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Giovanna Perini Folesani
Luigi Crespi storiografo, mercante e artista attraverso l’epistolario
[Luigi Crespi as an Historiographer, Art Dealer and Artist Through his Correspondence]
Florence, Leo S. Olschki, 2019
Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro. Part Two
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| Luigi Crespi, The Third Tome of the Felsina Pittrice, Rome, Marco Pagliarini, 1769 Source : https://books.google.it/books? id=8mQGAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r& cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false |
ABOUT GIOVANNA PERINI FOLESANI SEE IN THIS
BLOG: Giovanna Perini Folesani, Luigi Crespi as an Historiographer, Art Dealer
and Artist Through his Correspondence (Part One
and Two);
Sandra Costa, Giovanna Perini Folesani, The
Wise and the Ignorant - The Dialogue of the Public with Art (16th-18th Century);
Giovanna Perini, The
Writings of the Carraccis. Ludovico, Annibale, Agostino, Antonio, Giovanni
Antonio; Roger de Piles, Dialogue on Colouring, Edited by Giovanna Perini
Folesani and Sandra Costa (Part One
and Two);
Giovanna Perini Folesani, Sir
Joshua Reynolds in Italy (1750-1752). Passage to Tuscany. The 201 a 10 Notebook
of the British Museum
The Third Tome of the Felsina Pittrice
We have seen that the idea of a Third Tome of
Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice was born as an evolution of Crespi's proposal to Bottari (1753) to write a series of biographies in the
form of a letter (on the model of the biography he had written about his father
Giuseppe Maria) on artists not treated by Malvasia himself in his text and by Zanotti in the History of the Clementine Academy (1739).
The latter had written biographies of
artists belonging to the Academy, founded in 1710, and had therefore omitted
those who had died between Felsina’s
release (1678) and that date, as well as all those who had not been Clementine
academics. Drifting through ups and downs during the 1750s, the project took
shape in the form of the editing of an autonomous volume between 1759 and 1762.
Crespi wrote to the heirs of many artists, or at least to many of those who
knew them, to have first-hand accounts of their biographies. In 1761, indeed,
the book was seemingly ready to be brought out, completed by a series of
engravings made by the author. In reality, the letters to Bottari and the
preparatory documents of the volume present in Bologna’s Archiginnasio Library testify only how many times Luigi lied to the
poor Tuscan monsignor. Nevertheless, the latter was still striving to favour
his friend, first of all finding a printer, i.e. Marco Pagliarini, who was also
the publisher of the Raccolta di lettere,
and then underlining, in each volume of the same Raccolta, that the 'new'
Felsina was on its way. In 1767, however, there was some headway, probably because
another Bolognese scholar of the time, Marcello Oretti, was heading towards a very similar
project. Crespi managed to obtain permission from Charles Emmanuel
III of Savoy, king of Sardinia, to dedicate the work to him. Obviously, the name
was very prestigious (the Piedmonts ruler was also the dedicatee of Vasari's Lives in the Bottari edition of
1759-1760). In reality the story seems almost accidental: Luigi writes to the
Count of Groscavallo proposing him the purchase of artworks on behalf of Carlo
Emanuele, and the Count in turn responded negatively, without leaving any
opening [7]. Crespi however wrote again, this time to ask the permission to
dedicate his work to him, receiving an agreement [8]. Bottari himself acted as
corrector of Luigi's drafts, which were then passed to Pagliarini.
Unfortunately we have no trace of their mutual correspondence between 1766 and
1769, but it is just evident that the perplexities of the Florentine monsignor
must have been mounting as much as the end of the work was approaching. Thus,
for example, Crespi complained that Giovanni Gaetano did not include an ‘Addendum’, an evidently very polemical text against the Guide of Bologna by Carlo Bianconi (1766), the report of the trip
to Italy by Charles-Nicolas Cochin and the Treaty of painting by Jonathan Richardson. Eventually, Bottari did not add anything to Crespi's text. The fact remains
that the final product was an obvious example of sloppiness, both in the
iconographic apparatus and in the contents. Bottari, who had spent eight years
praising the idea in his Raccolta,
decided to remain totally silent about its publication.
Sloppiness, it was said. Meanwhile, we could start
with the title, evidently changed during the printing process, so that some
specimens are named "Felsina
Pittrice - Lives of the Bolognese painters, Tome Third" and others
"Lives of the Bolognese painters not
described in the Felsina Pittrice" (p. 290).
In terms of content, on the other hand, the
first thing to say is that the criterion by which Crespi presented his research
is not easy to grasp. There was no alphabetical, but not even a precise
chronological order: if anything, the author reasoned by schools, albeit with questionable
chains of master-pupil filiation. What was missing was "a stylistic and structural uniformity of the
various entries, oscillating between a pure and simple reference to Zanotti or
to Malvasia or to [Father Pellegrino Orlandi’s] Abecedario, and real biographies with an ambitious an rhetorical
overture [...] The extension of the
single item then did not depend at all on a precise and rigorous hierarchical
and «meritocratic» choice based on the objective quality of the artist, nor was it
necessarily bound to the quantity of materials found, but was essentially based
on the author's «caprice»” (p. 114 ).
Suffice it to say that the life of his father, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, is 31
pages long and that of Donato Creti only two and a half. Not to mention a few clearly
intended absences (even if Crespi, at the end of the book, referred to a fourth
tome for those who were not mentioned in the present). And again: "anyone who had read Malvasia could check how
the Lives of Angelo Michele Colonna and Agostino Mitelli were simply an
abbreviated and sloppy rewriting of Malvasia, while other Lives (those of
Giovanni Viani, Giuseppe Roli or Lorenzo Pasinelli, for example) were the fruit
of a similar operation carried out, this time, against the pages of Zanotti"
(ibidem).
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| Luigi Crespi, The Third Tome of the Felsina Pittrice, Portrait of Carlo Cesare Malvasia Source : https://books.google.it/books? id=8mQGAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r& cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false |
But the most striking element, the one that
really must have condemned Crespi’s Felsina to oblivion, is the iconographic
apparatus, or the forty-four off-text engravings containing the portraits of
the art creators. When Crespi sent from Rome some "advanced copies" of
the tome to the Count of Groscavallo to be presented to Carlo Emanuele III, the
reaction was as follows (May 1769): "I
was therefore greatly displeased seeing the plates of the badly drawn and
poorly carved portraits, so that they do a great harm to your beautiful work,
and I cannot understand how a person of as much intelligence as Your Lordship may
be induced to display them to the public. I have therefore deferred the
presentation of your work to His Majesty, since, as he is very keen on matters
of drawing, he would certainly not have liked this intaglio. I would therefore
feel that your Lordship would send me eight loose specimens without portraits, so
that I could have them tie here by the Court Bookbinder and I would send back
to your Lordship all those whom I have here in the box, so that you would be
able to do what you may prefer with them” (pp. 121-122). The work that was
deemed to consecrate Crespi as Malvasia’s heir was rejected without even being
presented to the dedicatee (then, in reality, all issues were solved, but
certainly in a heavy climate). Comments on the ugliness of the images became a
common place, underlined with less or more vehemence, depending on who expressed
them: so, for example, according to some very mean remarks, allegedly mothers would
even show Crespi's portraits to their own children, when they had been naughty,
to give them a little scare.
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| Luigi Crespi. The Third Tome of the Felsina Pittrice. Portrait of Giovanni Enrico Haffner Source : https://books.google.it/books? id=8mQGAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r& cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false |
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| Luigi Crespi. The Third Tome of the Felsina Pittrice. Portrait of Domenico Maria Canuti Source : https://books.google.it/books? id=8mQGAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r& cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false |
It should be said briefly, at this point, that
Perini Folesani did not fail to emphasize Crespi's technical deficiencies and even
pointed out that “the strange tangle of
lines that appears in the lower center in the frame of all 44 portraits is not
any decorative fancy, but precisely the monogram LC [Luigi Crespi] with
intertwined cursive letters, printed on the contrary due [...] to Crespi’s technical
inability to reproduce accurately a mirror-like inverted design, so as to neutralise
the left-right transposition produced when printing a matrix" (p.
293). However, she gave her best in order to attempt (in most cases
successfully) to identify the iconographic sources of the individual portraits.
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| Luigi Crespi. The Third Tome of the Felsina Pittrice. Portrait of Giovanni Maria Crespi Source : https://books.google.it/books? id=8mQGAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r& cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false |
It has been said of Bottari’s silence. In fact, probably in this period he decided to interrupt his correspondence with Crespi. But many of the judgments expressed by the other correspondents of the Bolognese canon were also lukewarm. And here we need to take a step back chronologically and talk briefly about them.
Crespi’s
correspondents
The collaboration with Monsignor Bottari for
the collection of letters ensured Crespi visibility in the Italian and
international scholarly world. We know very little about his letter exchanges
outside Italy, given that the correspondence with Mariette (which must have been there) is not witnessed
in the Archiginnasio. As far as Italy
is concerned, on the other hand, there is evidence that Luigi maintained
epistolary relations with local scholars for a long time; almost all the
correspondence and the relative friendships alike, however, were interrupted
due to disagreements that occurred during the work. On one thing, however, we
can be certain: Crespi proposed to all his correspondents the direct purchase
or brokerage for the purpose of selling the artworks of the father and other
authors, as well as books, prints and coins. He then asked many to intercede in
order to obtain pictorial commissions. Count Carrara in Bergamo (1714-1796), Innocenzo Ansaldi in Pescia (1734-1816), Tommaso
Francesco Bernardi in Lucca, Carlo Giuseppe Ratti in Genoa (1737-1795) are all
figures that should not be underestimated, at least because, in most cases,
they also constituted the information network underlying the drafting of Lanzi's Storia pittorica in the 1795-1796 version (and clearly, the comparison of how this
network was used by Crespi and Lanzi is all at the former’s disfavour).
I've already talked about it extensively in
other reviews. However, I would like to focus on the figure of Ratti, whose
correspondence with Crespi was actually very short, most likely because the
latter did not share the enthusiasm for Mengs of the former. Ratti, who in
Genoa had updated the lives of local architects written by Soprani, had
proposed to Crespi since his first letter to draft a series of pictorial
letters in order to refute the errors contained in Charles-Nicholas Cochin's Journey to Italy (1758 ), one of the most successful
texts among the French visitors who made the Grand Tour (pp. 117-118). But the
real problem is that Cochin, more generally, was a prominent figure of the Academie Royale de peinture et sculpture,
or of the Academy which, on these dates, was in fact dictating taste throughout
Europe. It has been said that Bottari essentially tried to quash any form of
controversy against the French academic; and in reality very soon Resta and Crespi
stopped planning 'pictorial letters' against the French, turning to a more
ambitious project, promoted by Crespi. They turned to the possible drafting of
a series of local artistic guides which, according to pre-established criteria,
would "map" the local artistic heritage in areas normally neglected
by (Italian and foreign) travellers. Luigi therefore turned to Baronto Tolomei
for the writing of a guide of Pistoia, to Tommaso Francesco Bernardi for that
of Lucca, to Andrea Zannoni for Faenza, to Michelarcangelo Dolci for Urbino, to
Innocenzo Ansaldi for Pescia. It is on this project that Perini
Folesani showed herself to be more lenient towards the canon: "Crespi's project [...] was certainly ambitious and intelligent: it
was basically a matter of systematically filling the gaps of Italian artistic
topography (that is, describing even minor centres, which still lacked a
reputed guide, as well as the accounts of illustrious travellers), which meant
both contesting credibility and reducing commercial space of the often
imprecise and superficial guides, always forcibly rapid, of foreign travellers.
Crespi wanted to provide an adequate, pragmatic and positive response to
overcome the initial, purely negative phase of satire or indignant criticism,
sometimes even specious and mean, sometimes actually motivated" (p.
160). I will be sincere: I do not know if Crespi really had this project in
mind, and in particular the overcoming of a ‘deprecative phase’ for the benefit
of a more ‘constructive’ step. It seems to me that his writings, in fact,
contradicted the intention. And then one should add that the canon maintained
correspondence partly because he was convinced of being the natural heir of
Bottari and partly because he was trying to stay up to date on sales
opportunities or on possible commissions. The fact remains, that of all the
guides requested, the only one to be published (by Crespi, without the author's
knowledge) was that of Innocenzo Ansaldi about Pescia. Once again, if Crespi
was able to "think big" he proved (as in Dresden or as with the Third
Tome of Felsina) inadequate to carry
out his projects.
The VII Tome of the Collection of letters on painting, sculpture
and architecture
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| The frontispiece of the VII volume of the Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura, scultura ed architettura, Rome, Marco Pagliarini, 1773 Fonte: https://books.google.it/books?id=0VkGAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false |
While some of Crespi’s correspondents interrupted
their correspondence after the publication of the Felsina, others, like Tommaso Francesco Bernardi, helped him in
finding the materials for the VII Tome of the Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura, scultura ed architettura (Collection of letters on painting, sculpture and architecture),
published by Crespi in 1773. The shadows on the publication of the work are manifold
and well-known. Bottari, who had edited the previous six volumes, was now in
very precarious physical conditions. In the first part of this review we have
already talked about a letter from Luigi to the monsignor from which it follows
that the latter would have told him that he was not willing to continue
publishing other tomes. Possibly, he did it also to cut relations with Crespi
(who replied, asking him to receive his letters back to print them in an
imminent publication); the fact is that in Bergamo the count Giacomo Carrara was
planning the publication of a VII Tome, which he immediately abandoned when he
realized that the canon of Bologna was pursuing, independently, the same
project. Once again, therefore, as in the case of the biographies of the
Bolognese painters with respect to Oretti, Crespi "arrived first" and
agreed with the publisher of the first six volumes of the collection (the Roman
Pagliarini) to also print the next tome. This too, to be honest, is an almost
extraordinary fact, if we consider that Pagliarini had already suffered heavy
losses, when he published the Third Tome of the Felsina, of which only 100 of the 500 copies had been sold. The publisher,
this time, agreed with Crespi by making the latter bear the costs of the
edition and, assuming to sell the VII Tome to all the buyers of the first six,
he also hoped to return the losses suffered with the Felsina. He was wrong, because also the VII Tome proved to be a commercial
failure.
There is no doubt that the review that Giovanni
Ludovico Bianconi published on the Effemeridi
Letterarie di Roma, the
literary journal he had founded, contributed to Crespi’s umpteenth debacle. In
this short article he did not only
devastated the work ("Two pamphlets on painting to which fourteen letters by Mr. Luigi Crespi Canon of Santa Maria Maggiore of Bologna were added"- see p. 206), but also condemned
Luigi’s behaviour, as he would have done everything without Bottari's
knowledge, producing a real pirate edition, not authorized by the elderly
Monsignor. Perini pointed out that also these statements were not entirely true
(see p. 205). The fact remains that, once again, the content of the work
(despite the constant pressure from Pagliarini to fill it with more substance) was
very modest. In addition to his writings (often they were already printed
essays to which he attributed the form of a letter, or - and once again -
invectives against the Guide of Bologna by Carlo Bianconi of 1766, against
Cochin, Richardson and Bologna’s Clementine Academy), Crespi published
materials provided by Tommaso Francesco Bernardi (while he rejected some of
them) including an unpublished treatise by the Genoese Paggi (1554-1627) while
being aware (as opposed to Bernardi) that it was not the work of the painter in
question (in reality, it was the Treatise
on the Nobility of Painting by Romano Alberti, as discovered only in the
twentieth century). Why did he so? The canon did not have philological scruples:
Paggi’s Treatise had already been mentioned in Ratti’s revised edition of the Genoese Lives by Soprani. The discovery
of a writing that already had its historiographical pedigree was evidently
judged to be more 'palatable' than a modest text by an anonymous author. The
story seems to be broadly indicative of the ethics of the man.
Crespi vs. Malvasia
Coming now closer to the end, there would
remain to talk about so many other "minor" writings by Crespi
(sometimes true plagiarisms) and also of his other failed projects (such as the
publication of Baruffaldi's Lives of the
Ferrara painters). We would then have to deal more fully with the question
of his pictorial activity. In this last case, I am referring to the very recent
catalogue of the first ever retrospective exhibition held at the end of 2017 at
Palazzo Davia Bargellini in Bologna, entitled Luigi Crespi ritrattista nell’età di papa Lambertini (Luigi Crespi portraitist in the age
of Pope Lambertini), edited by Mark Gregory D'Apuzzo and Irene Graziani,
Cinisello Balsamo, Silvana editoriale, 2017.
I prefer to finish, instead, by quoting the
words that Perini Folesani wrote, comparing Malvasia (whom she has always
considered his hero) and Crespi. If I had mentioned her statement at the
beginning of this review, one would have thought that the scholar wrote a
500-page book for an 'emotional reason': she could not stand that Crespi dared to
'mud' the name of Malvasia by writing the continuation of the Felsina. Here, instead, it seems to me
that these words can serve to draw a balance, at the end of a work that
contextualized Crespi's activity within the society of the time and ended up
highlighting his limits, in terms of behaviours and lack of ethical (and also
cultural) depth. These shortcomings could not be offset by cunning, shrewdness
and a good timing in identifying potentially interesting projects:
"I
have no doubt, personally, that contrasting the figure of Luigi Crespi alongside
with that of Carlo Cesare Malvasia (despite the recurrence of the comparison in
the late-eighteenth-century artistic literature and of the proven desire for
ideal continuity sought by Crespi) is an undeserved insult to the memory of the
latter and paying too much, undue honour to the former. With seriousness and
(not always recognized but real) scruple, Malvasia used epigraphic,
historiographical and perhaps even legal sources to reconstruct the native
glories of his hometown Bologna. He developed an ad hoc original and modern
critical method, as result of a European vision of problems. He did it at the
cost of his own assets and his own tranquillity. To the contrary, Luigi Crespi
has always sought, first and foremost, his own personal benefit, in a strictly
material and economic sense, disregarding social and moral values.
We cannot mix up the
profile of a truly aristocratic man, aware of the social duties of his rank ahead
of his rights, and of a man who has always acted within (military, legal,
academic) institutions for institutions, with the aspirations of a small petty
bourgeois, satisfied with the fruits of his daily traffics, which, betraying
his friends, finally allowed him to leave his bastard offspring well, even at
the expense of his brother and nephews”(pp. 303-304).
NOTES
[7] The methods of selling paintings, books and
coins that are testified in the correspondence would deserve a separate study:
they range from documented contractual proposals to transactions based on a
pure ‘trust’ basis, i.e. only on the proposer's description of the work. In
fact, one of the simplest ways to reject Crespi's offers was very common (and
in fact it is used a lot even today): the potential 'client' declined, saying
that his house was already full of paintings, many of which were not even hanging
on the walls and therefore he did not have space for further acquisitions. As a
bibliophile, I am horrified when Daniele Farsetti wrote in 1779 that the books
that Crespi had tried to sell him (at the time Luigi was trying to get rid of
his library) were highly overrated: in particular “Lomazzo’s book has many handmade annotations, which was not explained in the
catalogue, so that Mr. Armano tells me not to want it" (p. 84). I don't
know whether the book has ended up in the Hercolani collection.
[8] The vicissitudes of the material extension
of the dedication are exemplary; the first draft, sent to Groscavallo, has remained
in Crespi’s sheets. It was so ridiculously flattering and politically
embarrassing that the Count rejected it in (many) parts. See pp. 109-111.
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