Carlo Cesare Malvasia. Felsina pittrice. Volume 2 Part One: Lives of Francesco Francia and Lorenzo Costa

Carlo Cesare Malvasia
Felsina pittrice. Lives of the Bolognese Painters
A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation

Volume Two, Part One
Lives of Francesco Francia and Lorenzo Costa

Critical Edition by Lorenzo Pericolo, Introductory Essay by Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel, Translation and Historical Notes by Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel and Tiffany Racco, with Elizabeth Cropper and Lorenzo Pericolo, Corpus of Illustrations Established by Tiffany Racco and Elise Ferone

The Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, and Brepols Publisher, Turnhout, Belgium, 2021

Reviewed by Giovanni Mazzaferro

[This text was translated into English by Elizabeth Cropper whom I would like to thank for her kindness. The original Italian version is available here] 

The fifth title (of seven volumes in all) of the sixteen projected in the context of the critical edition with English translation of the Felsina pittrice by Carlo Cesare Malvasia. Here follows the list of the volumes that have appeared to date, all reviewed in this blog.

• Volume 1: Early Bolognese Painting (2012)
• Volume 2 Part One: Lives of Francesco Francia and Lorenzo Costa (2021)
• Volume 2 Part Two: Life of Marcantonio Raimondi and Critical Catalogue of Prints by or after Bolognese Masters [2 volumes] (2017)
• Volume 9: Life of Guido Reni [2 volumes] (2019)
• Volume 13: Lives of Domenichino and Francesco Gessi (2013)

Some people will probably say that my evaluation relates to the fact that I am Bolognese, but in my opinion, the critical edition issuing from CASVA (Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts) and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, is the most significant editorial enterprise in the field of sources for the history of art in recent years. This is not only because of the riches of the material offered, from the notes to the commentary, to the apparatus, or the images, but because of the true and real rediscovery of a source: that is to say of Malvasia, of which a critical edition does not exist in Italy (a shameful fact), which means one is reduced to consulting the printed version of 1841-44 that is especially incorrect. What matters most is that with solid arguments, and with the collaboration of different scholars in turn dedicated to the edition of individual volumes, Cropper and Pericolo demolish the image – a sort of damnatio memoriae - of Malvasia as a forger and an unreliable historian and restore his name as an author of quite different value. Others before them – and I won’t give a tedious list of names – have dedicated themselves to the analysis of individual issues in the Felsina, arriving at substantially the same results, but here the operation is systematic, and worthy of special credibility, thanks to the philological approach that investigates the various versions of Malvasia’s text known to us and his Scritti originali (or the assemblage of papers belonging to the Bolognese scholar that have come down to us, and which constitute the preparatory material for the printed edition).

In all honesty - I say this with a pinch of bitterness - I have an idea that the importance of this operation has not been completely understood in the world of art literature, where the Cropper-Pericolo edition is not often cited. One fact should suffice: in the national catalogue of Italian libraries only eighteen copies appear. Given that the cost of individual volumes is prohibitive for individuals, I don’t know, in all honesty, how many have had a way to appreciate this true editorial undertaking. Probably, rendered hesitant by the admittedly difficult language of Malvasia, they continue to rely lazily on a historiographical tradition that considers the author with disdain on account of the notorious affair of his definition of Raphael as the “boccalaio urbinate”, and for the presumed forgeries of the jurist and historian of Bolognese art.

The present volume, dedicated to Francesco Francia and to Lorenzo Costa, or to Emilian "protoclassicism", opens with a preface by Elizabeth Cropper that, in all honesty, worries me. Here the editor pens an excursus on the history of the project, which began in the first years of the 2000s, when Cropper became dean of CASVA. Now that the scholar has retired it is clear that support from CASVA will be less: it is perfectly legitimate, to be clear, that every director should decide how to spend funds for research, but what is certain is that on the website of the organization the edition of the Felsina pittrice already appears among the “Past Projects” (https://www.nga.gov/research/casva/research-projects.html), which does not give cause for rejoicing. Cropper assures us that the publications will continue, this time under the auspices of the National Gallery of Art alone, “though necessarily with a different rhythm” (p. XXIV), or, I imagine, more infrequently. Let’s hope for the best.

Francesco Francia and the Maniera moderna

In putting together these notes I will refer for the most part to the introductory essay by Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel, who has done the major part of the work on this volume, in the context of a research group made up of various individuals, for which I refer to the long title given at the beginning. Concluding the first part of his Felsina, Malvasia wrote that among the pupils of Marco Zoppo, there appeared, “Francesco Francia, who alone will suffice to render Marco’s name immortal, because if the glory of the master resides in a good pupil, what more worthy disciple could any master boast of having brought along? Who before Francia conferred prestige to the profession, and lifting art up from the lowness of the past, set himself to raise it up and ennoble it, knowing how to make himself revered by equals, appreciated by the great, followed by artists, and adored by all? Who could then show a judgment more refined, invention more select, drawing more correct, coloring more vigorous? Is this not a matter of wonder, all the more so because Francia worked in times so simple and pure, in circumstances so languid and inexpedient? He did not live (as Raphael would) in Rome, which he never even saw. He did not have for a teacher Pietro Perugino, who was his contemporary and competitor. He could not frequent and learn from Giovio, from Caro, from Tolomei. He could not go to the most perfect statues of the Belvedere for instruction. The Sistine Chapel of the Prophet in Sant’Agostino could not prompt and inspire him to relinquish the ancient modesties and restraints, to take risks in his foreshortening and indulge in terribilità and grandeur. He did not frequent the friar of San Marco. He did not have before him paintings by Da Vinci that could teach him softness. Thus, with this great leader of our school I will proudly start this second part. Assume indeed that up to this point I have used the painters of the first part – about whom we have reasonably hurried along quickly - as an introduction to this enterprise rather than as a significant integral part of the whole. They offered us some sort of exordium rather than any kind of example and were mentioned more in veneration of antiquity than as a paragon of perfect excellence” (Vol. 1: 265-67).

Part Two of the Felsina, covers a temporal arc that goes from the last decades of the Quattrocento up to the end of the Cinquecento, from protoclassicism to mannerism (Part Three will then be dedicated to the Carracci). In a perspective very similar to that of Vasari, the work is divided into epochs: in the case of the Aretine these are three, and the third corresponds to the “maniera moderna,” while in the case of the Bolognese writer there are four, and the second is concerned with the “maniera moderna,” which begins in fact with Francesco Francia, who is immediately paired with Perugino: “Just as the stars hide, mortified by the rising sun that paints the reborn day with golden rays, so did the most renowned brushes fall silent, shamed by the appearance of the new colors that so much embellished the Italian sky, thanks to the industrious hands of Francia in Bologna and Pietro in Perugia” (p. 63).

It should be noted right away that Francia and Perugino are also put side by side in Vasari’s Lives, on account of “a sweetness in blending colors that the Bolognese Francia and Pietro Perugino started to use in their works, at the sight of which people ran like madmen to this new and more lifelike beauty, as it appeared to them that it absolutely could never be done better” (p. 62). While Vasari, however, places Francia and Perugino at the end of the second part of his Lives, in which he explores the “dry” manner, Malvasia places Francia as the initiator of the modern manner.

As already seen in the case of the primitivi and the biography of Marcantonio Raimondi, Malvasia’s dependence on, and comparison with Vasari is, in this part of the Felsina, an undeniable constant. The Bolognese writer recognizes the Aretine as the reference point for the historiography of art, but at the same time, contests the organization of the work. He transcribes the text of the biography of Francia (from the Bolognese edition of Manolessi) in its entirety, but then subjects this to a series of observations and a crescendo of opposing arguments that demolish the credibility of the famous episode of the death of Francia after seeing Raphael’s Saint Cecilia, recently arrived in Bologna. This death, so grotesque in its telling, has, in Vasari, a clear symbolic value and represents “non-Florentine” art that came to a halt, and gave way to the achievements of the Tuscan-Roman style, without, among other things, even leaving pupils, or dismissing them as too intent on competing merely at a local level. For Francia, all that is unacceptable, in that, Malvasia (mistakenly, but basing his case on secure literary sources) postponed his death to after 1526, or well after the death of Raphael (1520). But let’s go to the beginning and to the pairing of Francia and Perugino.

Francia and Perugino

Both Vasari and Malvasia propose a pairing of these two artists. Galizzi Kroegel emphasizes this and investigates reasons for it. “Certainly,” she writes, “we are facing a turning point in Renaissance aesthetics, namely the development of a new form of beauty, whose elegance of form may remind us of classical art, while the sweet humanity of the characters, perfectly expressed in their placid attitudes and facial expressions, somehow anticipates the timeless devotion of Counter-Reformation art” (p. 13). The means by which Perugino and Francia embarked on this mode of painting are historically sources of debate, of which the author gives a full account. In particular, it is interesting to try to understand at what point this was an independent or interdependent journey for them. Certainly, in both one sees Flemish influences in the rendering of landscapes, similar compositional schemes, and what Vasari calls “la dolcezza ne’ colori unita” or a way of painting that sets forth a close harmony among colors. It is not clear at what point Vasari and Malvasia (who to a large extent think about this in the same way) attribute this new chromaticism to the adoption of the practice on the part of the two artists of painting in oil: surely it was indeed this technique that allowed them both to embark on new coloristic schemes and a new naturalism. If Vasari speaks of “dolcezza ne’ colori unita” Malvasia uses the adjectives “pastoso e moderno” to define Francia’s painting (p. 24), and, further, “pastosità del colorito.” The two historians, thus, read Francia’s style in a similar way; further, one of the characteristics of Vasari’s biography is the elogies that the writer showers on the Bolognese painter. The experience and success of the goldsmith and painter, however, are perceived as completely ephemeral and transitory. It is true that the patrons of Francia (and Perugino) seemed to be in the presence of a new and incomparable beauty, but it is also true that, very quickly, Raphael succeeded in reestablishing a well-defined hierarchy, and determining the misfortune of his older colleagues. In this sense, as I have said, the death of Francia is full of symbolic meaning to which Vasari skillfully added pathos in a sort of Rossinian crescendo that culminated in the death of Francia (even, to be precise, with a “double death”, in the sense that the artist first died at the sight of the painting in his studio, and then re-died after making sure it would be placed in San Giovanni in Monte). All this for Malvasia is unacceptable, not only on the level of local pride, but really in terms of method.

Francesco Francia, Bentivoglio Altarpiece, 1498-99, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale
Source: https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Francesco_Francia_-_Adoration_of_the_Child_-_WGA08169.jpg

A different way of conceiving history

One turns to what Elizabeth Cropper maintained in her introductory essay to the first volume of the Felsina, dedicated to the primitives (or “primi lumi”). Vasari and Malvasia conceived history in different ways. For the Aretine history proceeds through breaks, before and after which everything changes and everything is different: art dies and Cimabue comes to bring it alive again; Francia and Perugino are considered (and considered themselves) the new raiders of a canon of beauty that was forgotten after several decades upon the arrival of Raphael. For Malvasia, history is tradition; everything that happens today is the outcome of everything that has happened before to which something new is added. There are no breaks; there is development. Galizzi Kroegel points out at least two aspects that fit perfectly with regard to Malvasia’s narration concerning to the Bolognese artist. The first is the beauty of his Madonnas, universally recognized as such for the devotion they succeed in arousing in the public, for “neither lord nor prelate would consider himself content until he succeeded in possessing a Madonna by Francia of Bologna” (p. 85). These are, in fact, the same words that Francia used for the Madonnas of Lippo di Dalmasio (“non riputandosi uom di garbo e compito chi la Madonna del Dalmasio a possedere non fosse gionto” p. 25), adding the praises of Guido Reni himself on his sacred images. The Marian tradition in the art literature of Bologna is well known, and includes, for example. Francesco Cavazzoni and his Corona di Grazie (1608), known to Malvasia. But what matters here is the relay of Lippo, Francia, Reni: the history that evolves but maintains unaltered the ability of artists to express devotional aspects, with intimate knowledge of the works of those who came before them.

Another paradigmatic example refers to Francesco Francia’s ability to paint the human body with perfect proportions. At the end of Part One, Malvasia established how Francia had no way to “study from the antique”, or rather did not have the opportunity (or did not want) to go to Rome to study those statues that had been rediscovered in just those years, with extraordinary clamor (the rediscovery of the Laocoon was in 1506). And yet, the Bolognese painter was able to paint a Saint Sebastian (lost) that became the model for all Bolognese artists to study on account of its perfect proportions of the human body.: “In 1522 he painted a Saint Sebastian with his hands above his head tied to a trunk, of such elegant and correct proportions, resolute drawing, lively coloring, and graceful movement that a more wondrous one was never seen in any other time. Just as the ancient artists used to derive the measurements of man’s limbs and human features from that famous figure by Polykleitos, as if it were their only and indispensable canon, which today has been replaced by the perfect statue of Antinous in Rome, so too has Francia’s Saint Sebastian always served as an exemplar and norm to the most excellent masters. Not only did Primaticcio, Niccolò dell’Abate, Tibaldi, Sabbatini, Procaccini, Passerotti, and others exclusively study that torso, but the Carracci themselves, who drew it several times, and always sent their pupils to observe and study it, etc.” (p. 81).

Once again, development as opposed to rupture. The assumption is, however, clear: Francia was able to establish a canon of beauty that was a model for his successors quite independently of the study of ancient Greek and Roman statues. Most interesting is Galizzi Kroegel’s comment, based on other “Saint Sebastians” certainly by Francesco, that “Francia’s Saint Sebastian, which was a painted image originating solely from the artist’s own observation of human bodies in the flesh, did not convey that hard character intrinsic to ancient sculptures, something that Malvasia considered to be dangerously contagious among those who studied antiquities too intensively, including such painters as Raphael and Michelangelo. Malvasia called this hard character fare statuino, a wonderful neologism that he created in order to describe how Ludovico Carracci had not been at all impressed by the works of art he had seen during his only trip to Rome” (pp. 26-27).

Errors and Manipulations

Malvasia, in conclusion, could not stand Vasari’s claims about Francia’s death and immediately after transcribing the Aretine’s biography, he begins a long harangue that I cannot rehearse here for reasons of brevity, but which is – believe me - stupendous in the pursuit of a series of rhetorical questions that make manifest all Vasari’s contradictions. Cropper has rightly shown that here Carlo Cesare makes use of his forensic formation; it almost feels as if we are present at an interrogation in court, in which, inevitably, Perry Mason ends by revealing the guilty party (and even Vasari, had he been alive, would have confessed). Completing the “investigation” are a letter sent by Raphael to the Bolognese artist on 5 September 1508, and the sonnet written by Francia in honor of Sanzio, the authenticity of which has been much doubted from the beginning of the 19th century on. John Shearman, for example, in his monumental compilation of documents that cite Raphael before 1602, maintains that the letter is a forgery. I’ll speak of that later. It seems rather interesting to me to ask if, in upholding his cases, Malvasia did not make mistakes, or manipulate the documents. The reply, without doubt, is yes. The main mistake was in prolonging Francesco Francia’s life at least up to 1526, yet this is an excusable error. Malvasia was led to this (in addition to his wish to prove his points) from reading in the chronicle of the “exact” Antonio Masini that the altarpiece for the Felicini Chapel in San Francesco (not to be confused with the so-called Pala Felicini by Francesco) was completed in 1526. This was true: but the work was by Francesco’s sons Giacomo and Giulio, and not by him, as then thought.

Giacomo and Giulio Francia, Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and Saints Sebastian, Bernardino of Siena, Francis and George, and three Angels, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale (from the Felicini Chapel in the church of St. Francis, Bologna)
Source: https://www.pinacotecabologna.beniculturali.it/it/content_page/item/406-madonna-con-il-bambino-e-san-giovannino-fra-i-santi-sebastiano-bernardino-francesco-e-giorgio

Francesco Francia, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints John the Baptist, Monica, Augustine, Francis, Proculus, and Sebastian, and the Patron Bartolomeo Felicini (Felicini Altarpiece), Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale
Source: https://www.pinacotecabologna.beniculturali.it/it/content_page/item/296-madonna-col-bambino-in-trono-i-santi-agostino-francesco-procolo-monica-giovanni-battista-sebastiano-il-donatore-felicini-e-un-angelo-musicante-br-pala-felicini

We don’t know, however, how the Bolognese historian came to date the Crucifixion in the church of Santo Stefano to 1520, but probably there was an inscription of some sort with the wrong date. In the same way, it is clear that Malvasia cited the Saint Sebastian, just mentioned, as executed in 1522 in perfectly good faith, whether mistaking the date or the author. More serious, it seems to me, is that Malvasia maintains that “Francia lived many more years and albeit quite aged, he changed his manner and improved his art so much that, had he been the same age as Raphael and not older than him, as he indeed was (he could almost have been his grandfather, and to be sure his father), I dare say he could have equaled him” (p. 81).

Beyond the hyperbole, it seems to me that the Bolognese writer is unconvincing in defining the new style that he speaks of, taking cover once again in the "pastosità del colorito e nella tenerezza dell’opere”, that is elements already laid out before.

Beyond the mistakes there are the manipulations. One is to be found right at the beginning of the biography. Malvasia begins to cite Vasari (from the proemio to the third part of the Vite) saying that he could not deny that “they took away that certain dry, harsh, and sharp manner” (p. 63). Here it seems that he his speaking of Francia and Perugino: but no. In fact, Vasari had referred to the ancient statues that “were the way to take away a certain dry, crude, and harsh manner” (see p.110, n.3). A not inconsequential detail, as one sees, that is justified on the basis of wanting to insert the two artists in the “maniera moderna” and not make them bring to an end that “dry” one, as Vasari says. In the Scritti originali, or in the preparatory materials, we find a phrase that the Bolognese writer penned first, and then evidently decided to cut, because he understood that it would have threatened several of his arguments. Malvasia testified, in fact, to being in possession of several letters exchanged between Francia and Raphael, and one in particular, in which the Bolognese artist “envied him the study of reliefs and statues, lamenting their scarcity in his homeland” (p. 177). This affirmation would have greatly weakened the praises given to Francia for establishing a canon of beauty that was his own, independently of ancient roman antiquity, and above all, far from the “fare statuino,” as we have seen. There are, in fact, a series of omissions, or manipulations, with which Carlo Cesare seeks to render his arguments more convincing and, I may say, this is quite normal for his times. This was surely true for Vasari, more than a century earlier, and Galizzi Kroegel doesn’t fail to underline the circumstance; for example, when the Tuscan reports a sharp remark launched by Michelangelo against the sons of Francia, Malvasia notes that he copied this from Condivi, who, in turn took this from a precedent in the Saturnalia of Macrobius. This is an extremely important observation from a methodological point of view, that shows the sharpness of Malvasia’s work: it reveals “the same enlightened approach to a given text, namely the understanding, or at least the intuition, that writing about the history of art tends to follow its own narrative strategies, employing canons and topoi that often go back to antiquity. In a way, Malvasia’s disenchanted approach to the texts by Vasari and Condivi, his suspicion that some stories of artists’ deaths in the Lives might have followed a certain pattern, and his understanding that the joke attributed to Michelangelo belonged to a well-established tradition in which an artist’s quick wit stands for his sharpness of mind and social confidence, make him in nuce a forerunner of modern scholarship” (p. 29).

The Charges of Falsification

Malvasia’s theories about the falsity of the circumstances of Francesco Francia’s death were, substantially, accepted by everyone (indeed, Lomazzo had immediately anticipated them, already writing in his day, that they were not true). Nobody questioned the fact that the artist died in 1526; nobody questioned the letter sent by Raphael to Francia, which showed that the two already knew each other in 1508 and had exchanged drawings and portrait, nor the authenticity of the sonnet composed by Francia in praise of the painter from Urbino. However, attention to Malvasia’s work immediately concentrated on the epithet “boccalaio urbinate” with which Malvasia defined Raphael. More generally, two different positions encountered each other: on the one side the narrative of Tuscan-Roman classicism (which find their spokesmen at the time in Baldinucci and Bellori), and the other the Bolognese. The winner is well known and I refer to the notes written as commentary to the first volume of the Cropper-Pericolo critical edition. It was only at the beginning of the 19th century, that the cult of the “divine Raphael” led all the documents that were potentially “disturbing” to be viewed with skepticism. Malvasia became the “anti-Raphael” par excellence, and all the documents that he had produced in the Felsina were held to be of doubtful provenance. Lorenzo Pericolo, in his notes to the critical edition of this volume does not fail to comment on this situation with bitterness. Malvasia was not a falsifier. The fact that the documents he cites are no longer to be found testifies only to the fact that they are lost. We know very well, furthermore, that he had a large collection of letters and that he put an immense amount of work into gathering material in preparation for the Felsina. This work resulted in the Scritti originali, where the Bolognese writer wrote that he possess various letters exchanged between Raphael and Francia. Why would he need to lie about this, dealing as he was with private papers? In one, as already mentioned, Francia laments not having seen Rome; it was cut from the printed text because it didn’t support Malvasia’s thesis: once again, why would he have written all this in is notes if he was a falsifier? The documents relating to Francia and included in the Scritti originali refer to 29 different archival sources. Why should Raphael’s letter, transcribed – as Malvasia says – from an original owned by Guidantonio Lambertini, be a fake? Why have we not been able to clearly identify who Guidantonio Lambertini was? Why is it lost? Also preserved in the Scritti originali is the transcription of Francia’s sonnet: from a philological point of view it is self-evident that we are dealing with a transcription and not a poetic composition invented by Malvasia. Why must it be false, when, in linguistic terms and in its content, it belongs perfectly to a literary climate typical of the Bolognese ambient of that period? Pericolo concludes, indeed, with bitterness, that any and every argument could be brought in favor of the authenticity of the texts, yet not be heard by those who do not want to hear: by those, that is to say, who stubbornly value the arguments from a purely Raphaelesque point of view without having the patience to read Malvasia, and to go deeply into his method of working. Another of the great supporters of the Bolognese erudite, that is to say Charles Dempsey, has written that the question of the authenticity of the letter is “the keystone to the entire hypothetical structure of a Malvasia falsario” (p. 34). This is absolutely correct, and it is really hard to understand why some critics continue to accuse him of forgery, denying his merits, which were great.

The Pupils of Francia

With the sudden death of Francia before the Saint Cecilia Vasari closes the season of Emilian (or “lombard” according to the definitions of the time) protoclassicism. Once again Malvasia, the Malvasia who could not accept the vision of history as rupture, rises up and accuses him of having deliberately obscured all his pupils, at the same time charging Bolognese historiography with the great crime of having left no trace of them. This is why he dwells with particular attention on the history of Francia’s school, making use, among other things, of the work records of the Bolognese artist, in which are listed the names of the pupils who frequented his shop, with dates of arrival and departure. The “vacchette” (this is the technical name of such documents) belonged, at that date, to a certain Raimondi and these too have been lost, but nobody has ever dreamed of doubting their trustworthiness and authenticity, It turns out from the “vacchette”, for example, that Timoteo Viti was Francia’s pupil between 2 September 1491 and 4 April 1495. Let’s be clear about this: Malvasia also makes mistakes here, the most obvious being to consider Giacomo and Giulio Francia cousins rather than brothers. But it’s easy to see, once again, we are dealing with errors that are perfectly logical, taking into account the documents at his disposal and the preceding art literature. Giacomo and Giulio, and not just Giovan Battista Francia, but also Timoteo Viti, Giovan Maria Chiodarolo and Lorenzo Costa: these are the names Malvasia extrapolates as the main pupils of Francesco, with the clear understanding that Lorenzo Costa stood out above the others, but with very confused ideas concerning his catalogue, as was also the case in Vasari’s Vite.

The limitations of Malvasia, seen with today’s eyes, are then evident, but they become understandable if placed in the context of the period. It should be underlined, rather, that concerning Giovanni Battista Francia (and again in this case the relationship to Francesco is wrong), Carlo Cesare documents his participation in the associative artistic life with his request (around 1575) to separate the category of painters from the “saddlers, scabbard- and sword-makers” (p. 96), at that time united in the “Compagnia delle Quattro Arti”, and the association with the, much older and more prestigious “Compagnia dei Bombasari”. At the end of the century, it would then be Ludovico Carracci who would obtain the separation from the Bombasari, and the creation of the Compagnia dei pittori (1602). Through Giovan Battista, in sum, Malvasia builds another bridge, the umpteenth, between Francia and the age of the Carracci, in view of that development in continuity that remains the highest methodological index of his historical method.