Jaynie Anderson. [The Life of Giovanni Morelli in Risorgimento Italy]. Part One

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Jaynie Anderson
La vita di Giovanni Morelli nell’Italia del Risorgimento
[The Life of Giovanni Morelli in Risorgimento Italy]
Milan, Officina Libraria, 2019

Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro. Part One

On the front cover: Franz von Lenbach, Portrait of Giovanni Morelli, 1886, Bergamo, Accademia Carrara

Ms Jaynie Anderson is Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne. She has devoted much of her professional life to stydying Giovanni Morelli (1816-1891), a very famous nineteenth-century Italian connoisseur, dedicating four volumes and many other essays to him [1]. Now, rearranging partly published materials and adding others, she has written his biography, published by Officina Libraria first in English with the title The Life of Giovanni Morelli in Risorgimento Italy (March 2019) and then in Italian as La vita di Giovanni Morelli nell’Italia del Risorgimento (October 2019) [2]. To be noted, I have consulted the Italian version only; therefore, the English quotes below are not those original and may diverge from Ms Anderson’s text. As the author explained in the foreword, she has been and still is fascinated by Morelli as a man, a patriot, a politician, and a connoisseur. An "uncomfortable" statement, especially in Italy, where Morelli's critical "misfortune" began early, as opposed to the "exemplarity" of the figure of Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. Think, for example, of the evolution of the writings of Roberto Longhi in which Morelli, as opposed to his 'rival' born in Legnago, was gradually more and more seen as a scholar lacking a sense of quality, a simple recognizer of paintings [3], and even a profiteer of art trade, indifferent to the fate of the Italian artistic heritage [4]. It is certainly no coincidence that, even recently, Mina Gregori, distinguished between Morelli’s 'scientific method' and Cavalcaselle’s - and Longhi’s - 'intuitive method', assigned only to the latter (analysing the crisis of connoisseurship in the universities) the dignity of belonging to science [5].

I would like to tell upfront that something has really struck me in the Morelli vs. Cavalcaselle querelle: as a person coming from completely different studies, and having some knowledge of statistics, I found a a bit naive that their supporters use to claim for not verifiable statements; so, for instance, Anderson insisted on the fact that more than 80% of Morelli's attributions were to be considered still valid, when on the other side [6] Gregori mentioned that "the attributions of Cavalcaselle that have lasted over time are much more numerous in percentage than those proposed by Giovanni Morelli"? Is conneurship a problem of (impossibile to be monitored) percentages?  What becomes evident, between the lines, is how much of the contrast between the two methods has become entrenched after decades, now centuries, of arguments. The latter find precisely their raison d'être in the different attribution of the artworks. As a consequence, by now, scholars are making very few attributions, for fear of being sucked into a whirlpool of diatribes.

Despite all of this, I have no intention of crushing a biography that is absolutely enjoyable, punctuated in thirteen agile chapters and which, ultimately, is the summation of decades of work. A biography that – as Ms Anderson wrote from the beginning - stems from the fact of sensing the urgency to narrate the life of Morelli and to highlight how his attributive method was, ultimately, aimed at protecting the Italian artistic heritage (exactly the opposite of what Longhi wrote); no coincidence that the first of the distinctions she made aims to clearly separate the figures of the senator from Bergamo and Bernard Berenson, clarifying that it is because of the latter (whom Morelli knew only superficially) if connoisseurship became "a lucrative activity at the service of the antiquarian market" (p. XXVIII). It must be clear, in short, that – while Anderson's book is very stimulating and thoroughly based on the analysis of archives and documents spread around the world – it is manifestly partisan. As such, the author renounced to capture the contradictions of Morelli, even when they were clearly emerging from the documents themselves. In doing so, she failed to fully display his complexities as a man, and above all gave us an image of heroic coherence which, I would dare say, does not belong to any of us, poor mortals. Let me give an example: speaking of Morelli’s art collection, Ms Anderson wrote that "some of the purchases remained in his collection, for example a portrait by Cariani and a Saint Jerome by Bartolomeo Montagna now at the Accademia Carrara. Morelli was proud of the paintings by Bergognone, the Lombard equivalent of Beato Angelico. He liked to think that Charles Lock Eastlake would have wanted them for the National Gallery in London, but he never sold them, believing that the artistic heritage belonged to the nation and that every gentleman should preserve rare and valuable works by making himself a mere custodian" (p. 71). 

Giovanni Busi, called Cariani, Holy Family, 1530-1540, Bergamo, Accademia Carrara (from the Morelli Collection)
Source: https://www.lacarrara.it/catalogo/58mr00116/

This, therefore, seems to be the content of a letter written by Morelli to his fraternal friend Niccolò Antinori on 16 October 1857 (see p. 194 note 25). However, in 1862 Morelli sold to Eastlake (for the National Gallery) a Lorenzo Lotto’s Portrait of Giovanni Agostino della Torre with his son Niccolò. The director of the National Gallery asked him whether he wanted his name to appear in the annual Report to the Trustees of the museum as a previous owner or not. After all Morelli was a Member of Parliament and had also campaigned publicly against the export of artworks. However the Italian connoisseur replied he was ready to be quoted. According to Ms Anderson, he did it because “he intended to see himself recognized for having introduced Lorenzo Lotto to the United Kingdom: «Your lordship also asks me if I would prefer to see my name replaced by another one in the report which you publish every year. Unfortunately, I know that I did not perform a too patriotic action in depriving my country of a masterpiece like Lotto’s picture which I have given to you – but, since the fault is mine, I should also carry the penalty and not others! To please me, I would then pray your lordship not to alter in the least the truth of the facts, and to tolerate that my name is included in the midst of those of the other unfortunates, who like me were forced to deprive themselves of their best treasures»" (p. 205 note 94). Is there a way to reconcile these two episodes without having to necessarily think that Morelli was a "treacherous patriot"? Quite immodestly, I will try to provide my interpretation of the facts, which is based precisely on a critical reading of the materials provided by Anderson, here and elsewhere. First, however, I will offer some biographical notations. 

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Giovanni Agostino della Torre and his Son, about 1515-1516, London, National Gallery
Source: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/lorenzo-lotto-giovanni-agostino-della-torre-and-his-son-niccolo

A few biographic data

Johannes Morell was born in Verona in 1816. Both father and mother were members of rich Protestant families (of evangelical rite) of Swiss origins, which had moved to Italy (respectively to Verona and Bergamo) during the 18th century. While studying outside Italy (between Switzerland and Germany) from 1826 to 1838 and traveling in Europe from 1838 to 1840, Morell felt profoundly Italian, so much so as to officially change his name, at the time of his return to Italy, to Giovanni Morelli. In Germany, Morelli graduated in medicine (without ever practicing the profession). It is in this context that (in my opinion quite rightly) Ms Anderson identifies the humus of the subsequent "Morellian scientific method"; the young scholar was trained on the books of a very famous expert on comparative anatomy of the time, the Frenchman Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Cuvier theorized the "correlation of the parts", based on which - by studying in depth the comparative anatomy - it was possible to determine, for example, "from a fossilized claw the shape of the scapula of an animal. The parallel with the subsequent Morellian anatomical schemes, according to which a Botticelli or a Giorgione can be recognized starting from a significant detail such as an ear, an eye, a foot, is evident; a wider series of comparisons allows the connoisseur to propose an attribution. Morelli adopted, among others, the Cuverian principle of the subordination of the parts, according to which some traits are more significant than others" (p. 16). One certainly cannot forget the influence of Goethe, who for the young Johannes was a real myth, and of his endless scientific production. But what is really impressing is the level of acquaintances and characters that Morelli was able to learn from his university years, in the field of science, but also in literature, philosophy and, of course, art; he was really immersed in the most qualified circles of German romanticism. Suffice it to mention, in the field of art studies, the meetings with Carl Friedrich von Rumohr (1785-1843) and Gustav Friedrich Waagen (1794-1868) and the friendship with Otto Mündler, gained in Paris in 1839. One could not stress more the attendance with Mündler, a self-taught Protestant, heavily involved in art trade. In the late seventies of the nineteenth century, Morelli began publishing works inspired by Mündler’s Essai d’une Analyse Critique de la Notice des Tableaux Italiens du Musée National du Louvre accompagné d’Observations et de Documents relatifs à ces mêmes Tableaux , written by the German scholar in 1850: not a history of art in the strict sense, but the critical revision of the attributions of the artworks owned by the Louvre, aimed at subverting many of the erroneous statements contained in the museum's official catalogues.

In Italy

When Giovanni returned to Italy (to the maternal family, i.e. to the Zavaritts in Bergamo, as his father had passed away when he was six years old) Morelli would have easily been in the position to live from the rents of the silk industry that had always been managed by the family. However, his patriotic drive and aspiration to liberate Italy from foreign domination were already well present. He soon established close relationships with the Florentine circles of scholars, at the forefront of the liberal and cultural fronts; one of the main reasons was, without a doubt, the so-called 'question of the language', aimed at the use of Tuscan as a national language, a theme very dear to Francesco De Sanctis (1817-1883) and Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873), whom he had known and frequented for decades. Among the Florentine friends particular attention should be paid to the Marquis Niccolò Antinori (1812-1882), as their partnership lasted until the death of the Florentine nobleman. The correspondence with Antinori is one of the few to have reached our days and is therefore of particular importance. Morelli dealt with art, literature and philosophy, but he was above all a passionate political activist. The Five Days of Milan found him at the forefront of the barricades, fighting for liberation. A period of intense political-military engagement began, in which the actual war activity (for which he showed a particular liking) alternated with the diplomatic one: he was sent to Frankfurt (May 1848) to plead the Italian cause at the newly established German National Assembly against the common Austrian enemy. He remained there three months, obtaining discouraging results; the German parliament was more hearted to issue pan-Germanic plans than to practice solidarity with the other emerging national states. Back in Italy, he enlisted in Venice, then moved to Genua, one of the last Republican strongholds; finally, he failed to reach Rome, where, in the meantime, the experience of the Republic was running out. The overall picture must have been discouraging: disappointed by the Savoy monarchy and the indolence of the King of Savoy Carlo Alberto, Morelli had simultaneously to take note of the failure of the republican revolutionary movements.


Member of Parliament and Senator

Despite his direct and active involvement in the 1848 uprisings, Morelli was never exiled; a privilege probably linked to his social status (Cavalcaselle, for example, had to take refuge first in France and then in England). The next ten years would be devoted to studies, especially artistic. Morelli began to buy the first paintings in his collection and advised his friends about the most recommendable paintings to buy in order to create a high-level collection. This was the case, for example, of Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli (1822-1879).

Francesco Hayez, Portrait of Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli, 1851, Milan, Museo Poldi Pezzoli
Source: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/pgF_dyGhZ_dMww

It is really a pity that we have lost the notes he took across Northern Italy to visit private galleries and public collections. We know, for example that he visited Parma, Modena, Bologna and Ferrara in 1859, but we have no report of it. In later years Morelli wrote that he had produced an estimate of the paintings in the collection of the marquis Costabili in Ferrara in 1858; here too, unfortunately, we have been left with no evidence and it would be important to understand why he did it. But at the start of the Second Independence War, Morelli was again in the front line in Bergamo, commanding the National Guard pending the arrival of the Savoy troops. In those years, moreover, Morelli developed in the sense of political realism, abandoning the positions he had in the course of the riots of 1848 -1849. He forgot all his negative judgments against the monarchy (probably also thanks to the abdication of Carlo Alberto for the benefit of Vittorio Emanuele II) and, above all, he became a great admirer of Camillo Benso, count of Cavour. In a letter addressed to Niccolò Antinori on 16 June 1861, he wrote: “In Rieti we heard the news of Cavour's death. It was really a bolt from the blue. I was stunned, and for many days I could not recover from that unexpected blow. I am certainly not among those who make the fate of a nation depend on the existence of a single man, whether he be as great as Cavour, but with all the firm faith I have in the future of Italy, I cannot but fear the dangers to which the loss of that man exposes us. None of the statesmen, known in Italy, have a past as Cavour had - a past that imposed on all parties, and inside and outside the Parliament” [7]. On the contrary, the reservations against Garibaldi and the 'Republican party', which were also aligned with the idea of a monarchical but united Italy, were very strong: “What Garibaldi wanted and wants is the triumph of a violent minority which, after a long wait, believes that its own time has come: they want to overthrow the government that works tirelessly to constitute Italy. They are revolting against wisdom and prudence. These untimely provocations of a party without political perspective and without an established program, which sacrifices to its ambition, its whims and its hates the conquests that Italy owes to its own perseverance, courage and sense of purpose. Italy will be able to consolidate them only with its wisdom and concord ...” [8].

Morelli was elected Member of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia for the circumscription of Bergamo in 1860, then MP the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 (the only Protestant in Parliament) and consecutively re-elected until 1870, when he resigned in coincidence with the conquest of Rome and the prospect that the Italian State would find a form of cohabitation (then expressed with the Law of Guarantees) with the Roman Catholic Church. In those ten years he actively participated in parliamentary life, being part of numerous committees, but giving a single parliamentary speech, in favour of safeguarding the Italian artistic heritage. Among the many parliamentary tasks, particularly remarkable is, from our point of view, the one he assumed in 1861, committing himself to visit Umbria and the Marche and to draw up an inventory of the works of art belonging to those ecclesiastical bodies that were about to be suppressed by law. It was a very famous journey, which he intentionally carried out along with Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle and which we will mention later; in any case, it was also the only journey of which a first-hand documentary testimony has remained, thanks to the notebooks drawn up in preparation for the Report presented to the Ministry of Education (at that time competent in artistic matters). They have come down to us and were also published by Jaynie Anderson.

Morelli was then appointed senator in 1873. At that time, the Senate members were appointed by the King and their office (for all of them) was for life. For this reason, or rather because it was not the result of the direct election of the rightholders (however, a very limited number of citizens selected for wealth and education), Italy’s political life took place, concretely, not in the Senate but in the Chamber of Deputies.

Morelli as a connoisseur

The 1860s saw the consecration of Morelli as a connoisseur. His personal gallery became a destination for visiting scholars, but also for famous political officials. The MP elected to Bergamo knew all relevant people. Of particular significance was his friendship with Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894), an English archaeologist, politician, diplomat, connoisseur and collector thanks to whom his name became very famous in England. On the death of Charles Lock Eastlake (December 24, 1865) Layard had a serious chance of becoming the new director of the National Gallery, and Morelli wrote to him, immediately proposing his services as consultant for the museum purchases. To be named was instead William Boxall (1800-1879), and Layard became a simple Trustee of the museum; he nevertheless took care to present Boxall to Morelli, who always accompanied him on his Italian travels; the same thing happened to the successor of Boxall (who resigned in 1874), the Irish Frederic Burton (1816-1900). Morelli's first trip to England, instead, - and it is a curious fact, given that he had travelled a lot - was only in 1868. From that moment, however, the visits became more frequent and the fame of the connoisseur was such as to allow him to also meet Queen Victoria.

By then, if his fame of man and incredible mastery in attributing the paintings was already well established, it must be said that, in essence, Morelli had practically published nothing. It was only in the 1870s that the new senator decided to devote himself to writing the works that remained in history, making use of the help of his most trusted friends and students (starting with Gustavo Frizzoni, son of a family friend, considered in turn as a son by Morelli). We would like to recall, in particular, a series of articles that appeared, in German, in the Zeitschrift für bildende Kunste journal between 1874 and 1876, in which he discussed the works preserved in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. Curiously (but not too much) the senator almost never signed his writings with his real name, as he used the pseudonym of Ivan Lermolieff, resulting from his anagram with the addition of a Russian suffix.

Six years later came the publication, in 1880, for the types of the publisher Seeman, of Die Werke Italienischer Meister in der Galerien von München, Dresden und Berlin. Ein kritischer Versuch von Ivan Lermolieff. (The works of Italian masters in the art galeris of Munich, Dresden and Berlin. A critical attempt by Ivan Lermolieff). It was the result of a two-year editorial work in which he was helped in the correction of manuscript and drafts by Jean Paul Richter (1847-1937) [9]. Morelli was inspired by the work which Otto Mündler published in relation to the collection of the Louvre in 1850. The work inaugurated a series of publications destined to attract great attention, both for the attributions they contained and for the polemical tones that distinguished them. Let me spend some words on these aspects. It is absolutely true that the general catalogue of the Munich art gallery, published in 1866, was very poor, as other connoisseurs had also said. But, in proposing new attributions, Morelli certainly took very bold positions, and, above all, he used the ‘fake’ identity of an ignorant but capable tartar, to attack frontally (as he wrote to Lady Eastlake) "the German art historians and their arrogance in speaking of Italian art" (p. 164). In the letter to the widow Eastlake, he spoke generically of German art historians, but in reality the clear, specified target was only one: Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929), whom he cited dozens of times. Von Bode was already then the symbol of Berlin’s new aggressive museum policy. Next to Bode, the unpleasant place of most hated enemies was assigned to the duo Crowe-Cavalcaselle (pejoratively called the "Siamese twins") and to their writings. In short, Morelli proved to be a divisive man. In 1883 his work was translated into English by Richter's wife (who, to tell the truth, provided an inadequate translation), not without having been deprived of the most polemical parts; three years later the Bolognese publisher Zanichelli published the Italian version.

In 1889 Morelli agreed with the publishing house Brockaus, based in Leipzig, to publish a new edition of his writings. In reality the project, planned in three volumes, had been greatly expanded, and without doubt we should not talk about a simple re-edition, but of a revised work with a great deal of new material. The first volume, dedicated to the Galleries Colonna and Doria Pamphilj in Rome, was published in 1890; the second, released in January 1891, was related to the Italian paintings preserved in the Munich and Dresden art galleries, with excursions related to other European galleries (English, French, Hungarian, Austrian and Spanish). Morelli, who had been ill for some time, died on February 28, 1891. The release of the third volume (relating to Berlin) took place posthumously in 1893, thanks to the work of Gustavo Frizzoni, who put together the notes left by his mentor and added the first biography of the late senator. The first two volumes were translated and published in English (this time with a good translation by Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkes) between 1892 and 1893. In 1897 Frizzoni then published the first Italian edition of the tome dedicated to Roman galleries with the title Della pittura italiana. Studii storico critici di Giovanni Morelli (Ivan Lermolieff), Le Gallerie Borghese e Doria Pamphili in Roma, Milan, Treves [10].

There is no doubt that the history of attribution changed before and after the publication of Morelli's books. The number of works (including graphics) that were "renamed" by the Italian scholar is enormous; sometimes the proposals were wrong; much more often, however, they were accurate. It is beyond doubt, for example, that the history of Raphael's youth (which had also been recently discussed with the biography of Crowe and Cavalcaselle) was widely rewritten. Consider, by way of example, the fate of the so-called "Raphael’s’ Booklet", once owned by Giuseppe Bossi and then passed to the Academy of Venice. Until 1880, the (wrong) paternity of the drawings had never been questioned and it was Morelli who made it clear that it was not a file of "style exercises" drawn by the young Umbrian painter. After all, if today practically no one (apart from the specialists) knows the Booklet, it is due to Morelli. With Morelli, as already with Mündler and with Cavalcaselle, we enter that historical phase in which the fate of a painting depended on the attribution given to it by the great experts in the sector. Think of the Dresden Venus by Giorgione, assigned to the painter from Castelfranco Veneto by the Italian scholar and previously considered a modest copy from Titian; and, in antithesis, of the 'misfortune' of the Reading Mary Magdalene (also in Dresden), previously ascribed to Correggio, but attributed by Morelli to Adriaen van der Werff, and for this reason relegated to the basements of the museum, where it was destroyed during the bombings of the Second World War.

Giorgione, Sleeping Venus (or Dresden Venus), 1508, Dresena, Gemäldegalerie
Source: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/xgFm1GCECrnfQA?hl=es

An image of the Reading Mary Magdalen, attributed by Morelli to Adriaen vav der Werff iand previously ascribed to Corregio. The painting was destroyed by the II World War bombings
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Correggio,_maddalena_leggente,_perduto.jpg

But, in the case of Morelli, we should not only to take into consideration the individual attributions. Equally important is the method by which they were achieved, i.e. the famous "Morellian scientific method". We will talk about this method, the relationships with Cavalcaselle and Bode and the idea of heritage by the Bergamo Senator in the second part of this review.

End of Part One
Go to Part Two

NOTES

[1] Among Ms Anderson’s essays translated into Italian, I would like to mention: G. Morelli, Della pittura italiana. Studii storico-critici. Le Gallerie Borgehese e Doria-Pamphili in Roma, in the Adelphi 1991 version (which she edited) and J. Anderson, I taccuini manoscritti di Giovanni Morelli, Milan, Federico Motta, 2000.

[2] The translation is by Monica Fintoni.

[3] Curiously, Ruskin had addressed the same accusation to Cavalcaselle’s philological approach, guilty of having deprived the reading of the works of art of a mystical and spiritual zeal, reducing in fact the history of art to a study sparsely called 'antiquarian'. See Donata Levi, Cavalcaselle. Il pioniere della conservazione dell'arte italiana, Turin, Einaudi, 1988, pp. 193-196.

[4] See Giacomo Agosti, Una maschera longhiana in Anna Chiara Tommasi (edited by), Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle conoscitore e conservatore, Venice, Marsilio, 1998.

[5] Mina Gregori, The figure of the connoisseur in F. Caglioti, A. De Marchi, A. Nova (ed.), I conoscitori tedeschi fra Otto e Novecento, Milan, Officina Libraria, 2018.

[6] Idem, p. 8.

[7] J. Anderson, I taccuini manoscritti di Giovanni Morelli, quoted, p. 27. Curiously Morelli's pro-Cavour and anti-Gariubaldi positions, which are clear from the notebooks (edited by Anderson), are almost ignored in this biography.

[8] Idem, p. 125.

[9] Richter (today still famous for his Leonardo studies) was one of Morelli's most discussed friends, due to his involvement in art trade and, above all, for his unorthodox behaviour. He was also the object of jealousy of other "first hour” Morelli’s disciples, prominently including Gustavo Frizzoni.

[10] Then republished by Jaynie Anderson in 1991 (Adelphi publisher). To my knowledge, there is no Italian edition of the tomes dedicated to German galleries in the version published by Brockhaus.