What traces of handwriting reveals about the history of Giovan Paolo Lomazzo’s Trattato
The father of art history, Giorgio Vasari, was the initiater to a flood of publications on art and art history. His Vite (full title: Le vite de più eccellenti architetti, pittori et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri), published in 1550, consists of biographies of artists, which are divided into three chronological sections, roughly corresponding to the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Vasari’s Vite proved to be highly influential and after him, an endless amount of writers tried their hand on writing a treatise on art.
In the basement of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, safely locked away, lies a collection of 500 rare books, in which a few of these treatises on art can be found. One of them stands out because of the radiant red colour on the edge of the book. It is the Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura, from the Milanese painter, poet and minor noble Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, published in 1585.
Giovan Paolo Lomazzo
Lomazzo was born in 1538 in Milan. By the age of 10, the young Giovan (as he called himself) was taken to a master who taught him to draw, which would eventually lead to his career as a painter. Unfortunately he turned blind by the age of 33, causing him to turn his attention to writing about the profession and art in general. During his lifetime Lomazzo published four books: Trattato dell’Arte della Pittura (1584), Rime (1587), Idea del tempio della Pittura (1590) and Della forma delle Muse (1591), all published by P.G. Pontio in Milan. Given the fact that the Trattato and the Idea are published six years apart, and that the Trattato is mainly concerned with rules or techniques, while the Idea focuses on theory, one could assume that the books stand separately. However, the books are actually two parts of the same work: the Idea employs similar and additional sources to the Trattato and together they form a multiple times revised, long treatise on establishing painting as a microcosmic equivalent of cosmic perfection.
The Rime is a large volume of verse, including an autobiography and poems about Lomazzo’s life, work, friends and interests. This work shows that Lomazzo played an active role in the varied intellectual life of Milan, including humanist circles. The two treatises on art, Trattato and Idea, can best be understood against this humanist background. Apart from attending humanist circles, Lomazzo was also a Mannerist; the two treatises helped define the Mannerist artist’s self-conscious relation to his art.
Il Trattato
The Trattato contains a guide to picture making, including a theoretical and historical preface, and is followed by seven books on proportion, movement, colour, light, perspective, composition and form. Lomazzo demonstrates that the primary and most important activity of a painter is intellectual – the painter could form his ideas through contemplation. The manual activity following it, the painting of the picture, is simply the execution of the mentally conceived ideas. With this, he extended to painters the dignity that was, up to that moment, only enjoyed by rhetoricians and poets.
Trattato does not contain any illustrations, although they are referred to in the chapters. However, there is an explanation to this, which he himself gives in Rime: ‘And since I became blind during that period [of writing], I could not add the plates of explanatory drawings, to the art of painting which I had composed; they would have explained the precepts’.
The book was originally published in 1584 by Paolo Gottardo Pontio in Milan, who published four editions of the work, each time with some slight changes in the title page or the list of errata at the end of the work. The copy found in the library of the KNIR seems to be the fourth edition, since the first three editions were published in 1584 and this edition is published a year after the original publishing date. It is also the first in which the title has been changed from Trattato dell’Arte de la Pittura to Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura.
Different hands in the Trattato
What catches the eye of anyone who opens this specific copy, is the title page. At first sight, it is no different than other books. What makes this title page stand out, is that there are three different traces of handwriting, which could tell us something about the person who possessed the book previous to the KNIR.
Likely the oldest, and most interesting handwriting is the one that consists of two words which are scratched out. The words form a name, which is also written on page 211 and page 699, and reads ‘Mariano Smiriglio’. Signore Smiriglio was an architect for the Senate in Palermo and lived between 1561 and 1636. Given the time in which signore Smiriglio lived, it is quite possible he owned a copy of the Trattato. An explanation for why signore Smiriglio owned the Trattato is the fact that he was enthusiast of Mannerist art. Since Mannerism could also be applied in architecture, it makes sense that Smiriglio owned a Mannerist-inspired volume.
On the bottom of the page there is a line, which seems to be written in Italian, in brownish ink. Although this hand reappears later in the volume, at page 211, the only thing that can be read is ‘Andrea’. Andrea is one of the most frequently used names in Italian, so further research into establishing the last name is needed for identification.
Probably the most recent handwriting is in blue ink. Right above the imprint, the year of print is written in Arabic numbers. This hand is also visible on the page opposite of the title page, where the name ‘Leonardo Marchesi’ is written, including a date: ’11-70-81’. The name is quite common in Italy, so it is difficult – if not impossible – to retrieve which Leonardo Marchesi claimed the book by writing his name in it. However, because of the type of writing and the fact that he wrote the Roman numbers in Arabic, which is common after ca. 1800, we could conclude that the date this Leonardo wrote is probably 1881. This conclusion can be reinforced, due to the fact that a certain Leonardo Marchesi owned a stamperia, printing shop in Florence, during that time.
Because of the uncertain identification of Leonardo Marchesi and the unreadability of Andrea’s last name it is impossible – at least for now – to trace the owners of the Trattato after Mariano Smiriglio. What can be concluded is that the Trattato has had at least three different owners before it ending up at the KNIR. Which means this specific copy probably travelled from Milan to Palermo, to Florence, to Rome – and where else?
Wieke Reitsma (1990) is a Master student of Book History and Manuscript Studies, with a specialisation in medieval studies, at the University of Amsterdam. Previously she finished her Bachelors in Italian Language and Culture.
Literature
Gerald Martin Ackerman, The structure of Lomazzo’s treatise on painting (London 1964).
Massimo M. Augello and Marco Enrico Luigi Guidi, Associazionismo economico e diffusione dell’economia politica nell’Italia dell’Ottocento: dalle società economico-agrarie alle associazioni di economisti. Vol. 1 (Milano 2000).
Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Rime (Milano 1587).
Chris Murray, Key Writers on Art: From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century ( London 2005).
Barbara Tramelli, Due poesie del pittore Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, ammiratore di Cardano, Bruniana & Campanelliana 16.2 (Pisa & Roma, 2010) 571-574.
Primary sources
KNIR signature: Pregiato Ie Lom I.
LOMAZZO
Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo [Trattato dell’arte della pittvra, scoltvra et architettvra] Trattto dell’arte della pittvra, scoltvra et architettvra, di Gio Paolo Lomazzo milanese pittore. Diuiso in sette libri. Ne’ quali si discorre De la Proportione. De’ Lumi. De’ Moti. De la Prospettiua. De’ Colori. De la prattica de la Pittura. Et finalmente de le Istorie d’essa Pittura. Con vna tauola de’ nomi de tutti li Pittori, Scoltori, Architetti, & Matematici Antichi, & Moderni. Al serenissimo dvca di savoia. Con priuilegio de la Santità di N.S. Papa Gregorio XIII & de la Maestà Catholica del Rè Filipo
Milano, Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1585
8°: †8 ††12 A-Z8 Aa-VV8 XX6
Cover: parchment with a red leather piece on the back, on which ‘G. Lomazzo. TRATTATO DELL’ARTE DELLA PITTURA, SCOLTURA ET ARCHITETTURA’ is written. The edge of the book is covered with red ink.
Mining Library Treasures 