Carlo Cesare Malvasia. Felsina pittrice. Life of Guido Reni. Part One

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Carlo Cesare Malvasia
Felsina pittrice
Lives of the Bolognese Painters

Volume 9
Life of Guido Reni 

Critical Edition, Translation, and Essay by Lorenzo Pericolo, Historical Notes by Lorenzo Pericolo with Elizabeth Cropper, Stefan Albl, Mattia Biffis, and Elise Ferone

Corpus of Illustrations Established by Lorenzo Pericolo, with Mattia Biffis and Elise Ferone

Published for the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
2 tomes, Turnhout, Harvey Miller. An imprint of Brepols Publishers, 2019

Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro. Part One

This is the fourth volume (composed of two tomes) to be published as part of the critical edition of Carlo Cesare Malvasia's Felsina pittrice (after those dedicated to (i) the painting of the Bolognese primitives, (ii) the life of Marcantonio Raimondi combined with the critical catalogue of prints relating to Bolognese artists and (iii) the life of Domenichino). The critical comments on the pages that Carlo Cesare Malvasia wrote about Guido Reni certainly do not disappoint the best expectations. On the contrary, they demonstrate the commitment with which the editors of the initiative have undertaken this immense endeavour. In the specific case, their highly laudable effort takes the form of two volumes of over 1000 pages overall, proposing both the original Italian text and the English translation of the work. Additionally, the two volumes include 683 historical notes to the text in question (often real essays, enough to occupy 250 double-column pages); the Italian version of the Scritti originali (Original Writings) that have come down to us and are dedicated to Reni [1]; and, again (in the second volume) a critical essay, entitled Beyond Perfection: Guido Reni and Malvasia’s Fourth Age of Painting, written by Lorenzo Pericolo, which is actually not an essay, but a book in itself, and not even any book, but a masterpiece of erudition and lucidity. It analyses the theoretical assumptions behind the drafting of the biography of Guido Reni. All of this is completed by an iconographic apparatus of over 350 illustrations, almost all in colour and full page, and finally bibliography and indexes.

Of course the curators (in particular Elizabeth Cropper in her preface) are keen to clarify that the publication is neither a complete nor a reasoned catalogue of the works of Guido Reni, but ‘only’ concerns Guido and Malvasia. Undoubtedly, the Bolognese writer proved to be the most precious source of information about his fellow citizen painter. And yet a few scholars have questioned the real importance of the source, probably expecting something which Malvasia, a scholar of the second half of the seventeenth century, was certainly not able to provide: a 'modern' monograph, structured as a biography, and enriched by a catalogue of works, a critical transposition and a documentary register. On the contrary, as we have already seen in our previous reviews, the work of the noble canon from Bologna was, in perfect harmony with his times, non-linear, often taking up and deepening themes already addressed previously. In Malvasia’s works, biographical details were always mixed with anecdotes, with references to individual works (often operated without following a chronological order), with their original and contemporary destination, with clients, archival documents, but also with literary evidence in prose and poetry: “The modern classification of these [note of the editors: elements] as distinct categories reflects more than a simple need for clarification: it also follows certain modernist arguments that works of art and literature should be viewed in purely formal terms, without interpretation derived from biography or history. This view has been radically modified in the past half century, but continues to affect the general approach of art historians and critics to early modern texts and their relation to works of art” (See: Vol. I, p. XVI).

In any case, to simplify things and to overcome the fact that the space dedicated to the stylistic analysis of the works in the historical commentary notes was forcibly limited, the curators have decided to behave differently than on previous occasions, placing the illustrations in chronological order and not according to the sequencing of how they are cited in Malvasia’s text. To this aim, Lorenzo Pericolo, together with Mattia Biffis and Elise Ferone, had to establish a reference corpus, taking a position on the originality or not of the works (and we know how important it was the phenomenon of copies with reference to Guido Reni) and making hypotheses on the dates based on a stylistic basis. To make these hypotheses more evident, a number of works by Guido Reni have also been included in the apparatus of illustrations, albeit they were not expressly mentioned by Malvasia, but recalled, for example, in the historical commentary notes. In other words, an attempt was made to reconcile the needs of display linearity while maintaining the approach to the work, dutifully respectful of the context in which it was physically written. 

Copy of Guido Reni's self-portrait, Rome, Galleria di Palazzo Barberini
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guido_Reni_-_Self-portrait_2.jpg

Text of the strip

To be fully respectful of readers, the review of such an ambitious and imposing work needs to be adequately sized. For this reason, I have chosen to report below the text of the strip of the two volumes, which can be useful to those who simply wish to have a general idea of the contents of them:

“Celebrated by Malvasia as the creator and promoter of the new maniera moderna, Guido Reni (1575-1642) introduces the fourth age of painting: a period marked by an original and sometimes bold elaboration of the notion of artistic perfection developed by the Carracci and embodied more specifically by Ludovico's “synthesis of styles”. Art in Italy could have declined once again after the deaths of the Carracci, but thanks to Guido, and Domenichino, Francesco Albani and Guercino, painting is restored to its full blossoming, and, as a result, the Carracci lesson spreads and triumphs throughout Italy. In assessing Guido's role in promoting this artistic vanguard, Malvasia finds himself in a theoretical impasse. On the one hand, he cannot resist his infatuation with Guido's work. Endowed with spellbinding powers, Guido's paintings constitute the greatest luxury of modernity insofar as they reflect an endless search for aesthetic refinement and transcendental beauty both in the representation of the human body and in the orchestration of light, color, and impasto. On the other hand, Malvasia balks at embracing Guido's final production is both exceedingly sophisticated and tainted by its very sophistication: delicacy verges on feebleness, transcendence coalesces into purposeless abstraction, divine vision engenders incompleteness, and sprezzatura turns into apparent negligence. Furthermore, for Malvasia Guido is both a paragon of virtue and the self-indulgent victim of the gambling demon. With acuity, Malvasia praises Guido the money maker, the self-confident artist able to overhaul the mechanism of the art market by exponentially increasing the value of painting. And yet, Malvasia cannot help but condemn Guido the money squanderer, the indebted painter who gambles away his reputation and jeopardizes the quality of his sublime output (…)”.

Guido Reni, Samson, about 1617-1619, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reni_Samson_Bologna.jpeg

An idol to be historically framed

Malvasia (1616-1693) could make acquaintance with Guido Reni (who died in 1642). The Malvasian biography reports several episodes related to exchanges of views or anecdotes between the young Carlo Cesare and the then elderly Guido. We do not know when their contacts began, but they certainly stopped at the beginning of 1639, when the former moved to Rome for study reasons, returning to Bologna only in 1647. Most likely the young man was introduced to the painter's studio by the older cousin, Count Cornelio Malvasia, who, as an agent of Francesco I d'Este, Duke of Modena, had had relations with the painter since the early 1630s. One thing is certain: for Carlo Cesare, who had also received education in painting, the Elder Guido must have been an idol. To tell the truth, Reni was, at the time, the idol of all Bologna, the artist whose works were sought after and lavishly paid throughout Europe, the pride (but also the hen with golden eggs) of an entire town. Do you like rock music? Pretend that a 20-year-old man of today is given the opportunity to attend Bono Vox closely and you can perhaps understand what Malvasia's feelings were in those youthful years.

This circumstance undoubtedly made it difficult for Malvasia to discuss Guido in his Felsina Pittrice (from the Original writings it appears that the scholar worked on his biography at least since 1664). After all, it was all about stripping an idol from his mythical aura and putting it in a historical context of development of arts. If we follow the indications contained in the preface of the printed version of the Felsina, everything seems, in some way, clear: as the Carraccis had reached the "perfect manner", synthesis and quintessence of all styles, how was it possible to go further? The Carraccis’ legacy was collected by four of their followers, who, although not achieving their perfect completeness, were still able to overcome them and bring art towards new developments in specific aspects:  “namely, Guido in nobility and celestial ideas; Domenichino in erudite inventions and expression of the affections; Albani in poetic fancies and grace; and Guercino in strength of chiaroscuro and the beautiful calibration of colors. They all lived at the same time and, through reciprocal emulation, raised and secured a new title for Bologna, this great alma mater studiorum, as also the nourishing mother of painting” (See: Vol. I, p. 15). Guido Reni, Domenichino, Albani and Guercino were therefore the four Evangelists (the expression was first used by Francesco Scannelli in his Microcosmo della pittura - Microcosm of painting - of 1657) of the fourth age of painting (i.e. contemporary painting), also defined as a new modern manner. But – Malvasia added quoting precisely Scannelli - among these four, Reni was the one who, at the disappearance of the Carracci, was the "primary guide" for three reasons: he was older, (at least in part) he surpassed them and, finally, he was the master of Albani and Domenichino. Guido Reni therefore had a privileged role.

In fact, if one reads the first version of the preface, which Malvasia had written years before and which is now preserved in the Original writings, the evolution of the author's thought can be well understood: he wanted to place Guido Reni in the history of his time, and more generally he made an attempt to organise chronologically the various ages of painting.

Guido Reni, Portrait of Ginevra Pucci (or Pozzi), about 1617-1620, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale
Source: The Yorck Project via Wikimedia Commons

Third and fourth age of painting

Lorenzo Pericolo outlines this evolution with great clarity. The first version of the preface proposed a reading in which the Carracci and Guido were placed, essentially, on the same level: on the one hand the vigour of the former, on the other the delicacy of the latter. The dichotomy was reproduced substantially in the same terms in an annotation to the life of the Carraccis written in 1672 (See p. V. II, p. 18). “No doubt, at the time he compiled the first version of the proem, Malvasia had not yet come up with the groundbreaking notion that the Carracci, by sinthesizing the canonical styles of Italian painting, had surpassed all the previous masters and configured a new paradigm of pictorial perfection”. (See: Vol. I, p. 29). Rather, he thought that art had reached its peak with Guido Reni. Reni’s dominance was linked to the underlying optimism with which the scholar looked at 'novelty' (it is barely evident that Malvasia was a 'modernist' and the influence of Alessandro Tassoni's thought on the subject is perceptible – See: Vol. II , p. 208, no. 2). Novelty was, uncritically, perceived as having no relation to history, something that “crops up from nowhere and does not necessarily entail a mediation with or reflection on the past” (See: Vol. I, p. 28). Pericolo immediately clarifies that the Malvasian 'novelty' had nothing to do with 'fashion' and that Reni’s supremacy was based on a solid foundation of "sovereignity, tenderness, and nobility"; however, it remains that there was no credible historical connection between Reni and those who preceded him. The first version of the preface was abandoned and then reused (but with an overall reworking which weakened it) for the lives of Angelo Michele Colonna and Agostino Mitelli. The second version, in fact, established new criteria of judgment, starting from the fact that the perfection in painting had been achieved by the "learned compendium" of the Carracci (in particular by Ludovico). Now, 'novelty' was always related to the past, or with what has been done before.

I think it is very important to highlight here some aspects that do not directly have to do with Guido's biography, but rather with the entire structure of the work. Malvasia wrote a history that extended to the second half of the seventeenth century (in fact, a century beyond Vasari's Lives). By placing the Carracci at the top of modern manner, he expanded the latter until the end of the sixteenth century. All this raised a series of problems to which Malvasia was not always able to answer (See: Vol. II, p. 50 ff.): “In the first place, is the development of the third age of painting marked by one or two climaxes? Is the mannerist decline between Michelangelo's and Ludovico's time the by-product of an accomplished perfection or the symptom  of an unfulfilled perfection? [...] To be sure, Malvasia's insistence on the "intelligent synthesis" as the core of Ludovico's artistic project and achievement does imply that the canonical masters of Renaissance painting prefigure, but do not epitomize, perfection: they constitute facets of perfection whose assemblage and recomposition are entirely Ludovico's achievement”. 

Guido Reni, Assumption of the Virgin, 1627, Santa Maria Assunta, Castelfranco Emilia
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Assunzione_di_Maria.jpg

Contradictions about Guido

Guido's role in the transition between the first and second prefaces appears to be reduced following the assumption of the Carracci as a paradigm (although, as mentioned, Reni was a primus inter pares compared to Domenichino, Albani and Guercino). It should also be said that Malvasia did not always prove to be consistent and allowed clear contradictions to emerge in the evaluation of the work of the Bolognese artist, probably the result of the persistence in the text of parts written before the reworking of the project. This is the case, for example, of the evaluation of Guido's "second manner", that is the artistic production in the final years of his career (roughly, from 1630 onwards). In this regard, we happen to read: “He also wore himself out over his last paintings, never being satisfied, as I have already said, showing himself ever more erudite, with new effects and a thousand delightful refinements, blending subtle hues of violet-gray and pale blue mixed in amidst the half-tints and flesh colors [...]. These tints can be observed on delicate skin, which reflects a diaphanous glow, more conspicuously when the light falls from above, in particular when passing through closed windows, especially those made of glass, as anyone can easily observe. These inventions of his are not chimerical, ideal, and without foundation [...]. Guido's discoveries are instead new observations neglected by the ancients. In other professions, too, we see discoveries produced every day from the most fecund and original quarries of modern ingenuity, to the envy of those in the past” (See Vol. I, p. 183). The theme of an almost blind trust in novelty returns; and Guido proved to be an artist who tirelessly experimented, without ever getting satiated, the optical rendering of nature. Malvasia goes on to argue that while Guido's first way was destined to please the curious (i.e. the public of amateurs), the second was particularly dear to scholars (and therefore to artists and, more generally, to learned people). “And this is what they call Guido's second manner, which, because it is unfamiliar and foreign, will only become familiar and make itself well known with the passage of time, finally being confirmed in general affection and reputation. Let the malevolent scream as loud as they wish, for one day it will be known that this refinements of Guido's are inimitable [...] The most learned, then, will always prefer Guido's second manner, whereas his first manner will always be favored by the most curious. The first manner will stop you in your tracks, but the second will teach you. And if common opinion holds his second manner to be too languorous and delicate, connoisseurs will instead extol it as the most knowledgeable and supreme” (Ibid). It is evident that, using these words, and claiming that Reni's second manner was not the result of fantasy, but tended to scientifically reproduce natural phenomena, Malvasia placed the artist on a path that, going backwards, reached up to Leonardo. It is worth mentioning here that in 1739 the Tuscan painter Antonio Franchi claimed to have a handwritten copy of Leonardo's Treatise on painting that belonged to Guido Reni in his days. That specimen, if it really belonged to Guido Reni, has not been identified (it must also be said that the Bolognese artist was not a particularly cultured man). In any case, it is clear that, in these lines, Guido still represented the culmination of artistic work, as claimed in the first part of the preface, in the name of his continuous search for novelty.

Yet, a few pages earlier, Malvasia, but evidently in a later period, provided a practically antithetical interpretation of Reni’s second manner. He dealt, in fact, with the big problem of gambling, to which the Bolognese painter was pathologically addicted. Speaking of artworks made to pay his debts, Malvasia defines them more fruit of necessity than genius; and if it is true that in this category he included serial productions, it is equally true that immediately afterwards he added: “I will say further, and in all sincerity (in agreement with common opinion), that even the paintings of his second manner (as it is called) ought not to be ranked at the same level as the impressive ones he executed early on, even though they are more learned, noble, and deeply considered than the earlier ones, so much so that they were, and still are, highly celebrated” (See: Vol. I, p. 115). As we are faced with a real U-turn, Pericolo wonders why Malvasia decided to keep in the text passages that had become evidently obsolete following the maturation of a vision of the history of art evidently changed over the years. There is no precise answer, but the curator nevertheless points out that simply stressing the substantial failure of Guido's artistic experience would also have emptied the main novelty of his Felsina, that is, the insertion of a fourth artistic age following the modern manner. Otherwise, the fourth era would have simply become the tired continuation of the glorious third age of painting.

Guido Reni, Abduction of Europa, 1640, London, National Gallery
Source: The Yorck Project via Wikimedia Commons

But it is now time to try to better define the contours of Guido's first and second manners. We will do it in the second part of the review.

End of Part One
Go to Part Two 

NOTES

[1] As known, the Archiginnasio library in Bologna retains a part of the materials (conventionally called Original Writings) that Malvasia used and wrote in view of the printed publication of his Felsina. In the specific case, the pages dealing with Guido Reni range from 87r to 134v, but only ten (from 124r to 134v) present notes and documents that testify to the collection of data, while the previous ones contain a first version, not particularly different from the one in press, of the biography. It is assumed that, in reality, the work materials had to be much wider (See: Vol. II pp. 9 and following) and also had to include many letters from which Carlo Cesare selected extracts.