Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects. A New
Translation and Critical Edition by Giovan Pietro Bellori, Alice Sedgwick Wohl, Hellmut
Wohl and Tomaso Montanari
Review by: Maria Enrico
Source: Annali d'Italianistica , 2007, Vol. 25, Literature, Religion, and the Sacred (2007),
pp. 467-468
Published by: Arizona State University

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24016190

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 Annali d'italianistica 25 (2007). "Italian Bookshelf' 467

Giovan Pietro Bellori. The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects. A
New Translation and Critical Edition. Trans. Alice Sedgwick Wohl and Hellmut
Wohl. Introd. Tomaso Montanari. New York: Cambridge UP, 2005. Pp. 514.
In recent years the art world has seen a tremendous resurgence of interest in the work of
Annibale, Agostino and Ludovico Carracci and of Michelangelo Merisi, better known as
Caravaggio. In 2000 there were major exhibitions in Rome and New York devoted to the
Carraccis. The same year also saw the Cambridge University Press publication of a new
translation by Anne Summerscale of Malvasia 's Life of the Carracci: Commentary and
Translation (reviewed by this writer in South Atlantic Review, Winter 2001). In 1986
Derek Jarman directed the biographical and cult favorite film Caravaggio. In 2000 Peter
Robb wrote a best-selling novel, M— The Man Who Became Caravaggio, which relies
heavily on Bellori. In 2004 Naples expiated some of its guilt for being where Caravaggio
was murdered by mounting a major exhibit on him which then traveled to London,
followed by others in Amsterdam, Athens and Dusseldorf. Jonathan Harr's 2005 novel
"The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece" is based on actual events.
Currently a second movie, The Search for Caravaggio, is awaiting release.
Why all this sudden interest in Italian Baroque art? One possible answer is the
"rediscovery" of the work of the 17,h-century Italian art historian and critic Giovan Pietro
Bellori, Malvasia's contemporary and rival as successor to Giorgio Vasari and his The
Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550). In 1976 the
eminent Italian art historian Evelina Borea edited Einaudi's publication of Bellori's Lives
with an introduction by Giovanni Previtali. In 2000 Borea was the author of L'idea del
bello: viaggio per Roma nel seicento con Giovan Pietro Bellori, also the title of major
exhibit in Rome. In 2002 Cambridge University Press published Art History in the Age of
Bellori, Scholarship and Cultural Politics in Seventeenth-Centuty Rome, edited by Janis
Bell and Thomas Willette. With the publication of this first English translation of the
Borea edition of Bellori's Lives we seem to have come full circle.
Bellori's masterpiece picks up where Vasari's ended. Bellori's text begins with
homage to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Chevalier Marquis de Seignelay, founder of the French
Academy in Rome. This is followed by an appeal "To The Reader" in which Bellori says:
"But because we propose at present time to write of the artists of disegno, we shall
address painting, sculpture, and architecture: since these, like poetry, for their excellence
do not allow mediocrity of imitation, they reject mediocre artists and grant laurels of
immortality only to those who are excellent" (49). A translation of an excerpt from the
Prooemium of the Images by Philostratus the Younger on the essence of painting is next.
It serves an introduction to Bellori's discourse on "The Idea of the Painter, the Sculptor
and the Architect, selected from the beauties of nature, superior to Nature," where he
states his credo and the Baroque's manifesto: "Thus the Idea constitutes the perfection of
natural beauty and unites the truth with the verisimilitude of things that appear before the
eye, always aspiring to the best and to the marvelous, so that it not only rivals but
becomes superior to nature, revealing its works to us elegant and finished, whereas nature
is not wont to display them to us perfect in every part" (58).
Bellori's fifteen Lives then commence, beginning with Annibale and Agostino
Carracci, followed by Domenico Fontana, Federico Barrocci, Michelangelo Merisi da
Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, François Du Quesnoy, Domenico
Zampieri — il Domenichino, Giovanni Lanfranco, Alessandro Algardi, Nicolas Poussin,
Guido Reni, Andrea Sacchi, and Carlo Maratti: twelve painters, two sculptors and one

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468 "Italian Bookshelf." Annali d'italianistica 25 (2007)

architect. Explanations for Bellori's criteria in his choice of artists (criticized by

Panofsky, Mahon and Longhi for his praise of the Carraccis and somewhat conflicted
admiration for Caravaggio) and his omission of others (Rembrandt, Velâzquez, Bernini to
mention just a few) can be found in Tomaso Montanari's excellent introduction to the
translation.

Montanari repeatedly refers to and quotes Previtali's introduction to the 1976 Borea
édition of Bellori's Lives (not included in this translation) in refuting Bellori's past
classification as purely a theorist of classicism and stresses the importance of placing the
Lives within the context of "relations of power within artistic culture and society in Rome
in the seventeenth Century" (3). Montanari then devotes fourteen pages to a detailed
examination of the reasons for Bellori's "Inclusions and Exclusions," and ultimately
comes to the conclusion that in writing the Lives, "Bellori aimed to demonstrate to the
international community of learned men that the history of images and of artists was an
undeniable part of the history of European culture" (35).
Alice Sedgwick Wohl and Hellmut Wohl should be commended for undertaking this
monumentai task in translation and for maintaining the elegance and spirit of Bellori's
writing. The footnotes to the translation are exhaustive (in the best sense of the word) and
illuminating. Finally, Cambridge University Press should be thanked for oftering its
readers a most beautiful édition of one of art history's essential texts.
Maria Enrico, Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY

Moderata Fonte (Modesta Pozzo). Floridoro. A Chivalric Romance. Ed. and introd.
Valeria Finucci. Trans. Julia Kisacky. Annotated by Valeria Finucci and Julia
Kisacky. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 2006.
La meritoria iniziativa della University of Chicago Press, che con la serie "The Other
Voice in Early Modem Europe" permette di leggere, in traduzioni inglesi moderne ed
accessibili, testi spesso di difficile reperibilità persino in lingua originale conferma la sua
rilevanza con la pubblicazione di Floridoro. A Chivalrìc Romance, traduzione integrale
con introduzione e commento di Valeria Finucci e Julia Kisacky dei Tredici canti del
Floridoro, poema cavalleresco pubblicato da Moderata Fonte nel 1581. La stessa Finucci
nel 1995 aveva curato per la casa editrice modenese Mucchi la prima edizione moderna
del poema, riscattandolo di fatto dall'oblio in cui era caduto.
L'occasione estema della pubblicazione del Floridoro è costituita dal matrimonio tra
Francesco de' Medici e la veneziana Bianca Capello, avvenuto nel 1579. Il desiderio di
approfittare della congiuntura favorevole ha forse ispirato la decisione di dare il poema
alle stampe malgrado la sua incompiutezza. Nella lettera dedicatoria a Francesco de'
Medici, la scrittrice afferma di aver ben chiaro il disegno completo dell'intero lavoro e
promette di rimettersi all'opera qualora i primi tredici canti ricevano accoglienza
favorevole. Fonte però non avrebbe mai pubblicato ulteriori sezioni del poema, né il
volume del 1581 sarebbe mai stato ristampato fino alla citata edizione del 1995, il che
potrebbe indicare una recezione non molto calorosa. Tutto quello che rimane dei
cinquanta canti promessi nella lettera dedicatoria, dunque, sono questi tredici canti di
diversa lunghezza, per un totale di 1050 ottave.
Moderata Fonte sviluppa il tema encomiastico attraverso le storie parallele di
Floridoro, i cui successori fonderanno Venezia, e Risamante, antenata dei Medici,
inserendo nella narrazione le carrellate genealogiche a metà tra storia e leggenda tipiche

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