Notes on Attribution With Examples from the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana
By Kate T. Steinitz Curator h.c., The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana; Published: The Graphic Arts Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Volume 9, 2 & 3, 1974.
Epilogue to Kate Steinitz's Mariette book
Kate Steinitz
Notes on Attribution With Examples from the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana
Published: The Graphic Arts Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Volume 9, 2 & 3, 1974.
To attribute a work of art to a different artist from the name it bears means changing its identity, giving it another name, another origin, not necessarily another provenance, for the last owner kept it under the same name which the new research if going to change. This is one of the most risky, but also delicate and responsible tasks for any museum's director, curator, art critic, collector or dealer. The motive of an attribution can be a rigorous striving for historical truth according to inner and circumstantial evidence; it can be a labour of love and professional devotion; it can be biased by wishful thinking with the compulsive desire to make great discoveries, and its worst by commercial and speculative motives to make a work of art more precious, or perhaps less so.
When I was asked to write an article on Attributions for the Graphic Arts Council Newsletter, I agreed with pleasure. the theme is ever actual, I had several notes and works on the subject on my desk: the Metropolitan Museum Bulletin, June 1971, p. 431 with Dr. Fahy's report on an exhibit of Florentine paintings in the Met. His selection of fourteen paintings includes six which have changed their attribution. An entry in the Art Index of 1972 told that in recent years 300 works of art in the Metropolitan Museum in New York had been reattributed and downgraded. Certainly revisions are necessary6t with our perfected techniques in photography, radiology, laboratory analysis, documentation with help of a computer and others. As most of the acquisitions of the great museums were made before the means of technological control were invented, the revisions often had surprising results. However, even computers commit errors.
I will in this article tell some of our own case stories of attributions related to drawings and graphic arts and the hard way we had to go until our problems were solved. Only briefly I will pass along the tow of hundreds of Mona Lisa attributions, which appeared in the course of the centuries and still keep appearing, each claiming to be the real one instead of the great Lady in the Louvre, this phenomenon of a painting that has survived too much wordy attention in poetry and prose in all languages. She withstood continuous attacks of wit and humor, sarcasm and caricature. Apparently she does not care. She remains in silent dignity, a balanced pictorial composition, without glamour or sensation. How did she become a world celebrity? One has even tried to raise her social standing, attributing to her the name of a Princess: Philiberta of Savoy, instead of Mona Lisa Giaconda, the wife of a distinguished citizen. One has named her Constance d'Avalos or Pacifica Brandano, the beloved of Giuliano de'Medici. Marcel Duchamp decorated her with a mustache; Dr. Keele in England diagnosed her pregnancy; but with noiseless presence she dominates over the great Louvre portraits which have been assembled by ambitious owners to the master himself, such as the Prado Mona Lisa on a black background. There are nude Mona Lisas; the Cheramy Mona Lisa, which cam in the possession of the Austrian court painter von Matsch and in this country the Vernon Mona Lisa with her romantic history.
The progress of modern methods of documentary and laboratory research has taken many paintings from the list of Leonardo's originals. Today we have only 12 original paintings left.
Our own subject of research are Leonardo's drawings, his manuscripts and early engravings after Leonardo; at present those by Comte de Caylus and Wenceslous Hollar after Leonardo's caricature hands. We acquired in 1950 two typical French volumes containing sales catalogues of 1741, compiled by Pierre-Jean Mariette who also conducted auctions. One of the volumes contains the famous catalogue for the sale of Pierre Crozat's collection of 19,000 drawings and engravings, with marginal annotations by an affiliate of Mariette, written at or after the auction, telling the names of the buyers and prices obtained. his catalogue set the syle for modern catalogues raisonnks. It is of special interest for the history of attributions. Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694-1775) third generation in the family of collectors, dealers and sellers of graphic arts is still considered the greatest of the "connoisseurs-savants" of his time in France, when collectors had to depend entirely on connoissership and fingertip feeling. There was no photography, no x-rays, no radiographs, no technical facility whatsoever to confirm the authenticity of their purchases. Of course errors occurred. The Mariette-Crozat Catalogue lists 65 Leonardo and 114 Michelangelo drawings; 263 by Raphael, 73 by Andrea del Santo, and so on. An incredible number. Only a few of them are today considered authentic, but collectors of our time are still thrilled whenever a leaf with the small stamp of Mariette appears on the market for both Crozat and Mariette were most discriminating collectors. Even when the names had to be changed, a high standard of quality was maintained. Pierre-Jean Mariette, despite his errors, is till respected as an example of intelligence, creativity and integrity in his profession as a dealer, collector and writer. In 1967 the Louvre arranged a great memorial exhibit with an excellent catalogue in honor of Mariette, Le Cabinet d'un Grand Amateur. Frits Lugt, one of the greatest bibliographer of our day, who wrote the preface in form of a flowering letter full of devotion and appreciation addressed to Mariette, as though he were alive, signing it "Votre tres obeissant Arriere-petit-fils." This letter is remarkable because Lugt deviated here from his striking impersonal bibliographical pattern.
Mariette's father Pierre had acquired from the Arundel estate a set of Leonardo caricatures, fine copies after Leonardo, but of lesser quality that the originals at Windsor Castle which in the lifetime of Mariette were not accessible, hidden and forgotten in a trunk in Kensington Palace, to be rediscovered only 5 years after Mariette's death! There was no possibility to compare the Mariette set of caricatures with the originals. Moreover the Mariette caricature heads are placed within circular framelines, comparable to the heads of antique coins, while Leonardo sketched most of his heads into empty spaces between machine drawings and scientific diagrams in Codex Atlanticus, spontaneously, informally and subtly. Mariette had his set engraved by his friend the Comte de Caylus. He published it in 1730 with an introductory letter to the Comte. This letter, written with psychological insight, is considered a markstone in Leonardo literature.
Francesco Melzi (1493 - 1570), the pupil closest to Leonardo, became a great problem in attribution. The young aristocrat who became a painter accompanied Leonardo to France in 1516 and remained with him until the end. After Leonardo's dath, as his heir, he took the paintings and manuscripts back to Italy and spent years of his life excerpting notes on paintings scattered through all his notebooks, in order to compile the Treatis on Painting - (Trattato della Pittura) which Leonardo had planned but never edited. Melzi's version is kept in the Vatican Library, codex Vat. Urb. 1070, the "father" of all later editions.
We knew nothing definitive about Francesco Melzi, the painter. he became a victim of the so-called ashcan-attributions, everything lacking a name was attributed to him. Only recently the research of Kenneth Clark and Carlow Pedretti have started to clear the image of the painter, Francesco Melzi, in the new catalogue Leonardo da Vinci Drawings in the Windsor Castle by Kenneth Clark with the assistance of Carlo Pedretti, revised second edition, Phaidon, 1969. In the preface, Kenneth Clark developed very convincingly the theory of Melzi's "replacement" drawings. There are a number of drawings in the Windsor Library less sensitive and inferior in quality to Leonardo's. they have a harder, somewhat stiff and wooden outline. All are drawn by the same hand. Melzi apparently made replacement drawings whenever he had to give away a leaf from the treasure he guarded conscientiously. Kenneth Clark also found a connecting line from the "replacement" drawings to a painting in the Hermitage attributed to Melzi. it is the lovely 'Lady with the Columbine' a painting of so high a quality that the late Professor Goukowsky wanted to attribute it to Leonardo himself. Kenneth Clark remembers the drawing of a Columbine, in the style of the replacement drawings, which unfortunately disappeared from the Windsor Collection in 1907, but is kept in photography. It seems to be a preparatory drawing for the exquisite flowers the youthful Lady holds gracefully in her hand and also for a columbine in the painting of Vertumnus and Pomona in Berlin, attributed also to Melzi. This does not contradict Lomazzo calling Melzi "a miniaturist" in his Trattato dell' Arte della Pittura-- 1582. the flowers of the Hermitage painting are done with a very fine and pointed brush, swinging in a precise design to complete with any accomplished miniaturist.
Manuscripts alos provide opportunities for scholarship. The Ms. Belt 35 can prove this ppoint. the Elmer Belt acquired about 1950 a manuscript copy which is not especially attractive, know as Belt Manuscript 35, which became a sort of Cinderella in the Belt Library, until Professor Pedretti went through a labyrinth of research. Associating names and deciphering half-ereased lines, he established a safe upgrading. the upgrading of Belt 35 occurred just as a "happening" in the course of research. Dr. Belt never influenced the research in the Library to upgrade any of its holdings. In contrast to many of the collectors, he wanted nothing but 200% safety in attributions. This was his collector's ethics which made me happy and independent through 30 years of research librarianship. Belt 35 is now a most important manuscript dated 1582, the only manuscript copy known of the 16th century. However, there is still a link missing between the Vatican Codex, Melzi's Manuscript and the abbreviated copies. Pedretti published this story in detail in Leonardo's Legacy an International Symposium edited by the late Professor O'Malley, University of California Press 1967, containing the conferences held at the International Symposium, 1966, to honor Dr. Belt's donation of the Vincian Library to UCLA and the opening of its permanent headquarters in the Dickson Art Center.
The three steps of the research were: 1) both Pedretti and Renzo Ciancchi, the former Librarian of Biblioteca Leonardiani in Vince recognized the half destroyed ownership notes, the names of the Tuscan place Fucecchio and of Prince Bardsky who lived there. 2) More important was the deciphering of a very thin, half-erased line, folio 4 r with the ownership entry of Giovanni de Simone di Francesco Berti of Florence. This relates the Manuscript Belt35 to that the painter Furini (1600-1649). Furini begins his manuscript copy (now kept in Modena) telling that Giovanni Berti, Gentleman of Florence, Lent to him the Precepts by Leonardo da Vinci. We remembered the inscription in Ms. Furini (p. 66 in our Bibliogrpahy) with Rancesco Furini's dated note, August 2, 1632, the report how Simone and Giovanni Berti and from the Furini copied Leonardo' drawings for the use of the Florentine painter Pagabi. The names occur in the thin line 4 of our Ms. Belt 35 but the earlier date 1582. Now it is clear the Furni copied our Belt 35 and not as we thought before that our Manuscript was copied from Furini. 3) but the most surprising discovery was the torn out title page of Belt 35 among the Pagani drawings in the Uffizi in Florence. One page was torn out of Belt 35. We knew this from a remaining "stump". Pedretti looked into the Pagani drawings in the Uffize in reference to the quoted note by Berti. He found an allegorical drawing with the title in a Medallon: Discorai di Lionardo da Vince sopra La Pettura and the year 1582. This closed the circle of research with the happy end of re-evaluating of Belt 35.
We supplemented our collection of printed editions of Leonardo's Trattato dell Pittura with a microfilm archive of manuscript copies which circulated before the Treatise came to paint. We were able to acquire 5 such "Apografi", which are together with the microfilm archives frequently consulted by scholars even from abroad.
My own research through the years was devoted to Leonardo's Treatise on painting, especially the type of manuscript copies which Nicolas Poussin illustrated.
When Cardinal Barberini and his erudite secretary Cassiano dal Pozzo envisaged the first printed edition of Leonard's Trattato della Pittura they chose Nicholas Poussin, the French painter whom they sponsored in Rome to do the illustrations, as Leonardo's own drawings were only demonstrations, sketchy allusions to figures, not fitting into the large magnificent edition they planned . Poussin elaborated Leonardo's tiny figures, transforming them into classic figures of Greek mythology, such as Hercules and Antinous, in attitudes and in motion according to Leonardo's didactic directions. There are four manuscript copies known with Poussinesque illustrations all claiming to contain the originals; Manuscript H22i inf. in the Ambroision Library in Milan; the Manuscript in possession of Marquis de Ganay in Paris; the Heritage Manuscript in Leningrad and our Belt 36. Although the Belt manuscript is the most beautiful and elegant I thought the Ambroisiana copy contained the originals because it is written by Cassiano dal Pozzo in his own hand, remarkable for its formal grace and beauty; the drawings on separate pieces of paper are tipped in. The figures are built up by planes of light and dark; the contours sensitive, interrupted and often open at the side of the light. Our Belt 36 has the same composition, but the figures are regularly outlined, and modeled in wash technique. The drawings are perfectly integrated to the page, the script surrounding it. Our correspondence with authorities, Professor Edward Popham and Sir Anthony Blunt, showed their great interest in the problem. This increased my curiousity and my ambition and I finally achieved the land in Leningrad, although traveling in Russia was still considered risky and extravagant. But it was not risky at all. I made friends for lifetime, but unfortunately both Russian scholars passed away about two years ago, Professor Goukowsky, the passionate Leonardist, and Mme. Tatjana Kamenskaja, who had spent forty years or more of her life in the Hermitage, mainly in the print and manuscript room under the roof of the Enterpalais. At my arrival in 1960, Prof. Goukowsky had received me in the office of the Director presenting me with a pass card to get into the Hermitage at all times, Mme. Kamenskaja expected me at the winding stairs up to her paradise of drawings, the Poussinesque manuscript copy in her hand. I had traveled with my eyes almost closed not to forget the quality of the drawings in Milan, which photography did not render well enough. But the first glance at the manuscript told me that it was not necessary. it proved again that bad drawings appear better in photography and good ones worse. The beautiful tonality of the reproduction was due to the fact that at the time the photographic studio of the Hermitage did not have the right filters for the reproduction of corroded ink and spotty paper. The illustrations were very weak redrawings. The Leningrad manuscript had catalogued the illustration as Poussin originals, but Mme. was a mind reader. Before I could tell she knew my opinion. Her manuscript contained rather weak copies. She trusted my opinion because I had seen all the other manuscript copies. My statement regarding the compartive material enable her to change the official attribution into "school of...". An excellent connoisseur of drawings, she never had thought that the quality of the Leningrad manuscript reached the quality of Poussin. We remained friends by correspondence to the end of her life in 1973. This ends my story of the attributions. Postscript: Great involvement causes dreams. After I wrote about attributions, not only ours but the new 300 attributions of the metropolitan Museum haunted my dreams. I drove down Fifth Avenue at night. From the top of the bus I had a good view of the street and Central Park. Approaching 82nd street I saw a colorful crowd at the entrance of the Museum. Apparently it was a party. No, it was a revolt of the poor, downgraded paintings. I saw a Spanish King, a Spanish princess in a gorgeous crinoline, Dutch Burghers and their ladies, Putti and angels and voluptuous nudes next to Puritans. They lifted their arms and screamed furiously. I wanted to climb down from the bus to find out what they wanted, but also a bit French clock came out of the door striking 12:00 and a knight in armour on a horse from the Hall of Arms came and chased the crowd back, probably into the basement of the Museum, and visions disappeared as fast as dreams used to do. = K.S.
Epilogue to Kate Steinitz's Mariette book:
"Habent sua fata libelli" (books have their fates). This old saying refers to all the rare books which after many wanderings landed for good on the shelves of the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana; but the unique copy of Caylus 1730 described page 20, with illustrations pp 16 and 17 did not only have a fate but apparently it had a living soul. I had worked on the Caylus books for many years. We were accustomed to each other. I loved them and they loved me.
After Saul Marks (Plantin Press, Los Angeles) had started printing my Manuscript I needed the book again for proofreading. When I did not find it in its place, I searched for it, but a theft in this over-protected library was for me out of the question. However, it had occurred.
At that time in the middle of April, Jake Zeitlin had offered another Caylus 1730. I was interested in it; perhaps it would be another variation. When Jake opened the cabinet, I recognized the Belt copy at first glance. Careful examination, according to the description in this book, gave the definite proof. At the end paper, we found our accession number 53 - 100. Later we were able to find the accession card which told that we acquired the copy at Offenbacher in New York. Jack had acquired the copy from Heritage Bookshop in Hollywood. Neither Mr. Weinstein of Heritage Bookstore nor Jake talked about the business part. I was handed the book with joy and blessings. HOMAGE TO ZEITLIN AND WEINSTEIN, the gentlemen book selllers. The case of the theft of this and other books is still under investigation. The result will be added at a later period. Hopefully with the return of the other books.
Quotable quotes:
Steinitz often found herself in Paris and other major cities of Europe visiting museums and writing art criticism. She did not like the idea of a new vocabulary in art in which words substituted for work. As critics invented vocabularies to suit the art, Steinitz utilized the ordinary to describe the extraordinary and the manner by which it functioned. Over fifty years of art criticism found her faithful to her goal of using a language easily understood by all to explain the many transitions in art and the intentions of artists. She was revolted by the proliferation of a vocabulary of "artspeak" that was needed to compensate for the inadequacies of critics.
p9 Kate Steinitz.. Art Into Life Into Art. William A. Emboden, Ph.D. Severin Wunderman Museum Publications, 1994
"Art, poetry, and nonsense; all are superfluous, and yet so necessary to life."