02 July 2014
The Triumph of Mannerism – Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino in Florence
De Triomf van het Maniërisme (The Triumph of European Mannerism), a mammoth (518 items) Council of Europe exhibition in Amsterdam in 1955 was the first comprehensive examination of Mannerism – the dominant, and previously overlooked, artistic style between the High Renaissance and the Baroque, roughly between 1520 to 1600. It was followed, a year later, by the Mostra del Pontormo e del primo manierismo fiorentino at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, on Pontormo and early Florentine Mannerist art. In 1972, L’École de Fontainebleau, an exhaustive (705 items) examination of French Mannerism, largely indebted to Italian artists working for Francis I, completed the trio of major exhibitions that led to a proliferation of monographs, conference proceedings and exhibitions on Mannerism which continues unabated. In the first half of 2014 alone there was a rich crop of Mannerist shows: El Greco in Toledo and Madrid (one on his library and one on his influence on modern art), Pontormo drawings in Madrid, and Baccio Bandinelli and Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino in Florence.
Pontormo & Rosso Fiorentino: diverging paths of Mannerism revisits the subject of the 1956 Florence exhibition. It follows the stylistic development of these two leading artists of early Florentine Mannerism in roughly chronological order but with separate sections on their portrait paintings and their drawings (they were both remarkable draughtsmen). They had much in common, both temperamentally and artistically. They were ‘born under Saturn’ (i.e. they were eccentric, restless, and anguished) and were influenced by Michelangelo’s paintings and by Northern Renaissance prints, especially Dürer’s.
The exhibition, as its title indicates, also aims to demonstrate that, after their common beginnings in the workshop of Andrea del Sarto, the careers of the two artists took different directions. Pontormo enjoyed the protection of the Medici family for the rest of his life,whereas Rosso, thanks to his republican inclinations, was forced to lead a peripatetic existence, working in various artistic centres in Tuscany and also in Rome and Naples before going to France, where he spent his last ten years in the court of Francis I, becoming one of the key figures of the School of Fontainebleau. This last period of Rosso’s output, though examined in the catalogue, is largely omitted in the exhibition as it was the subject of a major show in the Château de Fontainebleau last year which demonstrated the far-reaching influence Rosso’s allegorical decorations exerted, through prints, on subsequent generations of artists. The present exhibition includes, nevertheless, two contrasting, examples from Rosso’s French years, his Pietà and Bacchus, Venus and Cupid, the first tragic and austere, the second erotic and voluptuous.
Rosso Fiorentino, Pietà (ca 1538-40). Paris, Musée du Louvre. Image from Wikimedia Commons
Rosso Fiorentino Bacchus, Venus and Cupid (ca 1535-39). Luxembourg, Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art. Image from Wikimedia Commons
The exhibition is a feast for the eyes. It opens spectacularly with three enormous detached frescoes, by Andrea del Sarto, Rosso, and Pontormo, from the atrium of the Church of SS Annunziata, all newly restored for the exhibition. Numerous other works have also been cleaned recently, sometimes with unexpected results – the cleaning of Rosso’s The Marriage of the Virgin has made St Joseph, traditionally depicted as an elderly man, look even more youthful whereas the head of a donkey, previously obscured by layers of grime, has been revealed in the background of Pontormo’s magnificent Visitation.
Rosso Fiorentino, The Marriage of the Virgin (Ginori Altarpiece) 1523. Florence, Basilica di san Lorenzo (Image from Artemagazine)
Pontormo, Visitation (ca 1528-29). Carmignano, Pieve di San Michele Archangelo. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)
The Mannerist treasures in churches and museums in Florence and surroundings are
overwhelming. They include Pontormo’s most famous work, his otherworldly Deposition/Lamentation, in the church of Santa Felicita and his beautiful lunette fresco decoration of Vertumnus and Pomona, in the Medici country villa at Poggio a Caiano. Palazzo Pitti has the world’s most important collection of Andrea del Sarto paintings, the Uffizi an incomparable collection of paintings by Bronzino, Pontormo’s pupil and himself the subject of a memorable exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi four years ago. Bronzino’s frescoes for the Chapel of Eleonora da Toledo are in the Palazzo Vecchio where several rooms were decorated by Giorgio Vasari, Johannes Stradanus, and Francesco Salviati and other artists of the second generation of Florentine Mannerists.
Chris Michaelides, Curator Italian and Modern Greek
A Select Bibliography of Florentine Mannerism and the École de Fontainebleau
Pontormo, Rosso and Mannerism in Florence
Pontormo e Rosso: atti del convegno di Empoli e Volterra progetto Appiani di Piombino. [Congress held on Sept. 22, 1994 in Empoli and on Sept. 23-24, 1994 in Volterra]. (Florence, 1996). YA.1998.b.216.
L’Officina della maniera: varietà e fierezzanell’arte fiorentinadel Cinquecento fra le due repubbliche, 1494-1530. (Venice, 1996). YA.2000.b.284.
Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence (exh. cat., ed. by C. B. Strehlke; Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A., 2004–5). m04/.37453
Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino: diverging paths of mannerism / edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali. (Florence, 2014). LF.31.b.10009.
Pontormo
Mostra del Pontormo e del primo manierismo fiorentino : [tenuta al] Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, marzo-luglio 1956. (Florence, 1956). YV.1989.a.419.
Pontormo: disegni degli Uffizi / catalogo di Carlo Falciani. (Florence, 1996). WP.4334. v.79.
Pontormo, dibujos (Fundación Mapfre, Madrid, 12 de febrero-11 de mayo de 2014) [comisariado, Kosme de Barañano] (Madrid, 2014). LF.31.b.11064
Rosso Fiorentino
Cecile Scaillierez, Rosso. Le Christ mort. (Paris, 2004). YF.2014.b.2174
Antonio Natali, Rosso Fiorentino: leggiadra maniera e terribilità di cose stravaganti. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2006). LF.31.b.3723.
Le roi et l'artiste: François Ier et Rosso Fiorentino : Château de Fontainebleau, du 23 mars au 24 juin 2013 / commissariat, Thierry Crépin-Leblond, Vincent Droguet. (Paris, [2013]) YF.2014.b.420.
Bronzino
Janet Cox-Rearick, Bronzino’s Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio. (Berkeley, 1993). YK.1994.c.10.
Bronzino: artist and poet at the court of the Medici / edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali. (Florence, 2010). LC.31.b.8601.
Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: the transformation of the Renaissance portrait in Florence / Carl Brandon Strehlke; with essays by Elizabeth Cropper ... [et al.]. (University Park, Pa, 2004). LC.31.b.2261.
Cellini
John Pope Hennessy, Cellini (London, 1985). L.45/3693.
École de Fontainebleau
L’École de Fontainebleau [catalogue of the exhibition in the Musée du Louvre and the Galeries nationales d'exposition du Grand Palais]. (Paris, 1972). X.410/5309.
Primatice: maître de Fontainebleau: Paris, Musée du Louvre, 22 septembre 2004-3 janvier 2005. (Paris, 2004). YF.2006.b.1071
Dominique Cordellier, Luca Penni, un disciple de Raphaël à Fontainebleau. (Paris, 2012). LF.31.a.4504.
Xavier Salmon, Fontainebleau, le temps des Italiens ([Heule?], 2013)]. LF.31.b.9839
Francesco Salviati
Francesco Salviati et la bella maniera: actes des colloques de Rome et Paris. (Rome, 2001). Ac.5233.a/284.
Francesco Salviati (1510-1563) ou, La bella maniera / sous la direction de Catherine Monbeig Goguel. (Paris, 1998). LB.31.b.17992.
Andrea del Sarto
Andrea del Sarto, 1486-1530: dipinti e disegni a Firenze : [catalogo della mostra a] Firenze, Palazzo Pitti, ... nov. 1986-mar. 1987. (Milan, 1986). YV.1987.b.798.
Giorgio Vasari
Patricia Lee Rubin, Giorgio Vasari: art and history. (New Haven; London, 1995). YC.1995.b.4896.
Giorgio Vasari disegnatore e pittore, a cura di Alessandro Cecchi. (Skira, 2011). LF.31.b.8051
Pontormo, Vertumnus and Pomona ( 1519-21) Poggio a Caiano, Villa medicea. Image from Wikimedia Commons
16 June 2014
Italian Studies Library Group Annual Lecture, 30 June 2014
On Monday 30 June the distinguished writer and broadcaster Gaia Servadio will give this year’s ISLG lecture, ‘Luchino Visconti, Theatre and Opera: a Legacy’ at the British Library. Gaia Servadio’s writings are wide ranging: as well as works of fiction she has published many books, on subjects including archaeology, history, politics and social studies, literature, music and the theatre, and she is also well-known as a journalist. Her 28th book, the autobiographical Raccogliamo le vele, was published earlier this year by Feltrinelli in Milan.
Gaia Servadio’s biography of Luchino Visconti (London, 1981; X.950/13855) is one of her best-known works. Visconti, a famous film director was also an innovative and, at times, controversial theatre and opera director. It is this aspect of his career that this lecture, which will be richly illustrated, will examine.
Luchino Visconti rehearsing La Vestale, La Scala, 1954. Photo: Erio Piccagliani. ©Teatro alla Scala
Wine and light refreshments will be served after the lecture, which is generously supported by Casalini Libri.
Attendance is free but registration is required If you plan to come please email [email protected] and type ‘ISLG Lecture’ in the subject line
Information Date: Monday, June 30, 2014
Opening time: 6pm
Venue: Brontë Room, The British Library Conference Centre, 96 Euston Road
Chris Michaelides, Curator Italian & Modern Greek
23 May 2014
Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages
The annual Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages will take place at the British Library on Monday 2 June in the Eliot Room of the Library’s Conference Centre.
Despite its rather specific title, the seminar always covers a range of topics in the fields of bibliography, printing, book history and publishing history, and this year we have a typically varied and interesting programme:
11.00 Registration and Coffee
11.45 ELIZABETH UPPER (Warburg Institute, University of London), Reconstructing Early Modern Workshop Practice for Colour Printing, c.1490-1630
12.30 Lunch (Own arrangements).
1.45 JOHN DUNKLEY, The Marriage of Gradgrind and Marple: Editing Eighteenth-Century French plays
2.30 GRAHAM WHITAKER (University of Glasgow), The ‘Science of Antiquity’ and the Nineteenth-Century Periodical in Germany.
3.15 Tea
3.45 NEIL HARRIS (University of Udine), Press Variants and Cancellantia in the First Edition of Alessandro Manzoni’s Promessi sposi (1825-26)
4.30 AENGUS WARD (University of Birmingham), Editing Alfonso X’s Estoria de Espanna
The Seminar will end at 5.15 pm.
The seminar is open to all and attendance is free, but please let Susan Reed ([email protected]) know if you would like to attend.
Printers at work; detail from the titlepage of Bernardus Mallinckrodt, De ortu ac progressu artis typographicæ dissertatio historica ... (Cologne, 1640) C.75.b.17.(1.)
19 May 2014
Christian Doctrine for Slavonic People: an early Bosnian and Herzegovinian printed book
Nauk krstjanski za narod slovinski (Venice 1611) C.38.e.40.
Nauk krstjanski za narod slovinski (‘Christian Doctrine for Slavonic People’) is an early Bosnian and Herzegovinian printed book, printed in Venice in 1611 by the Bosnian Franciscan Matija Divković (1563-1631). The book is a compilation from the catechisms published by Jacobus Ledisma (1519-1575) and Roberto Bellarmino, translated from Latin into Bosnian, arranged and interpreted by Divković. Divković’s typographical achievements and his Christian Doctrine will be discussed at the forthcoming Balkan Day seminar at the British Library on 13 June 2014.
On the title leaf above Divković explains that he wrote his book to be useful for both clerics and lay people. Under the image of the resurrected Christ, the imprint gives the place and the year of printing, the name and address of the printer, “Pietro-Maria Bertano by the church called Santa Maria Formosa”. The title leaf bears the ownership stamp of the British Museum Library, now the British Library, dated 10 January 1849, the date of purchase from the London bookselling firm of Rodd. This is the only known copy in Britain and the only edition from Bertano’s press in the British Library.
The image above shows Jesus preaching to his apostles. The text on this leaf and the rest of the Christian Doctrine identifies Divković’s book as a typical work of the Counter-Reformation aimed at the revival of the Roman Catholic Church.
Here Divković explains that he translated the sacred texts into a “real and true Bosnian language” and further on he mentions “Slavonic language as in Bosnia Slavonic is spoken”. For Divković Bosnian, Slavonic and “our language”, the term he uses throughout the book, are synonyms for one language which is spoken by the people in Bosnia.
The Cyrillic alphabet in the book is printed, in Divković’s words, using “Serbian characters” but Divković’s Cyrillic has at least ten specific characters of this minuscule Cyrillic alphabet, sometimes referred to as Bosnian Cyrillic (Bosančica); for example Divković uses a vertical rectangle symbol for the Cyrillic character ‘в’ (v).
Divković writes mainly in the Jekavian (jekavica) variant of the Štokavian dialect with some Ikavian (ikavica) words added to it. In the Italian imprimatur printed in the Christian Doctrine the language and the alphabet are referred to as Illyric: “in lingua Illirica, & carattere Illirico di Fra Mattheo de Bossna”.
Divković’s Štokavian dialect was widely spoken in the lands which are today Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia, representing one linguistic entity between Slovenian in the west and the Bulgarian in the east.
The above image shows Divković’s other work Sto čudesa (‘One Hundred Miracles’) bound together with the Christian Doctrine but foliated separately. The British Library has an intact copy in octavo format (Venice, 1611; C.38.e.40.). Both parts of the book have numerous misprints, which is understandable since Divković had his Cyrillic letters moulded in Venice by printers who didn’t know the language or the alphabet. A list of corrections is given at the end of the volume.
The One Hundred Miracles is Divković’s free translation of Johann Herolt’s Sermones Discipuli de tempore et de sanctis, cum exemplorum promptuario, ac miraculis Beatae Mariae Virginis.
Divković’s book contains 12 woodcuts, 10 in Christian Doctrine and two in One Hundred Miracles. The image of the Annunciation shown here is printed on the verso of One Hundred Miracles’s title leaf which has the motif of a stork feeding with the inscription “Pietas homini tutissima virtus” (Piety is the surest virtue of man).
Divković’s significance lies in the fact that his works have been widely researched and studied as part of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian, Croatian and Serbian written heritage to the present day. Most recently, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first imprint, the Bosna Srebrena Cultural and Historical Institute in Sarajevo published a critical edition of Christian Doctrine and One Hundred Miracles transcribed into Croatian as Nauk kristijanski za narod slovinski and Sto čudesa aliti zlamen'ja Blažene i slavne Bogorodice, Divice Marije. This critical edition was published together with a facsimile of the edition of Divković’s book printed by Pietro-Maria Bertano in Venice in 1611.
The language of his book, the Štokavian dialect, became the basis of the literary languages developed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia in the 19th century. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Divković’s importance goes beyond the religious doctrine and church teachings that he spread in his homeland. His main legacy is his reputation as the first Bosnian typographer who printed the first Bosnian book in the language spoken by the people in Bosnia and in an alphabet that anyone in Bosnia could read.
Divković is the author of four books; all are compilations from Christian literature popular in his time. The above image is a title-leaf of Christian Doctrine known as a “little Christian doctrine” (mali Nauk) printed in Venice 1616. The current research has identified 25 editions of this hugely popular small (16°) format of the work.
The British Library holds a copy printed by Marco Ginami (Venice, 1640-41; C.52.a.7.). It consists of 15 different religious works in prose and verse collected in one volume; one of them is Christian Doctrine, shown here as a constituent part of the work that bears the same title. This copy is one of two copies known to be in existence in Britain. It was acquired in 1889 from Nikola Batistić, a theology scholar and professor from Zadar, Croatia.
Milan Grba, Lead Curator South-East European Collections
References
Đorđe Đorđević, „Matija Divković: prilog istoriji srpske književnosti XVII veka“. Glas Srpske kraljevske akademije LII (1896), LIII (1898), pp. [30]-139 and [1]-135. Ac.1131/3.
Ralph Cleminson. Cyrillic books printed before 1701 in British and Irish collections :a union catalogue. (London, 2000). 2708.h.903.
Matija Divković. Nauk kristijanski za narod slovinski : Sto čudesa aliti zlamen'ja Blažene i slavne Bogorodice, Divice Marije. Uvodna studija, rječnik i tumač imena Nauka kristijanskoga Darija Gabrić-Bagarić, Dolores Grmača, Maja Banožić. Uvodna studija, transkripcija, rječnik i tumač imena Sto čudesa Marijana Horvat. (Sarajevo, 2013) YF.2014.a.10503.
Matija Divković. Naūk karstianski za narodʹ slovinski /ovi naūkʹ Izdiačkoga iezika ispisa, privede i složi ū iezikʹ Slovinski Bogoćliūbni Bogoslovat︠s︡ʹ P.O. fra Matie Divkovićʹ. (Sarajevo, 2013) YF.2014.a.10504 [Facsimile of the 1611 edition printed in Venice]
12 March 2014
‘The Tin Book’
The British Library has over 70 books written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) as well as a number of his manuscripts and sound recordings. Several of these were included in the Library’s 2007-2008 exhibition Breaking the Rules: the Art of the European Avant-Garde, 1900-1937, of which Marinetti, the creator of Futurism and its indefatigable promoter until his death in 1944, was one of the protagonists.
The cover of Marinetti’s poem Zang Tumb Tumb (Milan, 1914). British Library 12331.f.57
The rarest and most unusual item in the Library’s Marinetti collection was, however, acquired in 2009, the centenary year of the founding of Futurism, with generous support from The Art Fund and the Friends of the British Library. It can currently be seen in the newly-refurbished Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library as part of a display of books bought with the help of the Friends to mark their 25th anniversary.
Cover of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti/Tullio d’Albisola Parole In Libertà Futuriste Olfattive Tattili Termiche (Rome, 1932). HS.74/2143
Known as ‘The Tin Book’, its proper title is Parole In Libertà Futuriste Olfattive Tattili Termiche (‘Futurist Words in Freedom - Olfactory, Tactile, Thermal’). It is the most radical example of experimentation in futurist book production, the culmination of earlier experiments in the use of metal in such publications as Depero futurista (1927) – also called the ‘bolted book’ as its pages are held together by two aluminium bolts – and the aluminium cover of the menu for the first Futurist banquet in 1931.
Fortunato Depero, Depero futurista, 1913-1927. (Milan, [1927]) RB.23.b.6897
Parole In Libertà Futuriste was the first of only two Futurist ‘lithotin’ books ever produced and a prime example of a ‘book-object’. It was created in 1932 by Marinetti and Tullio D’Albisola (pseudonym of Tullio Spartaco Mazzotti, 1899-1971), a second generation futurist poet, sculptor and ceramicist. The second tin book, L’ Anguria lirica (‘The lyrical watermelon’), was published in 1934 with poems by Tullio d’Albisola, drawings by Bruno Munari and Nicolai Diulgheroff, and a preface by Marinetti. Both books were printed in Savona by Lito-Latta, a tin products factory owned by Vincenzo Nosenzo, a former sea captain and a friend and patron of the Futurists who hoped that this publishing venture would earn him extra publicity as several copies of the book were intended for distribution to the political and cultural elite (of the 101 copies printed only 50 were offered for sale). Its publication was shared by Nosenzo's firm, which was responsible for the book's production and Marinetti's Futurist publishing house ‘Poesia’ in Rome.
Parole In Libertà Futuriste Olfattive Tattili Termiche, p.[27] showing the Lito-Latta logo.
The book is made entirely of tin with the text and colour designs lithographically reproduced on its 30 pages. It contains a selection of texts by Marinetti, written in the style of ‘words-in-freedom’, each accompanied, on the verso, by a design by Tullio d’Albisola highlighting a line or phrase from the poem. This arrangement means that simultaneous visual comparison of the text and its artistic interpretation is impossible. Some of the texts have a retrospective character, like the ‘Bombardamento di Adrianopoli’ which is a variant of the poem originally included in Zang Tumb Tumb in 1914; its illustration is likewise a variation on the cover of the earlier book.
Marinetti’s ‘Bombardamento di Adrianopoli’ and Tullio d’Albisola’s accompanying illustration, Parole In Libertà Futuriste Olfattive Tattili Termiche, p.[17-18]
A third tin book was produced some 50 years later in conjunction with the exhibition Futurismo & Futurismi in Venice in 1986. Issued in an edition of 200 copies, Farfa: Il Miliardario della fantasia, was a homage to the Futurist spirit of innovation and experimentation, and its production involved the same techniques used in the two earlier books. It had seven previously unpublished illustrations by Bruno Munari (who had also illustrated L’Anguria lirica), was also printed in Savona (albeit by a different publisher), and had the same number of pages as Marinetti’s Tin Book. It was also a tribute to Farfa (real name Vittorio Osvaldo Tommasini), the Futurist poet, painter, ceramicist, photographer and printmaker who, irony of ironies, in 1964 was run over and killed by a car, the archetypal futurist symbol of modernity.
Chris Michaelides, Curator Italian and modern Greek Section
References
Breaking the Rules: the Printed Face of the European Avant Garde, 1900-1937 (London, 2007) YC.2008.b.251.
Mirella Bentivoglio ‘Innovative Artist’s Books of Italian Futurism’ in International Futurism in Arts and Literature edited by Günter Berghaus (Berlin, 2000), pp. 473-486. YA.2002.a.8247.
Futurismo & Futurismi (Milan, 1986) YV.1986.b.694. [English edition (London, 1986) at YV.1987.b.2043.]
Silvia Bottaro, Vincenzo Nosenzo: prestidigitatore e re della latta (Turin, 2009).
18 November 2013
Between Sacred and Profane, Word and Image: Marcello Macedonio’s Le nove muse
Today he is practically forgotten, but at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, Marcello Macedonio (1582-1619) stood at the centre of Roman and Neapolitan literary life. He attended both the Accademia degli Umoristi (‘of the Humorists’) in Rome and the Accademia degli Oziosi (‘of the Leisurely ones’) in Naples, both the most prestigious literary centres of their respective cities.
Le nove muse, (‘The Nine Muses’), is a collection of his poems published in Naples in 1614. The volume is especially interesting for its characterful illustrations representing each of the muses. Engraving in Naples in the early17th century was less advanced than in other cities such as Rome and Venice. It is rare, therefore, to come across engravings of such quality produced in Naples during this period. The engraver was Giovanni Felice Paduano, active in Naples in the early 17th century, about whom practically nothing is known; and surviving works that can be attributed to him are few.
It is interesting how the engravings correspond to the themes of the poetry. Notice how in the depiction of Erato, muse of love poetry, Cupid’s bow and arrow make the same shape as the muse’s bow and violin. This refers to the captivating quality of music (and poetry), which was often compared to the power of love. Yet the section devoted to Erato is entitled ‘Gli amori di Cristo e della Croce’ (‘The Loves of Christ and of the Cross’).
‘Erato’ from Marcello Macedonio, Le nove muse (Naples: G. Ruardo, 1614). British Library shelfmark C.47.d.16
The juxtaposition of the engraving of Erato and the poem about religious devotion betrays the confused relationship between sacred and profane concepts in elite Italian society during this period. The overall structure of the volume also betrays this ambiguity. It begins with a poem entitled ‘Sogno di Scipione’ (‘Dream of Scipione’) – referring to the volume’s dedicatee, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V. It ends with a poem entitled ‘Per una dama nel piglar i bagni’ (‘For a Lady Taking a Bath’). Likewise, the muse to which the first section is devoted, Clio, is shown covered in clothing, whereas, Thalia, in the final section, is shown scantily dressed and bare-breasted.
‘Clio’ from Le nove muse
‘Thalia’ from Le nove muse
Tom Denman, Italian Academies Project
11 November 2013
How the Georgian language first appeared in print
After the fall of Byzantium, Georgia was broken into several kingdoms and was encircled by hostile Muslim powers and weakened by constant invasions and internal conflicts. Consequently, in the 16th-17th centuries Georgia was no longer a cultural meeting ground for east and west, but became a country squeezed between the difficult conditions of rivalry between Turkey and Persia for domination over Transcaucasia. The King of East Georgia, Teimuraz I, sent Niceforo Irbach to Italy and Spain as the Georgian envoy to seek allies and to ask for assistance in holding off the Turks and Persians. The ambassadorial mission did not have much political success, but it did bring about a significant cultural event – the printing of the first Georgian book.
During his stay at the Vatican, Niceforo Irbach collaborated with Catholic scholars and missionaries to produce a Georgian-Italian vocabulary, as well as a brief collection of prayers in colloquial Georgian.
The first Georgian books were published by the Propaganda Fide Press of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith which was established in Rome in 1622 for the purpose of spreading Catholicism in non-Catholic countries.
Georgia adopted Christianity in the very early centuries and the resulting Georgian Orthodox Church, founded in the fourth century AD, has been in communion with the Eastern Christian Churches but has never been subject to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.
A general idea of the political situation in Italy at that time and the status and purpose of the Vatican agencies happened to be of direct relevance to the activities of the Georgian king’s envoy during his stay in Rome. The newly-established Catholic missions required manuals of the foreign language and devotional texts for their operations.
In 1629 the Congregation managed to cast Georgian type in moulds and to issue a ‘Georgian alphabet with prayers’ that was followed by the publication of the ‘Georgian-Italian Dictionary’. Achille Venerio, a member of the ‘Propaganda Fide’, sent the printed dictionary with its Georgian alphabet to Pope Urban VIII along with a ‘Dedication’ in which he described Georgian letters as ‘very refined and beautiful.’
Title-page of Stefano Paolini and Niceforo Irbach’s Dittionario giorgiano e italiano (Rome, 1629) 622.e.34.(2.)
The missionaries were taught Georgian by Niceforo Irbach, who was responsible for the Georgian version of these present works. They accordingly provided a relatively easy first attempt at translation between the two languages.
Alphabetum ibericum, sive georgianum: cum Oratione [Iberian or Georgian alphabet with prayers] is one of the first of two books printed in Georgian using moveable type. The book includes a table with the Georgian alphabet and the sounds signified by its letters and their Latin equivalents. The text begins with the thirty-six letters of the Iberian or Georgian alphabet, presented in four columns - formation, name (in both alphabets) and force. Some letters have additional italic comments at the side, referring to and giving the same phoneme in other languages including Arabic, Hebrew and Greek, entailing the use of type in 5 completely different alphabets on a single page. The second subsection explains the numerous ligatures when Georgian letters are combined. The third section exemplifies the use of Georgian by setting out the text of The Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary, Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds, Corporal Works of Mercy, the Seven Sacraments, and the Ten Commandments, concluding with the Canticle of the Virgin Mary. The text is given in Georgian and titles are in both languages, Latin and Georgian.
A page of the alphabet with Roman transliteration from Alphabetum ibericum, sive georgianum (Rome, 1629) 621.b.4. (12.)
Dittionario giorgiano e italiano, compiled by Niceforo Irbach and the printer Stepano Paolini, contains 3,084 entries written in Georgian letters. The text is printed in three columns: Georgian words in the left column, Italian transliterations (including stress) in the middle column, and an explanation of the meaning of each word in Italian in the right column. The Georgian alphabet and the Latin equivalents of each of its letters appear on pages 1–2.
The first page of the Dittionario giorgiano e italiano
Anna Chelidze, Curator Georgian Studies
08 November 2013
D'Annunzio - Defiant Archangel and Pike
Last week the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction was awarded to The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio: poet, seducer and preacher of war by Lucy Hughes-Hallett (London, 2013; YC.2013.a.15393).
The winning work, published on the 150th anniversary of D’Annunzio’s birth, was described by Martin Rees, the chair of the judges, as “A biography of an extraordinary man, a repellent man (the judges said), playwright, poet, novelist, war hero, womaniser, nationalist politician, and the man who in many ways invented Fascism. Everything that Mussolini learnt about parades and black-shirts and the extent to which politics is a branch of theatre he got from Gabriele D’Annunzio whose career peaked in 1919 when he led a hundred Italian army deserters into the Croatian town Fiume and tried to seize it for Italy.”
The ensuing flurry in the press predictably highlighted the scandalous and sensationalist elements in D’Annunzio. There was, however, general agreement that though he may have been repellent, profligate and promiscuous, D’Annunzio was never dull and he is, consequently, a splendid subject for a biography.
D'Annunzio (ca. 1896) and his distinctive signature. From G. di Propezio, Gabriele d'Annunzio (Rome, 1896). 11876.pp.3
This is, in fact, the second biography of the poet to have been published in Great Britain in the last 15 years. John Woodhouse’s Gabriele D’Annunzio: Defiant Archangel (Oxford, 1998; YC.1999.a.3656), adopted a largely chronological narrative approach, from D’Annunzio’s early life in the Abruzzi, his first steps as a society journalist in Rome, his years in France, his activities during the First World War , the invasion and annexation of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) in 1919 when he was associated with the elite Arditi storm troops of the Italian Army, to the final years in the Vittoriale, the hillside estate on Lake Garda where the writer lived from 1922 until his death in 1938, which is now his house-museum and mausoleum.
The Vittoriale (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Woodhouse’s work was the first fully documented biography of D’Annunzio, making use of thousands of newly-catalogued documents (especially those conserved in the Vittoriale) and it attempted to provide an objective and balanced appraisal of the man.
Hughes-Hallett, on the other hand, eschews chronology, adopting a thematic rather than a chronological structure, and a kaleidoscopic narrative technique more common in fiction-writing than in biography. In her own words: “I have raced through decades and slowed right down, on occasion, to record in great detail a week, a night, a conversation. To borrow terms from music … I have alternated legato narrative with staccato glimpses of the man and fragments of his thought” (p. 16). Unlike the detailed notes and excellent bibliography in Woodhouse, the present work has only a select bibliography and does not include precise page references.
Like Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the indefatigable promoter of Futurism, D’Annunzio was theatrical, preposterous, charismatic, a great self-publicist and propagandist, a skilful manipulator of the media to ensure reaching a mass audience. Both men also shared a passion for motor cars and aeroplanes: one of D’Annunzio’s, most impressive wartime exploits was “the flight over Vienna”, a 700-mile round trip he undertook on 9 August 1918 to drop propaganda leaflets on Vienna.
The image of both men has also been tainted by their early association with Fascism, though their relations with Mussolini were often ambiguous. It should also be remembered that, although D’Annunzio had a strong influence on Mussolini’s ideology, he never became directly involved in fascist government politics.
Unlike Marinetti, however, D’Annunzio was a notorious womaniser, who often incorporated details of his love affairs into his works, completely disregarding the feelings of the women involved. His mistresses included the great actress Eleonora Duse, the ballerina Ida Rubinstein, and the eccentric heiress Luisa Casati.
Small wonder, therefore, that D’Annunzio’s writings have been overshadowed and compromised, especially outside Italy, by his flamboyant and sensationalist elements in his life. Additionally, his literary reputation suffered by early translations of his works into English that often appeared in bowdlerized versions. A typical example is that of D’Annunzio’s first novel Il Piacere, (Milan, 1889; 12471.h.20). This masterly evocation of Rome and Roman high society in the 1880s, much influenced by Huysman’s A rebours, has only been available in English as The Child of Pleasure (London, 1898; 12471.k.25), a heavily sanitized version which also omitted many of the original aesthetic reflections that play such an important role in the original. The forthcoming new translation of the novel will hopefully give a fairer idea of the original, one of the great novels of the Decadent movement. It is also hoped that the interest aroused by award of the Johnson Prize to the new biography will prompt further translations of D’Annunzio.
And for those wondering about the title of Hughes-Hallet’s biography, it is a reference to Romain Rolland’s description of D’Annunzio as a pike – a predatory fish lurking, afloat and still, waiting for ideas on which to pounce, swallow them, and express them better himself, making them his own: a testimony to the wide variety of D’Annunzio’s enormous output.
Chris Michaelides, Curator Italian and Modern Greek Studies
References:
Annamaria Andreoli (ed.) D’Annunzio: l’uomo, l’eroe, il poeta (Rome, 2001) LB.31.b.24190.
D’Annunzio, Gabriele, Notturno. Translated and annotated by Stephen Sartarelli. (New Haven, 2011) YC.2012.a.19881
The cover of D'Annunzio's first published work, Canto Novo (Rome, 1882). 1568/7016
14 October 2013
Verdi and Wagner: two composers, two bicentenaries, four portraits
The bicentenaries of the births of Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) and Richard Wagner (1813-1883) are being magnificently commemorated in various countries, though not without the occasional controversy. Last December, La Scala’s decision to open its season not with a Verdi opera but with Wagner’s Lohengrin was seen as ‘a blow for national pride in a moment of crisis’; this summer’s Proms were also widely criticised for programming seven Wagner operas (including a complete Ring Cycle) and none by Verdi, who was represented only by a concert of choral music and half a concert of tenor arias. It has to be said, though, that during this anniversary year the BBC is broadcasting the complete works of both composers and that Verdi is more in evidence this autumn in the weeks around the exact anniversary of his birth on 10 October. Finally, the inauguration of La Scala’s new season with La traviata will hopefully restore national pride (even though it will have a German Violetta)!
The anniversary has also engendered innumerable discussions about the relative merits of these two towering figures, embodiments of the cultures of their respective nations. Verdi’s status as the symbol of the Risorgimento, has recently been been questioned. Even more unexpected is the revelation that at times during the Third Reich Verdi’s operas were more performed in Germany than Wagner’s.
I would like commemorate this bicentenary year with a brief, and uncontroversial, look at portraits of the two composers in old age, painted in the 1880s and 1890s, Verdi by Giovanni Boldini, and Wagner by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931) was an immensely successful society portrait painter. He was one of the ‘Italians in Paris’ who worked in the orbit of Degas and his two portraits of Verdi were painted in the spring of 1886, during the composer’s brief visit to Paris to hear the baritone Victor Maurel, who went on to create the roles of Iago and Falstaff, in the composer’s last two operas. The first portrait was the larger, more official and sober oil painting which Verdi later presented to the Rest Home for Musicians, which he himself had founded.
Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi seated. 1886. Milan, Oil on canvas.
Boldini, who was dissatisfied with that first portrait, invited Verdi to a second sitting in which the pastel portrait in a top hat and a scarf knotted at his neck, was finished in just three hours.
Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931) Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi in a Top Hat. 1886. Rome, Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna. Pastel on board.
It is a more delicate, informal and lively work, and Boldini liked it so much that he kept it in his studio, refusing to sell it to eager buyers (including the Prince of Wales). He lent it, however, to various important exhibitions and its fame spread, especially after Verdi’s publisher Giulio Ricordi commissioned an etching after it. In 1918 Boldini finally presented it to the Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna in Rome. It is now one of the most reproduced portraits of Verdi.
Renoir’s portrait of Wagner (now in the Musée d’Orsay) was painted just one year before the composer’s death
Pierre-Auguste Renoir Portrait of Richard Wagner. 15 January 1882 Paris, Musée d’Orsay.
The artist, whose circle of friends included numerous Wagner enthusiasts at a time of considerable anti-German feeling in France after the Franco-Prussian War, was in Naples when he received a commission from a French music lover, the magistrate Antoine Lascoux, to paint a portrait of the composer. After several misadventures on his journey to Palermo, amusingly recounted in a letter to a friend, he was finally received by Wagner, who was staying at the Grand Hotel et des Palmes.
The portrait was painted in just 35 minutes, on 15 January 1882, two days after Wagner had completed the orchestral score of Parsifal. The session, also documented in Cosima Wagner’s diary, was by all accounts a jovial occasion, though Renoir was very nervous and was shocked by Wagner’s comments about painting and his anti-Semitic remarks. Wagner was amused by Renoir’s nervousness and grimacing while painting, and commented that the portrait made him look like ‘a protestant pastor’ (in Renoir’s account) or ‘the embryo of an angel, an oyster swallowed by an epicure’ (in Cosima’s).
A copy of the 1882 portrait was commissioned by another French Wagner enthusiast, Paul-Alfred Chéramy. This version (now in the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra National de Paris) is smaller and sketchier than the original.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir Portrait of Richard Wagner. 1893. Paris, Musée del’Opéra.
Renoir visited Bayreuth in 1896 but was bored by the length of the operas. Moreover, he detested the new development of performances taking place in a darkened auditorium that deprived him the pleasure of observing the activities of other spectators.
This celebration of these two great composers will, however, have to end on a sad note – the recent death of Patrice Chéreau. Chéreau’s 1976 centenary production of the Ring cycle in Bayreuth is now, like Giorgio Strehler’s productions of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra and Macbeth, the stuff of operatic legend.
Chris Michaelides, Curator Italian and Modern Greek studies
References:
Barbara Ehrlich White, Renoir, his life, art, and letters. (New York, 2010) LC.31.b.8596
Jean Renoir, Renoir, my father (London, 1962) 7852.s.52.
Boldini / a cura di Francesca Dini, Fernando Mazzocca, Carlo Sisi. (Venice, 2005) YF.2006.b.182
Cosima Wagner, Die Tagebücher, ediert und kommentiert von Martin Gregor-Dellin und Dietrich Mack (Munich, 1976-1977) X:439/4604
09 October 2013
The British Library & British Museum Singers celebrate Verdi’s Birthday
Join the British Library and British Museum Singers for this performance on 10 October to mark the 200th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth on 10 October 1813.
When: 13.00-13.40, Thursday 10 October 2013
Where: Entrance Hall, British Library, St Pancras
Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi by Giovanni Boldini, 1886, from Wikimedia Commons
This free event will be conducted by Peter Hellyer and accompanied by Giles Ridley.
The programme will include these choruses and arias from Verdi operas:
Chorus of Hebrew slaves (Nabucco)
Brindisi (La traviata) - solos: Andrew Bale, Hidemi Hatada
Chorus of Scottish refugees (Macbeth)
Matadors’ chorus (La traviata)
Soldiers’ chorus (Il trovatore)
Rataplan (La forza del destino)- solo Kirsten Johnson
Triumphal scene (Aida)
Please come and join in the repeat of Va, pensiero (Chorus of Hebrew slaves) from Nabucco at the end of the concert.
The British Library & British Museum Singers perform four concerts a year in the British Library, the British Museum or St Pancras Church. Wherever possible it links its programmes to current exhibitions and features items held by the British Library or the British Museum. This year it has given concerts celebrating the anniversaries of Benjamin Britten (Britten and Purcell) and Verdi (Verdi and Monteverdi). On 10 October in the British Library Entrance Hall we will be repeating some of Verdi’s best-known choruses on the actual day of his birth. Our next concert entitled “A French Connection” will mark the 50th anniversary of Francis Poulenc’s death and will include his Gloria and songs set to words by Apollinaire. This concert will take place on Thursday 21 November in St Pancras Church at 1.15.
The operas of Verdi were all the rage in Russia in the 1860s. La forza del destino which features in our celebration was in fact first performed in the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre of St. Petersburg, Russia on 22nd November 1862. After further revisions it was performed in Rome, Madrid, New York and London and elsewhere. It was the version after further revisions, with additions by Antonio Ghislanzoni which premiered in La Scala in 1869 that became the standard performance version. One of the notable celebrations of Verdi’s anniversary in Russia this year has been at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
Peter Hellyer, Musical Director British Library & British Museum Singers and Curator Russian Studies
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