Carlo Cesare Malvasia. [The Paintings of Bologna 1686 ]. Edited by Andrea Emiliani. Part Two

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Carlo Cesare Malvasia
Le pitture di Bologna 1686

[The Paintings of Bologna 1686]

Facsimile reprint accompanied by research indexes, a bibliographic and informational commentary and an illustrated repertoire

Edited by Andrea Emiliani

Bologna, Edizioni Alfa, 1969

Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro. Part Two

Fig. 8) Ludovico Carracci, Annunciation, 1584, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale
Source: Paul Hermans via Wikimedia Commons

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France as a target

Let us take a step back and recall that Carlo Cesare Malvasia dedicated the Felsina Pittrice to none less than the Sun King. As we know very well, Malvasia was well aware that his work would receive a strong push-back from the Tuscan-Roman party; therefore, he aimed at disseminating his 'alternative narrative' in France. In short, his dedication to Louis XIV was not just flattery. Carlo Cesare had realized that the new frontier of artistic historiography, the one which was dictating taste throughout Europe, was France. His project did not succeed. Too strong was the bond unifying Roman and French classicism (in other words, displaying the France of the Sun King and Paris in particular as the heirs of the glories of ancient Rome was too attractive from a French perspective). However the Sun King did not fail to show his gratitude to Carlo Cesare by sending him a gift (a jewel with his portrait). The latter, unfortunately, was lost during the journey, so much so that (around the end of 1682) Malvasia first received a series of prints by Charles Le Brun and then a second jewel that today is held in Bologna at the Municipal Art Collections.

In the dedication of the Paintings of Bologna, Malvasia thanked Charles Le Brun (whom he defined an 'incomparable friend') for the renewed sending of prints (which therefore must have been present even in the first posting) and for the support he provided to ensure a second jewel would be delivered. Of course, all this can only be a sin of vanity. However, I would guess that Malvasia delivered a copy of his guide to Le Brun himself, for two reasons: first, it would have been a new attempt to re-propose the excellence of the Bologna school and, second, Carlo Cesare would have nurtured the ambition to let translate his work into French for the benefit of foreign travellers. Of all this, however, there is no trace; however, it would be interesting to try to find out whether a sample was sent out. For instance, one might check whether, if not the princeps of 1686, at least one or more of the eighteenth century editions can be found in the French academic circles in France (and thus in those of Descamps).

Fig. 9) Ludovico Carracci, Bargellini Altarpiece, 1588, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carracci_Ludovico_Madonna_Bargellini.jpg

The index of names: towards a new work?

In view to widen the possibilities offered to the visitor, Malvasia also drew up an index by artist, thus giving the reader the possibility of building a personalized itinerary dedicated only to some artists. The index was included in the initial pages; most notably, it was composed ‘only’ of thirty-nine names (including some ‘foreign’ artists such as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael). It is extremely interesting to read what Carlo Cesare wrote under the heading "INDEX De 'Pittori" (INDEX of the painters): "It includes, however, only those painters whose works today seem the most sought after and appreciated by the interested passenger. Information on all the others, including the time in which they flourished, and the masters from which they neatly derived, will be found in the copious Catalogue of the Bolognese Painters, which will soon be published" (p. 10). There is no doubt – in my view – that it was Malvasia's intention to complete his production precisely with a catalogue of Bolognese painters. In reality nothing of this happened, and, as far as I know, there was no allusion to this project in the residual papers of Malvasia. Carlo Cesare's last years were rather dedicated to antiquarianism. However, it must be acknowledged that, in those years, Malvasia was thinking of a third milestone of his path of artistic historiography, after the Felsina and the Paintings of Bologna. How was this catalogue due to look like? No one knows. It is possible (but extremely unlikely, in my opinion) that Carlo Cesare thought of an abecedary on the type first realized by the Bolognese Father Pellegrino Orlandi in 1704. However, the author left clues in a couple of occurrences in the text, for example, when in the introduction he was hoping "that the Bolognese can, similarly to those dazzling Decennali [Decennials], soon publish an equally well-proven Catalogue of the most ancient and distinguished authors" (p. 20). The "Decennali" in question were, obviously, the subdivision into periods that marked Filippo Baldinucci’s Notes on the Teachers of Drawing, published starting from 1681.

I believe one could take the view, at this point, that Malvasia wanted to endow Bologna with a parallel historical-critical instrument, but an alternative to the one which Florence could count on: and so, the Felsina in response to Vasari's Lives, the Paintings of Bologna vis-à-vis Francesco Bocchi’s The Beauties of the City of Florence, whose first edition dated back to 1591, but which was printed in a greatly expanded form by Giovanni Cinelli in 1677 (dates are seldomly a coincidence), and the never achieved Catalogue of Bolognese Painters, to be written in response to Baldinucci' News of the professors of design. This was conceived as an alternative text to the Tuscan one, it was said, and there is no doubt that there are parochial reasons at the base of Carlo Cesare’s action. Still, it is important to underline that it was (as much as it was published) the expression of a different way of conceiving history, based on continuity and development, in contrast with the Florentine one, which conceived historical events as sudden fractures. Taking now a very bold route for a comparison, I would dare to claim that Malvasia might today perhaps be an evolutionist, while Vasari (but above all Baldinucci) might be creationists.

Fig. 10) Agostino Carracci, Last Communion of St. Jerome, about 1591-1597, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:
Agostino_carracci_ultima_comunione_san_girolamo_pinacoteca_nazionale_bologna.png

Fig. 11) Annibale Carracci, Crucifixion with Saints, 1583, Bologna, Church of Santa Maria della Carità
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1583_
Annibale_Caracci,_Crucifixion_Santa_Maria_della_Carit%C3%A0,_Bologna.jpg

The primitives

No doubt at all, one of the characteristic elements of Malvasia’s guide is the strong presence of the primitives. In the Paintings of Bologna, as Emiliani wrote (p. XII), the artworks created before end of the fifteenth century were 350, or about 15% of all those quoted. The figure might seem low, but it should in fact be compared with many cases of seventeenth-century guides, where works of the primitives could be hardly found. From this point of view, please let me mention at least two aspects. First, the words spent on the church of Saint Apollonia in Mezzaratta (whose frescoes, or, better, what remains of them, are today preserved in Bologna’s National Art Gallery). The frescoes in the church were not described in the itineraries (the building was well outside the city walls) [7], but still recalled, and with flattering words, in the author's introduction: "but more than any other in the very capacious [church] of Mezzaratta outside Porta S. Mamolo, that is to say, representing the birth, life, death and glorification of our very loving Redeemer, (...) with drawings never thought before, and with nine new creations of two foreign artists, Christopher from Modena and Galasso from Ferrara, still disciples under the same Master. I do not need to remind you how much this work was praised: such an invention, albeit still made in such a rough century, was meaningful for the Carraccis themselves" (p.17). The other architectural ensemble deserving a similar quote was, without doubt, St. Stephen's Basilica in Bologna, also called the Seven Churches. In the (incomplete) Bolognese guides by Pietro Lamo and Francesco Cavazzoni, St. Stephen was never mentioned. Of course it is quite possible that this is due to the fact that both works were left unfinished (although in the case of Cavazzoni we are not sure). Certainly St. Stephen was, with contemporary eyes to Malvasia (but not with his own), a church of minor interest because it testified precisely the 'rough' centuries (the basilica stood on an area dedicated to the cult of Isis in Roman times and saw a real stratification of places of worship). Once again, Carlo Cesare demonstrated his attention to the continuity of artistic practice. In short, Malvasia detected and recorded what many witnesses from the end of the sixteenth century onwards saw (the paintings of the primitives), but pretended not to see. Malvasia proved to be a 'historian' like Vasari, but a different type of historian (in the sense that he proposed a different reading, as already mentioned); he took a contrary view to the one of those like Giovan Battista Armenini etc, for whom the history of art began only with Leonardo, and all what was previous was considered ridiculous. Where Armenini spoke of ‘puppets’, for example, Carlo Cesare described polyptychs (which were not yet called such) as ‘section-based’ altarpieces, with pyramidal cusps, and recorded the subjects if possible.

The overall narrative of the guide, moreover, testified the continuous shifting of the heritage exhibited to the public, with a taste-dependent replacement of the works: and therefore the ancient frescoes were first swapped with tempera on wood with a gold background, and then with oil canvases, showing how Malvasia’s Bologna was completely renovated over the centuries; so much so that the paintings of the primitives had to be sought (and Carlo Cesare did it) in the sacristies, or in the church service rooms.

A special case is that of the "miraculous Madonnas". Malvasia knew the ‘Corona di gratie’ (Crown of gracies), a manuscript with a devotional background written by Francesco Cavazzoni: a collection of sacred printed images, now preserved in the Archiginnasio library in Bologna.  Without doubt, devotion was the reason why the miraculous Madonnas are the images of the primitives that have survived best. During the demolition of old buildings, or of the overall renovation of the churches, the images of popular devotion were literally sawed away together with the wall on which they were painted, to be incorporated in the new buildings: “in the daily modernization, indeed in the total reconstruction of our most ancient buildings, therefore, they were for the most part conserved. The walls were sawed, newly embedded in very large frames and moved to the nearest Churches, and in modern buildings; whence you will be able to see them, for your talent. Please check their presence in other towns, and then inform me whether there is any other location holding more of them or any better from those times" (p. 18). For Cavazzoni, ancient images were important only as an expression of devotion; for Malvasia they were instead the empirical proof that painting in Bologna had never been discontinued in the past. Therefore, they served the aim of helping the visitors to "debunk" his age’s prejudices. 

Fig. 12) Guido Reni, Massacre of the innocents, 1611, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale
Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtPCQIX-UpkTXUV1lABjheNdOtOsSzT59mQJT0lr7iKjOwz5HGn6FFu_q2TVBTtt6eKFc1SyuYYxRnwdnMy_ATqjN3T6J3NmFxvsMjf27uQvipzhje75nafUvz_GgebZpeG3OxCMdnWrHS/s1600/Guido+Reni--Massacre+of+the+Innocents.1611.jpg via Wikimedia Commons

Fig. 13) Guido Reni, Altarpiece of the Plague, 1630, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale
Source: http://www.pinacotecabologna.beniculturali.it/it/content_page/item/312-madonna-col-bambino-in-gloria-e-i-santi-protettori-di-bologna-petronio-francesco-ignazio-francesco-saverio-procolo-e-floriano-br-pala-della-peste

Malvasia's sources

We spoke about Cavazzoni. What were Malvasia’s other sources? An overwhelming role was played, without doubt, by the Bologna perlustrata (Patrolled Bologna) of Antonio di Paolo Masini (1602-1692), published in 1666. Malvasia knew Masini personally, and had already had the opportunity to make extensive use of his work in the Felsina Pittrice. The Patrolled Bologna, however, was not an artistic guide, but a collection of liturgical material incremented with news about history and art. In short, it is clear that Carlo Cesare used Masini's repertoire to double-check the results of his own ocular inspections and as a documentary proof of what he was writing in his guide. Malvasia wrote in the paratext: "those who refuse to give full faith to these elements of information (which belong to history and share the soul of a verginal and unalterable truth) and require more material proofs of the contents [...] will find full satisfaction in the Patrolled Bologna of the very exact Masini. With no less effort and greater profit (and also checking a high number of ​​writings) this author recorded the public and authentic figures in every particularity” (p. 12). In short, if Malvasia was a historian, Masini was the 'notary' of the situation. This does not mean, however, that everything mentioned by the former must have been reported by the latter in 1666: on a closer inspection – as Emiliani wrote - only 200 (out of 2400) works included in the Patrolled Bologna were also mentioned by Malvasia in The paintings of Bologna. And if we consider that only 230 artefacts were present in both the Felsina and the Paintings, we understand that Malvasia’s guide has an inestimable value not only as a completion of a historical-critical project, but, in positive terms, for the mapping of the artistic heritage in Bologna at the end of the seventeenth century.

NOTES

[7] They had however been described previously in the Felsina (1678). See the first volume of the Cropper-Pericolo Critical edition (at pp. 222 and 224).