to organise exchanges. This diffusion of the book, considered an excellent
means of education and an effective weapon of struggle, was characteristic of
the activity of the Jansenists. Bottari, a man cultivating interests for all kind of books, certainly had his representatives, his advisers, his
intermediaries in all the major book centres of Italy and abroad” [8].
Often numerous copies of the
Jansenist works published abroad were purchased, so that they could be
distributed across Italy. Giovanni Gaetano was really an operative
intellectual: he created, under his protection, links between Roman libraries
and counterparts in France, Holland, Saxony (thanks to his friend Giovanni
Bianconi). The same relationships between booksellers, intermediaries and
experts - established between the forties and fifties of the XVIII Century -
supported the collection of the artists’ letters in the subsequent decades and
its commercial fortune.
 |
| Fig. 13) Pietro Bracci, Bust of Benedict XIV, ca 1750. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
To better understand the Raccolta, one of the most relevant
aspects of Romana Palozzi’s essay was about the task which Roman Jansenists
assigned to the "study of history through
the sources". They had the task of "restoring the truth of tradition on the testimony of the document,
(...) re-establishing the authority of the past on the arrogance and intolerance
of the present, and clearing the ground of abuses and arbitrations. For the
rehabilitation of the rights of the State vis-à-vis the Church, the study of
history became a revolutionary force” [9]. Historical sources were used to
justify the return to a humble and pure Church, free from riches and
corruption, and full of spirituality. The study of ecclesiastical sources had been
central for Bottari (as well as for the Italian Jansenists) since the 1730s.
For instance, in 1754 - the year of publication of the collection of the
artists’ letters - one of the closest friends of Bottari, or Pier Francesco
Foggini (1713-1783), also a Jansenist cleric and enthusiast of art and
archaeology and a Vatican librarian - began the publication of a collection of
seven volumes written by St. Augustine and other fathers of the church on the
basic question for the Jansenists of guilt and free will ("Selected works of Saint Augustin on the
grace of God and the free will and predestination") which would be
completed in 1771.
History of the Raccolta: from
a single volume (1754) to a ten-year collection (1757-1768) complemented by a
unauthorised edition (1773)
 |
| Fig. 14) At the left: The frontispiece of the collection of letters edited by Giovanni Gaetano Bottari in the Barbiellini edition (1754) Source: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t40s19s1q;view=1up;seq=5) At the right: The same first tome republished by Pagliarini publishers (1757) Source: https://archive.org/details/raccoltadiletter01bott/page/n5) |
The Raccolta had its start as a standing-alone volume in 1754 (Bottari was
then 65 years old), but evolved in a life-long endeavour accompanying Giovanni
Gaetano Bottari’s elderly years. The monsignor had access to a nucleus of
manuscript materials thanks to contacts with Tuscan scholars who had worked on
a project to collect artists' letters already in the late twenties of the century. Thirty
years later Giovanni Gaetano set himself the goal of accomplish that
initiative, thanks to the availability of other letters he had found, first as
a member of the Corsini Library in Rome and later on as custodian of the
Vatican Library. He edited a single volume gathering 203 letters, published in
Rome at the workshop of the Barbiellini heirs, merchants of books and printers,
in 1754. As explained, it was brought out in tandem with the Dialogues above the three arts of design,
published by the monsignor in Lucca.
 |
| Fig. 15) Giovanni Paolo Panini, Benedict XIV Lambertini and Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, about 1750-1760. Source: http://www.museodiroma.it/it/opera/benedetto-xiv-lambertini-e-il-cardinale-silvio-valenti-gonzaga |
The work was dedicated to Silvio
Valenti Gonzaga (1690-1756), Secretary of State of Benedict XIV. The
declaration of conformity of the Raccolta
with the rules of the Holy Office, for the purpose of getting the authorisation
for publication, was signed by Bottari himself on 29 June 1751 (it was actually
the only place in the volume where his name appeared, according to a practice
that Bottari had often used in his other works). Thus, the work of the printers
(which in those years also included the pre-emptive collection of subscriptions
by selected future readers, to whom the first pages of the text were sent as a preview,
so that those interested could decide whether to order the volumes, paying in
advance) lasted longer than necessary (a letter from Luigi Crespi to Bottari
dated 4 April 1753, published years later in Volume IV of the Raccolta, reported about Giovanni Gaetano's complains
about the delays of the Barbiellini [10]).
The introduction also contained the primary
definition of the purpose of the work: "The usefulness, which can be drawn from these Letters, is not only to
learn about various things belonging to the lives of many famous professors, a
purpose which by itself would be very notable and desirable; but also to draw from
the letters many precepts belonging to the three fine arts, and much history of
their famous works, and the way to order and dispose them, and their meaning,
and the manner of representing many ideal figures, and different inventions,
and moral and poetic concepts; all of this can be of help to, and enlighten the
art makers in carrying out their works to perfection” [11]. Thus, the
ambition was to read in the letters not so much private testimony on the
biography of the artists, but to start on their basis a research on theoretical
- even normative - aspects of art over time, which could also be useful to
contemporary artists. It can be said, in a frank and candid way, that this goal
was never achieved: the number of letters from which other artists could learn
how to reason on aesthetic issues remained really limited.
Nevertheless, the success must have been
great. For the first time, the public had a collection available where they could
read about the lives of the artists, not because their biographies had been
narrated by other colleague (for example Vasari) or by scholars, but because they
could hear them speak in the first person. A new edition of the Raccolta followed after three years,
this time conceived in two volumes, both of which brought out in 1757 [12]. The
two tomes in 1757 were published no longer by the Barbiellini Heirs, but by
Niccolò and Marco Pagliarini [13]. The change of the publisher was not only
linked to the delays of the first edition, but probably also to the role that
Bottari played as a leader of Roman Jansenism: the Barbiellini heirs
(specialized in art publications) were in fact close to the Jesuits (the
historical enemies of Jansenism) while the Pagliarinis, as already mentioned,
offered a tool for the international diffusion of the most recent Jansenist
publications in Europe [14].
The selection of letters in the
first tome corresponded exactly to that of the 1754 single volume of the Raccolta, although with minor
typographical differences (the volume grew from 328 to 339 pages). The title was
also changed and the term 'professori'
(professors) was replaced by the term 'personaggi'
(personalities, characters, figures).
The second volume (which included
fewer letters than the first one – i.e. 127 letters - but still extended for 321
pages) was produced in two versions, which were distinguished only because one
had a brief introduction of two pages [15], while the other was without an
autonomous introduction (the pages were occupied by an engraved vignette with
some ornamental designs) [16]. In the introduction, Giovanni Gaetano explained
that he had started the production of a second volume because he had himself collected further letters and received many others as a gift by his
correspondents. The number of letters still in his hands was however so wide
that he announced the publication - as soon as possible - of a third volume. He
then clarified that he had decided to include not only transcripts from
unpublished manuscripts, but also letters already contained in so sparse press
texts that it would be difficult to consult them. To help the reader, the book ended
with a very detailed analytical index listing jointly authors, themes and
topics from both tomes.
The announced third volume [17] was
published in 1759 (again by Niccolò and Marco Pagliarini). The title was further
simplified: the reference to the fact that the letters were written by artists
or art experts (whether ‘professors’ or ‘personalities’) disappeared and the
heading was limited to "Collection
of letters on painting, sculpture and architecture". It disappeared also the temporal
reference, which had previously limited the writings to the period
between the (very little documented) XV century and the XVII century. In this
way the set of writers of letters to be included in the collection was further
expanded and opened to the contemporaries. The introduction listed in detail
the new and different origin of the additional 227 letters (extended for 412
pages): Giovanni Gaetano had received new texts from friends and
correspondents, and thanked them for the competition of generosity between them
to contribute to the continuation of the editorial effort. Unlike the previous
volume, the indices placed at the end of the third volume referred only to the
texts published on that occasion and were no longer integrated with those of
the previous tomes.
 |
| Fig. 16) On the left: The title page of the fourth volume of the collection of letters by Giovanni Gaetano Bottari. Source: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t76t2114d;view=1up;seq=5 On the right: The title page of the sixth volume of the collection of letters. Source: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t4wh44047;view=1up;seq=5;size=150 |
When Bottari published the Tome IV
(1764) [18], he was now 75 years old. We have tried in vain to clarify the
reasons why, for the first time, the imprimatur no longer occurred in response
to a self-certification (as in all previous cases) but with the intervention of
Abbot Prospero Petroni (1716-1785). To be noted, for this reason some
bibliographic repertoires on the internet consider that the real curator of this
tome (and the following ones) was Petroni, and not Bottari. Based on the
information we were able to collect, I believe that this does not correspond to
the truth. However, it cannot be ruled out - if it was not a simple change due
to bureaucratic issues - that Petroni was assigned a controlling function: in
1761 Pope Clement XIII launched a theological offensive against the Jansenists,
and perhaps the curia did not want to leave Bottari - who was their leader in
Rome - the possibility of 'self-certifying' his respect of the norms of faith.
Whatever the role of Petroni may have been, the Tome IV housed 240 letters in
424 pages, plus a 1571 Renaissance treatise by Francesco Bocchi (1548-1613) on
Donatello. However, more than 90% of the letters dated back to the eighteenth
century and more than a hundred of them were letters received by Bottari
himself. In the introduction he especially thanked the Count Giacomo Carrara
in Bergamo (he would be the founder of the Accademia Carrara) and the French
Pierre-Jean Mariette.
Petroni continued to certify the
work’s compliance with the official rules for the fifth (1766) [19] and the
sixth tome (1768) [20]. The latter was published by the Stamperia di Pallade (Printing House of Pallas), which was still the
publishing house of Niccolò and Marco Pagliarini. It should be anticipated that
between the two dates Bottari (in 1766, i.e. at 77 years) was hit by a stroke,
which did not kill him but seriously prevented him for some time from intervening
directly in the production of the tomes. His enthusiasm for artistic literature
remained however intact. Curiously, the brief introduction of the fifth tome
(which included 175 letters in 317 pages) ignored to praise the content of the
tome itself, but announced with very youthful excitement the recent discovery -
thanks to the combined help of Mariette and Zanotti, i.e. his main correspondents
in Paris and Bologna - of very rare booklets (opuscoli) by Federico Zuccari. Here Bottari does not use the usual word 'letters'. Revealing a high
degree of naivety, Giovanni Gaetano even announced that those letters would even
occupy a prominent position in the next tome. What the introduction did not
tell is how valuable the service was which that Tome V offered to the
reader: Bottari selected one hundred letters, in anthological form, sifting
collections of letters from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, in
particular among those published in Venice.
The sixth tome (367 pages, albeit
only for 55 letters) contained instead a long introduction, written again in the
first person (and therefore not at the name of the publishing house), to
explain that - contrary to what Giovani Gaetano had hoped – he was able neither
in Bologna nor in Paris to trace letters from Zuccari, attributing this failure
to Mariette. And yet the tenacity of the elderly Giovanni Gaetano allowed him
to identify three texts by Zuccari in libraries in Florence and Venice: he then
announced that the first one (The idea of
painters, sculptors and architects, a treatise in two books) was entirely
presented in the sixth tome of the collection, that the second (The journey through Italy)
 |
| Fig. 17) The title page of the Tome VII (source:https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t9r22gt03;view=1up;seq=5;size=150) and the imprimatur by Prospero Petroni (source:https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t9r22gt03;view=1up;seq=214;size=150) |
A seventh tome [21] was actually released in 1773, but it was not the one tasked to the Count Carrara, but one actually edited by the painter (and canon) Luigi Crespi (1708-1779), who had been already for some years one of the main correspondents of Bottari. It was authorized, as usual, by Prospero Petroni. It did not include anything of what Bottari had anticipated in Tome VI.
Here is what Giovanni Lodovico
Bianconi (1717-1781), actually a sworn enemy of Crespi [22], wrote in this
regard, describing this last volume as a pirate edition in an article published
by him on the "Literary Ephemerides
of Rome" in 1773, a new literary journal founded that year by Bianconi
himself. "Since 1754 the valiant
Monsignor Bottari began to publish various pictorial letters written by famous maestros,
or old and modern amateurs; he built up happily a so beautiful collection up to
the sixth volume. Thanks to the many materials he had prepared for the
continuation, materials which we had repeatedly seen, we expected to read very
soon the useful and delightful continuation of this work. But what a surprise
it was for us to suddenly see the same days appearing, with the prints of
Pagliarini, a seventh volume of the pictorial letters compiled by the Bolognese canon Crespi, known for his third volume of the Felsina Pittrice, and for The Certosa described in its paintings! Many lovers of the fine arts wished to hear whether Monsignor Bottari
had given this commission to the canon or not, or at least permitted him to put
his scythe into this harvest. The learned cleric [note of the editor:
Bottari] said he did not know anything
about it, and indeed he was rushing to get the book with great curiosity, having
never seen it. He read it, and was asked, whether he had taken this prank badly.
Replying with his usual sparkling tone, he said he did not; however, he would
have been more worried if he had been the author of such a bad work” [23].
 |
| Fig. 18) Bianconi's slating of the seventh tome of the Collection of Letters published by him in the Literary Ephemerides of Rome, October 2, 1773. Source:https://books.google.de/books?id=wG5UAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false |
In truth, Bianconi’s polemical text could
create the wrong impression that Crespi and Bottari were not in close contacts.
Nothing could be more false. A recent essay dedicated to Crespi by Giovanna Perini Folesani [23bis] revealed that the letter exchange between the two included at least 212 letters, of which 157 from Crespi to Bottari and 55 from Bottari to Crespi, extending at least from 1751 to 1770. Of the 212 letters, only 38 were published in the Raccolta (36 by Crespi and 2 by Bottari). As to the published missives, Crespi's first letter to Bottari, included already
in Volume II of 1757, dated back to 1751 (they were three long prolusions about
the pre-eminence between Raphael and Michelangelo, in the form of a letter sent
by Luigi to Giovanni Gaetano, about Bellori and Vasari); in Volume III the number
of letters from Crespi rose to four and included two long pseudo-letters
discussing restoration techniques directed in 1756 to Francesco Algarotti and a
beautiful biography of the father, the painter Giuseppe Maria, sent to Bottari,
dated 1757; in Volume IV the number of letters from Crespi to Bottari exploded
to 32 and documented their close relations in the years 1751-1760 (with
continuous reciprocal mailings accompanying the transmission of prints and
medals, as well as the relative exchange of information). In a letter dated 16
October 1751 we learn that the Bolognese canon was one of the first to be
told of the preparations in progress for the drafting of the forthcoming Raccolta and to congratulate Giovanni
Gaetano. On the same day Crespi wrote about the project to the old Bolognese
painter and scholar Giampietro Zanotti (1674-1765), thus creating - for Bottari
- another of the most useful correspondent links to gather information on the
Bolognese school. Crespi informed Giovanni Gaetano of his next trip to Dresden
(1752-1753),
sent him a letter from Vienna on the Imperial Library imperial which he had just visited
(December 1752), on April 4, 1753 told him about his project to write the
continuation of Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice, on September 3, 1757 thanked him for receiving the
second volume of the Raccolta, in November of that year helped Bottari to contact the Manolessi heirs
to look for the old copper plates of their edition of Vasari's Lives and in October 1759 updated him about the progress of the third volume of the Felsina. The direct epistolary relationship stopped abruptly in 1760: after having documented years of continuous interaction, the Raccolta no longer contained letters between the two in the Tomes V and VI (equally, there was no Crespi’s letter sent to or received from any other correspondent), if not a short text to Bottari 1766 (Tome V). We know from the above mentioned article of di Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò that, in reality, their exchange of letters went on, but Bottari did not include anymore what received in the Raccolta. For instance, Crespi sent him in 1764 a long treatise-letter on the Essay on the theory of painting by Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745), which Bottari failed to include in Tome V. On the same year Crespi sent another unpublished letter on Algarotti’s death and his will, and in 1765 an additional one after the passing away of Zanotti [23 ter]. This last letter included polemical tones, as Crespi expressed his displeasure, as he was often not receiving answers from Bottari. Turning back to the letters published in the Raccolta, in 1765 Bottari made a very cryptic statement about Crespi to Mariette, perhaps about the lagging progress of the work to finish the third volume of Felsina Pittrice: "I believe, too, that we will not have the Lives of Bologna painters as soon as we all wish, because Mr. canon Crespi is very busy” [24]. Some letters between Bottari and Crespi reappeared only in Tome VII (the one edited by Crespi) and were dated 1770. Even considering the unpublished correspondence, there seems to have been no letter exchange between 1766 and 1770.
 |
| Fig. 19) Luigi Crespi, Self-Portrait, 1775. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
What conclusions to draw? I limit
myself here to formulating questions that can certainly be given different
answers. Did the two write each other intensely even between 1760 and 1770, and
the letters were simply lost? Can we – to the contrary – make the hypothesis
that their friendship broke, that Bottari voluntarily excluded Crespi from all
subsequent volumes of the Raccolta and
that the latter avenged himself in 1773 with a pirate edition, i.e. with a real
imposture? Did the eighty-four year old Bottari really know nothing, in 1773, of
the intention of the sixty-five-year-old Bolognese painter to produce the
seventh volume of the Raccolta, as Bianconi pretended? And why did the
publisher Pagliarini, with whom he had a very intense relationship for many
years, not informed him? Why did Prospero Petroni, who had authorized the three
previous tomes, not discover this was a fake edition? Or was the level of imposture such that the tome was not printed at Pagliarini’s and never officially authorized by Petroni? Bottari’s unpublished correspondence provides some answer. First, Bottari had been informed about what was happening by Crespi himself, albeit only in April 1772, the year preceding the publication. He then immediately wrote to the Count Carrara (whom he had tasked to edit the seventh volume) urging him to stop every attempt to publish the original version; in the letter he also did not refrain from expressing his surprise that not only Crespi, but also the publisher Pagliarini had kept him in the dark. [24 bis].
How did the publisher justify himself? In a declaration by the printer to the public, included at the beginning of Volume VII, he stated that the readers were clamouring for the release of a new tome and that
therefore the publisher had urged action from "such a worthy literate [note of the editor: Bottari]; but to my utmost regret I could not attain
anything I asked, since he was occupied in other more serious and certainly
more profitable studies; so I had to address a distinguished painter, and
foreign writer, I mean the Gentleman canon Luigi Crespi in Bologna, who after
having continued Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice, and published it at my printing house, was pleased again to send me
some letters, partially written by him, and few by other authors. Not wanting
therefore to deceive the general desire, nor wait that the volume would reach
the bulk of others, I put it in the printing press with all solitude, and I am
presenting it here being sure it will meet your approval” [25]. So the
initiative of the work would have been taken by the printer (Pagliarini), and
the assignment to Crespi would be due to Bottari's refusal to continue the
work.
Certainly, in relation to the other books edited by the Pagliarinis, some peculiar features are striking, like if this were a less carefully and more hastily handled publication than usual. Firstly, unlike all previous ones, Tome VII was not dedicated to any
personality (and therefore there was not the usual introductory text signed by the
publisher and addressed to a specific individual, mainly making his public
praises often in the hope of some financing). Secondly, the frieze on the title
page was exactly the same as that of a previous unrelated publication by
Bottari of 1748, or "Three Lessons
above earthquakes", but it had also been used by the Pagliarinis for other scientific
titles (for example, the "Description
of a human fetus" by Giovanni Sorbi of 1749).
 |
| Fig. 20) The title page of Volume VII of the Collection (left - 1773. Source:https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t9r22gt03;view=1up;seq=5 ), compared with the frontispieces of the text of Bottari on the earthquake (in the center - 1748. Source: https://pictures.abebooks.com/TRUEWORLDOFBOOKS/22789376797.jpg) and with that of Giovanni Sorbi on the human fetus (right - 1749. Source:https://books.google.de/books?id=YitVAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it). In all cases, these were titles of the Pagliarini publishing house. |
I think we can say for certain that Crespi and Pagliarini were in cahoots. The former felt perhaps betrayed because Bottari had failed to oublish his letters in the Raccolta over the last years. The latter had perhaps some evidence that a seventh volume was being prepared, but was due to be published by a competitor outside Rome. Indeed, the concept of professional correctness in those years was anyway subject to interpretation and Bottari himself, as we shall see, had at times not been respecting best practices in publishing the letters.
We also know - as Serenella Rolfi Ožvald informed us [26] – that, when in 1825 Ticozzi published fifty years later a new version of the Raccolta, he found the unpublished letters that were in the hands of Bottari, ready for printing in Tome VII, and which were brought out only in that occasion. Thus, it is proven that neither Crespi nor Pagliarini had access to Bottari’s archives. Of course, the number of documents that Crespi was able to collect in the last tome of the collection was very limited: only 16 letters and two long non-letters for 206 pages, of which more than a half were authored by the same Bolognese painter. It was therefore largely a publication of his writings.
Emulators and translators (1817-1857)
Already Bottari’s eulogy, published
in 1775 by the aforementioned Giovanni Ludovico Bianconi on the Roman Anthology [27], cited - albeit briefly - the Raccolta, relating it to both the Dialogues above the three arts of design and
the edition of Vasari's Lives [28],
but also referring to the continuous activity of Giovanni Gaetano as epistolary
correspondent not only with artists and art experts, but also with scholars of
all kinds [29].
Serenella Rolfi Ožvald has recently
documented how Bottari's collection of letters has been considered, as from the
early XIX Century, as an authoritative source for the study of art history.
"Already in 1821 LeopoldoCicognara's catalogue of art books had recorded the usefulness of the Raccolta and the artists’ letters as tools used
without delay in the yards of art history. In Lanzi's Pictorial history of
Italy [editorial note: of 1795-96] the Raccolta
recurred at least 45 times as a
circumstantial source, or as a basis of value judgment” [30].
 |
| Fig. 21) On the left: The French translation of Bottari’s Raccolta, published by Louis-Joseph Jay in 1817. Source: https://archive.org/details/recueildelettre00unkngoog/page/n4. On the right: The first of the eight volumes of the edition of the letters of Bottari, edited and continued by Stefano Ticozzi in 1821. Source:https://archive.org/details/diletteresulla07bott/page/n5 |
In 1817 a French translation was
produced. Its author was Louis-Joseph Jay (1755-1836), a professor of drawing
in Grenoble. Jay's version was diminished to a single volume. In the introduction,
Jay clarified that he wanted to reduce the seven volumes to a more manageable
size for readers (as a whole, the French version included 338 letters in 667
pages), at the same time eliminating all minor authors' epistles but also
integrating the collection with new letters (especially from France).
In 1822 Stefano Ticozzi (1762-1836)
- a scholar who had devoted himself to art at a late age and had nevertheless become
one of the leading experts in artistic literature of the time, after having
played an important role in the Napoleonic administration in Italy and suffered
a purge – took again the volumes of Bottari in his hands and published the
"Collection of letters on painting,
sculpture and architecture written by the most famous characters of the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries" which, as written in
the frontispiece, was presented as "published
by M. Gio.Bottari and continued to this day by Stefano Ticozzi” [31]. The
series was extended from seven to eight volumes, the last of which appeared in
1825. It is worth taking note that Ticozzi included the seventh volume (i.e. Crespi's pirate edition) as an integral part of Bottari's endeavour. Facsimile editions of the Bottari-Ticozzi edition of 1822-1825 were published by the German publisher G. Olms in 1975 and by the Italian A. Forni
in 1979.
 |
| Fig. 22) On the left: Johann Wilhelm Gaye, The unreleased correspondence of artists of the XIV, XV and XVI centuries, published in Florence in 1839. On the right: the first edition of the Letters of artist by Ernst Guhl, published in Berlin in 1853 |
The history of the fortune of the
Bottari Collection cannot ignore the Letters
of artists by Ernst Karl Guhl (1819-1862), a Berlin scholar who published in 1853 and
1857 two volumes of texts largely translated from the collection of
Bottari-Ticozzi, but also from the later ones by Gaye (who searched for letters
from the primitives and the early Renaissance, filling a gap left open by
Bottari) and Gualandi (who instead wanted to integrate the collection of
Bolognese painters).
Giovanni Gaetano Bottari and his correspondence in the field of art
What can we learn about the life and
the interests of Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, when reading the seven volumes of
the Raccolta (including the one
edited by Crespi)? Not surprisingly, according to Julius von Schlosser, this
was the most interesting aspects of the collection. Here is what he wrote in
his Kunstliteratur of 1924, indeed showing some lack of precision on numbers: "The most part of the volumes was dominated
by the very active correspondence of Bottari himself with artists and
connoisseurs of his time" [32].
In the six volumes between 1754 and
1768 we find 158 texts received by Giovanni Gaetano and 13 sent by him; to these
one should add six letters in Tome VII of 1773. It was therefore a limited, but
not marginal number compared to 1027 letters (more than ten percent). The
author therefore used this instrument (especially when he included 119 letters
sent to or by him in Tome IV in 1764) also to document his exchanges with
a series of correspondents: in descending order, the most present
correspondents were Pierre-Jean Mariette (with 50 letters received from him
and four sent to him in the first six volumes), Luigi Crespi (with 36 letters
received and 2 sent), Giampietro Zanotti (20 and 4 texts respectively),
Giovanni Poleni (17 letters received), Tommaso Temanza and Giacomo Carrara (in
both cases, 7 letters received), Carlo Giuseppe Ratti (5 letters received) and
Giovan Battista Ponfredi (3 letters sent). To these one must add other eleven
counterparts with whom the exchange of letters was limited to a single
transmission.
Reading Bottari’s correspondence on
art, the first impression is that he wanted to keep his fields of action
distinct. Either the letters have been amended or Bottari never wrote about anything
else but paintings, drawings, etchings, sculptures etc. to his correspondents in matters of art. In the texts written to Bottari and in his own
letters there were also no reference (if not entirely marginal) to the government
of the Church, to his relationship with the three popes he served (Clement XII,
Benedict XIV and Clement XIII) or to the administration of the libraries at the
Vatican. The only relevant reference to the 'hated' Jesuits was in a letter
from Mariette of December 1758, in which he criticized a restoration of the
Pantheon promoted by them [33]. In no case did I find references to Jansenism
or religious issues.
Unlike probably what would have happened
in the previous century, although he was a man of the church, his iconographic concern
was also not to censure the nudity of the images or to dwell about the
theological appropriateness of the iconographic compositions. En passant, I would like to mention the
letters published in Volume IV in which he received requests from Pierre-Jean
Mariette (1756) and Luigi Crespi (1757) about Marcantonio Raimondi's
"lascivious" (in fact, erotic-pornographic) prints (letters with
Mariette) and Agostino Carracci and Giulio Romano (with Crespi). Despite his
Jansenism, the monsignor was not afraid to deal with French libertinism and to
let it even be known by publishing the letters on the subject.
 |
| Fig. 23) Marcantonio Raimondi, Erotic scene, after 1524. Source: Wikimedia Commons. |
Obviously, the collected and
published letters (and there were some, between the XVI and XVII centuries, mirroring
the climate of the Counter-Reformation) always reflected the atmosphere of
time, but evidently Bottari did not try to compile (both for the present and
for the past art) an anthological history of writings oriented to theological
and ecclesiastical themes.
Generally, one has the impression of
a free and tolerant man in matters of art. In the letters I did not read any hostile
criticism of works of art nor preconceived censorship, and it almost seems that
he moved in a world that he generally considered beautiful (there were instead
stronger opinions, even if never extreme, in his Dialogues above three arts of the drawing of 1754). This does not
mean that he was not able to question the established traditions of thought.
Interestingly, for example, in an exchange with Zanotti of 1758 (Tome III) he
tried to restore the dialogue between supporters of Vasari and Malvasia, if anything,
making the relief that Malvasia had not given enough merit to the Bolognese
primitive (from Vitale da Bologna to Francesco Francia). It has already been
said that he was of Tuscan extraction (very evident in the choice of the
writings of the Renaissance period, for example in the first part of the Raccolta published in 1754), but his
interest was evident not only for the Carraccis in Bologna, typical in the age
of Roman classicism and during the papacy of Benedict XIV Lambertini, but also for
the developments of art in Paris and in the Venetian world (Venice and
Bergamo).
This impression of freedom is
confirmed by the fact that Bottari decided (as we will see more carefully
later) to publish in his collection the biographies of Giuseppe Maria Crespi
(1665-1747) and Marco Benefial (1684-1764), in the form of two pseudo-letters
containing the description of their life and work, included in Tome II and Tome
V. Well, what was common to both artists was the harshness of their
relationship with the Accademia
Clementina in Bologna and the Accademia
di San Luca in Rome respectively. In short, Giovanni Gaetano wanted to
include also testimonies about artists whom we would call today outsiders.
 |
| Fig. 24) On the left: Mariette's letter to the authors of the Gazette littéraire de l'Europe on November 4, 1764 (source: https://books.google.fr/books?id=lchMAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr#v=twopage&q&f=false). On the right: The same letter published by Bottari in Volume V of the Collection (1766). Source: https://archive.org/details/raccoltadilette05bottgoog/page/n315. |
Another proof of intellectual
freedom concerned the publication of a letter by Pier-Jean Mariette to the
"Authors of the Gazette littéraire
de l'Europe" in Volume V of the 1766 Collection. It was a text already
published in France in 1764, which documented a public polemic between two
long-standing friends of Bottari: Mariette on one side and Giovanni Battista
Piranesi (1720-1778) on the other. Well, Bottari was not afraid to translate that
text, and to make it accessible to the Italian-speaking public. We know however
from Lola Kantor-Kazovsky that Bottari had cleaned up other pieces of his
correspondence with Mariette, softening a series of very harsh statements of
the French scholar on Piranesi, thereby tempering in a hidden form the frontal
terms of the clash between his two friends [34].
 |
| Fig. 25) Pietro Labruzzi, Posthumous Portrait of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1779. Source: Wikimedia Commons. |
The only case of self-censorship
documented in the Raccolta (Tomo IV)
concerned the Carraccis. On December 24, 1758, Pierre-Jean Mariette urged
Giovanni Gaetano to publish all the letters of the Carraccis that he found in
the Vatican Library. In the footnote of that letter, Bottari wrote: "I found those notes written by the
Carraccis, without knowing by whom of the three most famous, in the Vatican
library, but they are very short, and contain nothing but strange mordacity”
[35]. Only few of them were included in the Raccolta.
What is missing in the Raccolta?
Finally, it seems to me useful to
mention what cannot be read in the Raccolta.
First of all, I found very little
about classical antiquity: it is a theme on which Bottari had actually worked
extensively in his life (writing important volumes - as we have already
mentioned - both on underground Rome and on the Capitoline Museum) and most
probably he had frequent relations both with the ecclesiastics who were taking
care of the conservation of antique works as well as with the great Roman
collectors. To be precise, the only reference in the Raccolta to classical antiquity was contained in a nucleus of a
few letters in Tome V, published in 1766 (and therefore only twelve years after
the start of the enterprise). The theme was in particular treated in a letter
by Bottari to Mariette of October 16, 1765, where he spoke of the etchings of
the engraver Giuseppe Vasi (1710-1782) for guide the Capitoline Museum [36], but also commented the publication of the
fourth volume of The Antiquities of
Herculaneum Exposed in Naples and also referred to the
archaeological-themed engravings of the English neoclassical painter Gavin
Hamilton (1723-1798). There were also some other letters exchanged between Hamilton
and the painter Ignazio Enrico Hugford (1703-1778), one of the long-lasting
supporters of the Raccolta. The just
mentioned publication of Mariette's text in controversy with Piranesi was also
of that year.
 |
| Fig. 26) The frontispiece of Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte, 1757. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
In short, Tome V offered a glimpse,
albeit limited, about the strengthening of early neoclassicism in Rome and of
the difficulties it was nevertheless encountering. If we consider the role
played directly by Bottari to enhance the Roman archaeological heritage on the
one hand and the spasmodic interest in the discovery of archaeology in Pompeii
and Herculaneum in those years, the evaluation of the moderns on antiquity was all
in all a theme far from being central to the collection.
Moreover, it is worth stressing that
also these exchanges of letters involved counterparts far from Rome (especially
with Mariette in Paris). There was not a single letter on how ancient monuments
and findings were preserved in Rome (for example, there was no exchange between
Bottari and Piranesi, although they were on excellent personal terms, or
between Bottari and Cardinal Albani and his circle). The fact of living in the
same city certainly cannot exclude by itself that Bottari may have received or sent
letters to them. On the other hand, most likely he made a clear difference
between the stylistic classicism of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries (at
the centre of his interest in the Raccolta)
and the original one of the ancient world, including the former and excluding
everything referring to ancient Rome.
In this regard, another important
absence (we have already said) was precisely that of letters by Anton Raphael
Mengs (1728-1779) and Johann Joachim Winckelmann. We are talking about the
major exponents of the first neoclassicism, whose impact on the aesthetics of
time was formidable. As from 1764 Winckelmann was quoted in a letter from
Mariette to Bottari (letter 238, Volume VI), but there were no texts of his. It
is not by chance that Stefano Ticozzi felt the need, in his renewed 1822 edition
of the Raccolta (Tome VI), to include
letters from both, considering their absence as truly unique.
 |
| Fig. 27) Pompeo Batoni, Self-portrait, 1773-1787. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
I also did not find any evidence (an
even more important absence) of Bottari’s exchange of letters with the artists
working in Rome. One could think, for example, of another Tuscan like Pompeo
Batoni (1708-1787), whom Bottari must have attended, even if perhaps he was too
close to the Jesuits, having worked in several of their churches, to be in his
innermost circle. Of course, Batoni (who was a real celebrity in
mid-eighteenth-century Rome) was mentioned in the collection, for example in
two different letters, respectively by the Bergamasco portraitist Bartolo
Nazari (1757) and Pier-Jean Mariette (1764), both published in Tome IV. The
only case in which the Raccolta
documented a story of Roman art concerned the exchange of letters between
Bottari and a minor painter (Giovanni Battista Ponfreni, 1715-1795) who wrote pseudo-letters
(published in Tome V) on the life of his teacher Marco Benefial (1684-1764),
who for decades had gained the reputation of enfant terrible and had just passed
away. With this exception, the absence of Roman letters (once again, even if they lived in
the same city, is it indeed possible that Bottari and the Roman artists never exchanged
letters?) does not seem fortuitous to us.
Finally, nothing can be read about
the vicissitudes of the life within the Roman papal curia (with the exception
perhaps of a lext by Crespi who intended to 'buy' his nomination as 'secret
chaplain' with a panel by Perugino to be presented as gift to the Secretary of
State in May 1751).
 |
| Fig. 28) Marco Benefial, Self-portrait, 1731. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
The role of the correspondents
The majority of Bottari's letter
exchange with his correspondents (including some very extensive letters of his)
focused on exchanges of information between experts due to the desire to
collect engravings and drawings, and therefore documented above all the taste
of the era. This was especially the case with Bottari's correspondence with
Mariette, a real bloodhound always searching for new images to be engraved
(both to include them in collections of prints to be sold to the public,
according to the model inaugurated by Crozat, or to keep them in his own
collection, or to disseminate Italian works of art in French art circles). With
Antonio Maria Zanotti the Elder, instead, the focus of the information exchange
became merits and shortcomings of the authors of art literature: Vasari, Malvasia,
Orlandi and many others. The reading and assessment of art writings was, in
short, an important part of the time spent both by Bottari and his
correspondents on artistic issues.
And yet the role of the
correspondents in the Raccolta was
actually much higher than that of 'simple' senders or recipients of the 158
letters. The number of texts referable to them (in the sense that they were
those who found the letters both in their personal correspondence and in local
archives and libraries and passed them to Giovanni Gaetano) was very high. In
this way they have helped to create a very thick epistolary tissue, beyond
bilateral relations.
Bottari knew indirectly Mariette
thanks to the latter's relations with the Tuscan world of art already twenty
years earlier, starting with the correspondence between Mariette and Francesco Niccolò Maria Gabburri as early as 1731. At first Giovanni Gaetano had probably
access to the correspondence of Gabburri (he published more than 50 letters
referable to him in Tome II, including many letters not only of Mariette, but
of the Venetian Antonio Maria Zannetti the Elder, of the Englishman John
Molesworth, of the French Pierre Crozat and many others). The direct
correspondence with Mariette and Crespi started most probably around 1750, when
the Raccolta was in preparation, and was
probably motivated at the beginning by the search for information on the life
and works of the artists.
 |
| Fig. 29) Rosalba Carriera, Self-portrait with her sister's portrait, 1715. Source: Wikimedia Commons. |
If the origins of the Raccolta were Tuscan and dated back to the early part of the
thirties of the eighteenth century, Bottari's relationship with Mariette since
the fifties was fundamental. For decades, the French had been in contact not
only (and obviously) with Parisian circles (Crozat, but also the Count of Caylus), but also with the Florentines, Romans, Venetians and Bolognese, and was
very generous in making his letters available to Giovanni Gaetano. To quote
some valuable pieces in the Raccolta, it belonged to the correspondence of Mariette, for example, the
beautiful letters sent to him by the Venetian painter Rosalba Carriera since
1722 (Tome IV) and the reflections he sent to the Count of Caylus in 1730 on
Leonardo da Vinci (Tome II). The latter, however, was actually a text already
published in Paris in the Gazette
littéraire de l'Europe, of which Bottari therefore provided a French
translation. Most improbably the very ample correspondence with Mariette was all
in an impeccable Italian: Giovanni Gaetano translated it, in this way also
providing a transfer function between linguistic areas.
Also important was the
Bottari-Crespi-Zanotti triangle, i.e. the relationship with the Bolognese Luigi
Crespi, twenty years younger than Giovanni Gaetano, and the equally Bologna-based Giampietro Zanotti
(1674-1765) who, on the other hand, was twenty years older than him and entered
into the Raccolta already at an old age, continuing to correspond by letter
with him almost until his death, which came at ninety-one years in 1764 (the
last letters appeared in Volume VI and dated back to that year). The triangle
therefore documented the capacity for dialogue between exponents of three
generations. We have just said how in 1751 Crespi learned about the project for
the publication of the collection; he then informed the old Zanotti (who was
already a correspondent of Gabburri in the 1730s), being well aware of the
latter’s passion for art literature. If at the beginning the elderly author of
the History of the Clementine Academy
seemed a little reserved, his correspondence soon became the most explicit in
terms of expressions of opinions and feelings in terms of artistic taste. As
far as art literature in particular is concerned, Bottari and Zanotti were
among the major supporters of Crespi’s project to complete, with a new tome,
Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice: note
that the two frequently exchanged views about Crespi in years in which there was
no longer evidence of a correspondence relationship between Bottari and the
latter.
 |
| Fig. 30) Simone Elia, Facade of the Carrara Academy, Bergamo, 1810. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
The role of the Count Giacomo
Carrara (founder of the homonymous Academy in Bergamo) was extremely important
starting from Tome III (1759), when - after a trip to Rome in 1758 - he donated
to Giovanni Gaetano about twenty letters covering the period 1660-1730 and all
centred on the decoration of the Basilica of S. Maria Maggiore in Bergamo (and
in particular on the relationship between the fresco painters and the "Presidents of the Greater Mercy"; in
Tome IV (1764) a hundred letters followed on the interaction between Bergamo,
Venice (to which Bergamo belonged) and all the art centres of northern Italy. From
the collection of letters of Carrara, so generously made available to Bottari,
we get a story of Bergamo painting in letters over a century, starting from about
1660.
The philological accuracy and the deontological correctness of Bottari
It goes without saying that Bottari
reflected the way of working of the scholars of his time, much less tied to compliance
with criteria of philological accuracy and ethical correctness than today.
On the first topic, Giovanna Perini gave
an important contribution [37]: the academic of the Crusca and curator of a
version of the dictionary of the Italian language always exercised - as editor
of the letters - a function of grammatical-syntactic correction, even on the punctuation
of the texts he published, not only on those of authors of the past (who wrote
in an old Italian), but even of contemporaries like Luigi Crespi. And yet
Giovanni Gaetano went further. Ms Perini compared the letters in the Raccolta with two sets of originals: on
the one hand with the texts in the manuscript A IV 16 of the library of Cassano
del Pozzo conserved in the Vatican Library and on the other hand with other manuscripts
collected by Carlo Piancastelli (1867-1938) in Forlì. The result was to
discover not only language corrections, but also deletions of some important
incisions, to the point of changing the sense of the sentence. Ms Perini was
therefore in agreement with the nineteenth-century judgment of Pierre De Nolhac
(1859-1936), according to whom Bottari would have been a great "tamer"
of texts.
This judgment was indirectly
confirmed by Mariette in a second case, when he read the long biographical text
on the life of Marco Benefial written by Ponfreni, which opened Tome V: "I read with singular pleasure the letter
opening the collection. It made me better know Marco Benefial. I would wish us
to have many painters' lives written like this. This live is filled with
massive teachings, and, as far as I can understand, someone whose excellent pen
I know, has put a hand on it” [38]. Evidently, that someone can only be Bottari
himself.
 |
| Fig. 31) Giuseppe Ghezzi, Volta of the Scarlatti Chapel, 1684. Rome, San Giovanni dei Fiorentini. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
A third case was identified by
Francesco Grisolia in a study on the correspondence of Father Sebastiano Resta
(1635-1714). Many letters of Resta were published in the second and third tomes
of the Raccolta in 1757 and 1759. On
22 February 1696 Resta wrote to the painter Giuseppe Ghezzi (1634-1721) on Leonardesque
questions. The scholar has discovered that the letter published by Bottari (No.
217 of Tome III) was actually a combination of two different missives. This
text, in the nineteenth century, would be hardly contested by scholars because
of errors on the life of Leonardo. And yet, those mistakes were mainly due to
the fusion of the two texts by Giovanni Gaetano. Here is what Grisolia writes:
"In light of the above, the
aforementioned compendium that Bottari made of it appears completely out of
context if extrapolated from the whole correspondence and even more from the
many considerations of Resta” [39].
On the second theme (that of
deontology) I would like here to refer to two cases that seem exemplary to me.
In many situations Bottari warned
readers that the letters he published had already been included in XVI or XVII century
volumes available only in libraries. And yet, at times, he did not provide to
communicate the information to the reader, creating the illusion that he was
confronted with an absolute novelty. For example, Bottari published a letter
from Palladio to Vincenzo Arnaldi, dated February 23, 1565. Located at the
beginning of Tome IV, the letter was placed there to attract the interest of
buyers (who, as already explained, were always receiving the first pages of the books in advance thanks to
the subscription mechanism). As we will see, however, the text had already been
published the year before by architect Tommaso Temanza in his Life of Andrea Palladio, egregious architect
from Vicenza. The letter was in those years in possession of the Arnaldi
heirs, and in particular of the architectural scholar Enea Arnaldi (1716-1794),
who was in contact with both. It is not impossible that Arnaldi provided copies
of the letter to both Giovanni Gaetano and Tommaso; it is, however, unlikely that Bottari did not
know about the publication made the year before by one of his most important
correspondents.
 |
| Fig. 32) Tommaso Temanza and Giannantonio Selva, Chiesa della Maddalena, Venice, 1763-1790 Source: Wikimedia Commons |
The second example concerned the
letters sent by Mariette to Gabburri, and published in Tome II in 1757. As was
said, Bottari discovered those letters in Florentine archives, but probably
also informed immediately Mariette of that detection. The fact is that Giovanni
Gaetano published only in 1764 a letter from Mariette (received by him on May
30, 1756 and therefore before the publication of Volume II) in which the latter
appealed for the (not achieved) elimination of some of his texts for he was fearing to lose prestige in Italy due to them. Bottari had therefore bothered to warn him about the incumbent publication, but had ignored his prayer not to include some of those letters in the Raccolta.
End of Part One
Go to Part Two (Forthcoming)
NOTES
[2] The 1754 version of the Raccolta is fully available at
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t40s19s1q;view=1up;seq=5.
[3] See Perini, Giovanna - The letters of the artists from communication tool, to document, to heirloom (quoted)
[4] See the item Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, edited by Giuseppe Pignatelli in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Biographical Dictionary of Italians - 1971):
[3] See Perini, Giovanna - The letters of the artists from communication tool, to document, to heirloom (quoted)
[4] See the item Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, edited by Giuseppe Pignatelli in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Biographical Dictionary of Italians - 1971):
http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-gaetano-bottari_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/
[5] Giuseppe Pignatelli (dead in 2013) was the historical editor in chief of the Biographical Dictionary of Italians, and active at the Treccani publishing house from the sixties of the last century to the beginning of the new millennium. He did not author any major essay. However, he dealt with the biography of many Italian clerics between the seventeenth and eight hundred, publishing in the Dictionary the items on Adriano Bernareggi, Andrea Bianchini, Francesco Boaretti, Spiridione Berioli, Giuseppe Bertieri, Luigi Biraghi, Alessandro Borgia, Carlo Borgo, Giuseppe Boero, Francesco Bonacchi, Bonaventura da Coccaglio, Giuseppe Bofondi, Antonio Maria Borromeo, Giovanni Carlo Boschi, Cesare Brancodoro, Giuseppe Mario Brocchi, Francesco Burgio, Innocenzo Buontempi, Alessandro Burgos, Alessandro Busca, Cesare Calini, Antonio Campanella, Giovanni Battista Caprara Montecuccoli, Raimondo Cecchetti, Giuseppe Cernitori, Giacinto Cerutti, Antonio Cingari, Branciforte Colonna, Ermanno Domenico Cristianopulo, Luigi Cuccagni, Giovanni Paolo Dolfin, Antonio Dugnani, Giovanni Marchetti. He was also the author of the items on other representatives of the Italian conservative world as Joseph de Maistre. See also: Pignatelli, Giuseppe - The eighteenth-century origins of reactionary Catholicism: the anti-Jansenist polemic of the "Ecclesiastical Journal" of Rome, in Studi Storici: quarterly magazine, 1970, Rome, Gramsci Institute, pp. 755-782; Pignatelli, Giuseppe - Aspects of Catholic Propaganda in Rome from Pius VI to Leo XII, Rome, Institute for the History of the Italian Risorgimento, 1974.
[6] Consider for example the recent studies on Winckelmann in Italy, reviewed on this blog. Another relevant essay is: Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment: Art, Science, and Spirituality, edited by Rebecca Messbarger, Christopher Johns, Philip Gavitt, 2017.
[7] Palozzi, Romana - Mons. Giovanni Bottari e il circolo dei giansenisti romani (Mons. Giovanni Bottari and the circle of Roman Jansenists). In: ‘Annali della R. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Lettere, Storia e Filosofia”, Series II, Vol. 10, No. 1/2 (1941), pp. 70-90. See:
[5] Giuseppe Pignatelli (dead in 2013) was the historical editor in chief of the Biographical Dictionary of Italians, and active at the Treccani publishing house from the sixties of the last century to the beginning of the new millennium. He did not author any major essay. However, he dealt with the biography of many Italian clerics between the seventeenth and eight hundred, publishing in the Dictionary the items on Adriano Bernareggi, Andrea Bianchini, Francesco Boaretti, Spiridione Berioli, Giuseppe Bertieri, Luigi Biraghi, Alessandro Borgia, Carlo Borgo, Giuseppe Boero, Francesco Bonacchi, Bonaventura da Coccaglio, Giuseppe Bofondi, Antonio Maria Borromeo, Giovanni Carlo Boschi, Cesare Brancodoro, Giuseppe Mario Brocchi, Francesco Burgio, Innocenzo Buontempi, Alessandro Burgos, Alessandro Busca, Cesare Calini, Antonio Campanella, Giovanni Battista Caprara Montecuccoli, Raimondo Cecchetti, Giuseppe Cernitori, Giacinto Cerutti, Antonio Cingari, Branciforte Colonna, Ermanno Domenico Cristianopulo, Luigi Cuccagni, Giovanni Paolo Dolfin, Antonio Dugnani, Giovanni Marchetti. He was also the author of the items on other representatives of the Italian conservative world as Joseph de Maistre. See also: Pignatelli, Giuseppe - The eighteenth-century origins of reactionary Catholicism: the anti-Jansenist polemic of the "Ecclesiastical Journal" of Rome, in Studi Storici: quarterly magazine, 1970, Rome, Gramsci Institute, pp. 755-782; Pignatelli, Giuseppe - Aspects of Catholic Propaganda in Rome from Pius VI to Leo XII, Rome, Institute for the History of the Italian Risorgimento, 1974.
[6] Consider for example the recent studies on Winckelmann in Italy, reviewed on this blog. Another relevant essay is: Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment: Art, Science, and Spirituality, edited by Rebecca Messbarger, Christopher Johns, Philip Gavitt, 2017.
[7] Palozzi, Romana - Mons. Giovanni Bottari e il circolo dei giansenisti romani (Mons. Giovanni Bottari and the circle of Roman Jansenists). In: ‘Annali della R. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Lettere, Storia e Filosofia”, Series II, Vol. 10, No. 1/2 (1941), pp. 70-90. See:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24298981?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
[8] Palozzi, Romana - Mons. Giovanni Bottari e il circolo dei giansenisti romani (quoted), p. 81
[9] Palozzi, Romana - Mons. Giovanni Bottari e il circolo dei giansenisti romani (quoted), p. 86
[10] See:
[8] Palozzi, Romana - Mons. Giovanni Bottari e il circolo dei giansenisti romani (quoted), p. 81
[9] Palozzi, Romana - Mons. Giovanni Bottari e il circolo dei giansenisti romani (quoted), p. 86
[10] See:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t40s19s1q;view=1up;seq=12
[12] The first tome of 1757 is available at the address
[12] The first tome of 1757 is available at the address
https://archive.org/details/raccoltadiletter01bott/page/n5.
[13] On Pagliarini see: Marcelli, Stefano - The Pagliarinis: a family of booksellers, publishers and printers in eighteenth-century Rome. Viceries and typographical Annals, Rome, La Sapienza University. The text is available at the address:
[13] On Pagliarini see: Marcelli, Stefano - The Pagliarinis: a family of booksellers, publishers and printers in eighteenth-century Rome. Viceries and typographical Annals, Rome, La Sapienza University. The text is available at the address:
https://iris.uniroma1.it/retrieve/handle/11573/917924/551038/Tesi%20Dottorato%20Stefano%20Marcelli.pdf
[14] See item Pagliarini in the Italian Biographical Dictionary, by Saverio Franchi (2014). The entry is available at the address:
[14] See item Pagliarini in the Italian Biographical Dictionary, by Saverio Franchi (2014). The entry is available at the address:
http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/pagliarini_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
[15] The second tome in the version with autonomous introduction (see pages viii-ix) is completely available at the address
[15] The second tome in the version with autonomous introduction (see pages viii-ix) is completely available at the address
https://books.google.it/books?id=7tNOAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it#v=onepage&q&f=false
[16] The second tome in the version without an autonomous introduction is completely available at the address
[16] The second tome in the version without an autonomous introduction is completely available at the address
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t8hd9cn7n;view=1up;seq=5
[17] The third tome is completely available at the address
[17] The third tome is completely available at the address
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t9g462003;view=1up;seq=5
[18] The fourth tome is completely available at the address
[18] The fourth tome is completely available at the address
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t76t2114d;view=1up;seq=5
[19] The fifth tome is completely available at the address
[19] The fifth tome is completely available at the address
https://archive.org/details/raccoltadilette05bottgoog/page/n5
[20] The sixth tome is completely available at the address
[20] The sixth tome is completely available at the address
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t4wh44047;view=1up;seq=5
[20 bis] Prosperi Valenti Rodino' Simonetta, Le lettere di Luigi Crespi e Giovanni Gaetano Bottari nella Biblioteca Corsiniana, in Paragone arte, n.407, XXXV 1984, pp.22-55. Quotation at page 42.
[21] The seventh tome is completely available at the address
[20 bis] Prosperi Valenti Rodino' Simonetta, Le lettere di Luigi Crespi e Giovanni Gaetano Bottari nella Biblioteca Corsiniana, in Paragone arte, n.407, XXXV 1984, pp.22-55. Quotation at page 42.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t9r22gt03;view=1up;seq=5
[22] Bianconi had in fact already clashed with Crespi in Dresden and criticized him for years. For example, he crushed the merits of the continuation by Crespi of the continuation of Felsina Pittrice, in eight letters in which he denounced Luigi Crespi at the Accademia Clementina of Bologna for a series of improprieties and inaccuracies (Otto lettere inedite riguardanti il così detto terzo tomo della Felsina Pittrice composto dal Canonico Luigi Crespi - Eight unpublished letters concerning the said third volume of the Felsina Pittrice composed by the Canon Luigi Crespi).
[23] See:
[22] Bianconi had in fact already clashed with Crespi in Dresden and criticized him for years. For example, he crushed the merits of the continuation by Crespi of the continuation of Felsina Pittrice, in eight letters in which he denounced Luigi Crespi at the Accademia Clementina of Bologna for a series of improprieties and inaccuracies (Otto lettere inedite riguardanti il così detto terzo tomo della Felsina Pittrice composto dal Canonico Luigi Crespi - Eight unpublished letters concerning the said third volume of the Felsina Pittrice composed by the Canon Luigi Crespi).
[23] See:
https://books.google.de/books?id=Rw0XAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA313&lpg=PA313&dq=commissione+al+sig.+Canonico,+o+almeno+la+permissione+di+mettere+in+questa+messe+la+sua+falce&source=bl&ots=6LrOVSYMFR&sig=ACfU3U2MiHOhTWADJs6J45DB8UsNNzpCCg&hl=it&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwip7vrAo4jgAhUJPFAKHZlKAqUQ6AEwAnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=commissione%20al%20sig.%20Canonico%2C%20o%20almeno%20la%20permissione%20di%20mettere%20in%20questa%20messe%20la%20sua%20falce&f=false
[23 bis] Giovanna Perini Folesani, Luigi Crespi storiografo, mercante e artista attraverso l'epistolario, Florence, Leo S. Olschki, 2019.
[23 ter] Prosperi Valenti Rodino' Simonetta, Le lettere di Luigi Crespi e Giovanni Gaetano Bottari nella Biblioteca Corsiniana, quoted, pp. 41-42
[24] See:
[23 bis] Giovanna Perini Folesani, Luigi Crespi storiografo, mercante e artista attraverso l'epistolario, Florence, Leo S. Olschki, 2019.
[23 ter] Prosperi Valenti Rodino' Simonetta, Le lettere di Luigi Crespi e Giovanni Gaetano Bottari nella Biblioteca Corsiniana, quoted, pp. 41-42
https://archive.org/details/raccoltadilette05bottgoog/page/n307
[24 bis] Prosperi Valenti Rodino' Simonetta, Le lettere di Luigi Crespi e Giovanni Gaetano Bottari nella Biblioteca Corsiniana, quoted, p. 43
[25] See:
[24 bis] Prosperi Valenti Rodino' Simonetta, Le lettere di Luigi Crespi e Giovanni Gaetano Bottari nella Biblioteca Corsiniana, quoted, p. 43
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t9r22gt03;view=1up;seq=7;size=150
[26] Rolfi Ožvald, Serenella, Lettere ad un amico (quoted), p. 481
[27] Bianconi, Giovanni Ludovico - Eulogy of Monsignor Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, in "Roman Anthology", I (1775), 8, pp. 57-61
[28] Bianconi, Giovanni Ludovico - Eulogy of Monsignor Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, p.58
[29] Bianconi, Giovanni Ludovico - Eulogy of Monsignor Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, p.59
[30] See: https://rivisteweb.it/doi/10.7374/91038
[26] Rolfi Ožvald, Serenella, Lettere ad un amico (quoted), p. 481
[27] Bianconi, Giovanni Ludovico - Eulogy of Monsignor Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, in "Roman Anthology", I (1775), 8, pp. 57-61
[28] Bianconi, Giovanni Ludovico - Eulogy of Monsignor Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, p.58
[29] Bianconi, Giovanni Ludovico - Eulogy of Monsignor Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, p.59
[30] See: https://rivisteweb.it/doi/10.7374/91038
[31] All eight volumes of the Ticozzi edition are available at https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000168657.
[32] Schlosser, Letteratura artistica, Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1964, 706 pages. Quotation on page 507.
[33] See: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t76t2114d;view=1up;seq=351
[34] Kantor-Kazovsky, Lola - Pierre Jean Mariette and Piranesi: The Controversy Reconsidered.
Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 4, The Serpent and the Stylus: Essays on G. B. Piranesi (2006), pages 149-168. See: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4238471?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents .
[35] See: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t76t2114d;view=1up;seq=349
[36] See: https://archive.org/details/raccoltadilette05bottgoog/page/n303
[37] Perini, Giovanna – Le lettere degli artisti da strumento di comunicazione, a documento, a cimelio (quoted), pp. 173-
[38] See: https://archive.org/details/raccoltadilette05bottgoog/page/n300
[39] Grisolia, Francesco - Su Leonardo e i cartoni della Sant’Anna tra Resta, Ghezzi, Bellori e Bottari, 2018. See:
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento