Dietrich / VisualApprenticeshipI

The Giovanni Morelli Visual Biography

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI VISUAL BIOGRAPHY Visual Apprenticeship I

When Giovanni Morelli was forty years old, he started to collect works of art. This might also be interpreted as a kind of turning point in his life, since up to the year of 1856 little had pointed to his – rather late in his life – becoming a connoisseur of art, although the visual arts had also, next to many other things, ranged among his interests. Thus, the biographical panorama that leads through the first forty years of his life, up to the year of 1856, shows in a way the ›other‹ Morelli. It shows with Morelli studying, with Morelli discovering his literary ambition, with Morelli travelling and experiencing nature, with Morelli experiencing war times, and last but not least: with Morelli discovering the roles one has to play in society (and politics), the necessary backdrop to his later becoming a connoisseur of art, and of his becoming a personality that some who knew him were inclined to call also an expert as to human nature and a man of the world.

And a section that one may call also ›The Young Morelli‹ shows a Johann Morell/Giovanni Morelli, conversing with German and French 19th century artists (and connoisseurs), which also might be interpreted as a necessary counterpoint to his later developing his expertise for Renaissance painting and drawing and (to some degree) also for Dutch painting, since, especially as a collector, he did not at all dismiss all other periods of art, even if he was inclined to speak of the Renaissance period as the ›Golden Age‹.

VISUAL APPRENTICESHIP I:

(ONE) A LION’S BLADEBONE AND A REAL CONNOISSEUR’S EYE

(TWO) NATURE, LANDSCAPE AND ONE’S HOME COUNTRY

(THREE) HUMAN ROLES IN WAR AND PEACE TIME, HUMAN MASKS

(FOUR) SECLUSION, INTROSPECTION AND COLLECTING

ONE) A LION’S BLADEBONE AND A REAL CONNOISSEUR’S EYE

›Not a human soul I have here, that I could share a thought with (except my scientific matters) – not to mention someone who would, like you do, encourage me to all good and beautiful and who would instruct me.‹

»Keinen Menschen hab’ ich hier, dem ich, ausser meine wissenschaftlichen Angelegenheiten, einen Gedanken mitheilen könnte – geschweige denn einen, der mich, wie Sie, zu allem Guten u Schönen aufmunterte u mich belehrte.«
(GM to Bonaventura Genelli, 14 June 1838; from Berlin)

GENELLI’S TAKING A WALK: AN INTRODUCTION

Every now and then it happened that Munich-based artist Bonaventura Genelli stopped working all of a sudden. Not because of being tired of working (although he lived under rather dire circumstances at Munich with his family, and without a patron). But only due to a very welcome arriving of a letter. A letter by his dear friend Johann Morell, sent from Erlangen, Berlin or Paris, or elsewhere, and later mainly from Italy. From his friend, who was capable of producing this kind of overwhelmingly hilarious and often very funny letter, this kind of in any way delightening and heart-warming letter. And all of a sudden Genelli could not go on working anymore, but had to go out to take a stroll. And somewhere, out in the green, or in the city of Munich (but rather not in the English garden, where one might encounter rivals or enemies), somewhere he would stop: to take that letter out of his pocket and read it, decipher it as good as he could (since Morelli’s handwriting was not particularly easy to read). And he would read it again, to make the most of it, to savour the letter as much as he could savour it, because, if there was something to delighten Genelli, it was a letter by his dear friend Morell.(1)
Who had left Munich all too soon in 1837, to come back once again, but only briefly, in 1841. And after this last short visit this remarkable friendship between the artist and the connoisseur of art to-be, was to remain the correspondence of two pen friends. To the chagrin of both, but with Genelli suffering more from it, while the friendship, in fact, was of existential importance for both of them. A friendship between a somewhat older mentor (Genelli) and a student (Morelli), between someone more inclined to write (Morelli) and someone being less friend of writing letters (Genelli), and it was the friendship between someone who had to stay at Munich and someone who could and had to return to Italy, to further live in Italy. Away from his friend, but keeping, in his heart, his warm affection, throughout of his life, that he had for his dear Munich friend.

Bonaventura Genelli was the one man that Morelli did allow to criticize him, since he had accepted (or even chosen) Genelli as a mentor. And if Genelli did indeed criticize Morelli, as it was occasionally the case, for example for Morelli being all too undecided, all to inclined to leisure also, all too lazy, Morelli did not wrangle (as it was otherwise the case, for example if Morelli was criticized by one of the Frizzoni brothers), but accepted the criticism without (his otherwise characterisic) muttering, if not to speak of (also characteristic) energetic counterattacks.(2)
Because in Genelli he had found that one man that he thought of as a real teacher, not only in all affairs related to art, but also as to how to look at life in general. And specifically Morelli appreciated Genelli as the one man who also really responded to his fancies, ideas and projects.(3) His literary ideas, in the first place, since literature, namely Morelli’s first satirical piece, the Balvi magnus of 1836, had been the actual reason that the two men (Morelli then being 20, and Genelli being 38) had met;(4) and Genelli was to become the one to encourage Morelli, to criticize and encourage him in all his efforts. And in that particularly Morelli did accept and love Genelli as a friend, beside that he did appreciate Genelli’s wayward art and character.
We are fortunate to have that correpondence, if unfortunately not entirely, since many letters seem to be lost. But we are lucky because of the specific and natural arrangement that was the outcome of this friendship: with Morelli writing, and writing letters that actually were meant to be, in some sense, literary writings, and with Genelli commenting about Morelli’s doings and about his lively descriptions of many a thing, scenario or person.
And since indeed many of Morelli’s letters contain graphic descriptions, since Morelli did try to show Genelli graphically what he had seen or experienced, we dispose of a valuable source as to the young Giovanni Morelli’s way of looking. That manifests in these descriptions, while Genelli’s comments serve us as valuable counterpoints and provide us with extra informations.
The roles in this correpondence of two pen friends were and remained also relatively fixed. We see two friends, speaking not only of how to see art, but also of how to see life, and about how to deal with life. From the perspective of a poorly living artist at Munich, and a moderately well-to-do Italian student of Swiss descent who had studied at Munich, and from the beginning had been also eager to support Genelli as good as he could; Genelli whom Morelli regarded as being a humiliated genius, a genius being too proud to offer his services to the ruling taste (and rightly so!).(5) And Morelli did much, not only to encourage Genelli and have him feel that he was appreciated, but also in recommending Genelli to potential solvent clients, and namely also to his Bergamo friends Giovanni and Federico Frizzoni, to whom he described Genelli also as follows:

›It is a real anguish to me to see this great genius slashing his way through life that meagrely. Genelli is an uncommon appearance – yet unfortunately recognized only by few. His external magnificent guise corresponds fully with his mind, which does not show a hunch anywhere, as it is common as regards to people which are shining, but as he does have his art taped, he has life taped to the most profound abysses, and he does look at things as they are, not finding, for instance, in every milk pot, as Görres and Friedrich Schlegel (do), the Holy Trinity.‹
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»Es ist mir eine wahre Pein, dieses grosse Genie sich so kümmerlich durchs Leben schlagen zu sehen. Genelli ist eine seltene Erscheinung – doch leider nur von wenigen erkannt. Seine äussere herrliche Gestalt entspricht ganz seinem Geiste, der nicht etwa, wie das gewöhnlich bei Luminibus der Fall ist, irgendwo hinaus einen Buckel hat, sondern wie seine Kunst, so durchschaut er auch das Leben bis in seine tiefsten Abgründe und sieht die Dinge an, wie sie sind, und findet nicht etwa, wie Görres und Friedrich Schlegel, in einem Milchtopfe die Dreieinigkeit.«(6)

When in 1837 Morelli had been still working for his Munich professor Ignaz Döllinger, Genelli must have visited Morelli also at work. Since on such an occasion Morelli must have presented Genelli with an unusual gift: a plaster cast, taken from the bladebone of a lion; and probably Morelli had also been working on a whole lion’s skeleton.(7) We have to keep this in mind, if we now turn to look at a first example, taken from one letter, an example of how young Giovanni Morelli did look at things. At Paris, at a local theatre, and among other animals also at a mighty African lion.

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AN AMERICAN NAMED VAN AMBURGH AND HIS CATS

Only specialists for 19th century popular culture would probably know his name today – but Isaac A. Van Amburgh (1811-1865) was, at his day, the wild animal trainer of his day,(8) a public figure, fascinating personalities as diverse as American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, Queen Victoria (who had just ascended to the throne in 1837), and last but not least young art connoisseur-to-be Giovanni Morelli.
What better opportunity do we have to look at the way of looking of 23-year-old Morelli, who, in Paris in 1839, got to see Van Amburgh’s show? Since we do not only dispose of a letter by Morelli describing, to his friend Genelli, what he had seen, but also a context of a world-wide popularity of this particular animal trainer, and a context of a many pair of eyes, being also fascinated, as Morelli was, by what Van Amburgh was doing with and amidst his animals. Some pairs of eyes (that of writer Nathaniel Hawthorne) also sensing the atmosphere of an audience watching,(9) others inclined to have what they did see also again being represented, and maybe anew and differentely represented and interpreted – in painting.
But here, we may start off with hearing, and subsequently discussing, what young Giovanni Morelli had to say. Since what he had to say was meant to show Genelli, in words, what he had seen; and this, certainly unintentionally, does nonetheless also serve us, who are, as Genelli, not in the position to verify in the flesh what Morelli had seen, to see how he did see (and how he liked others to hear about what he had seen and how he did see):

›Presently a certain Mr. van Amburgh, an American, baffles the audience due to his tamed cats, and indeed one has to open wide one’s eyes, if one does see this man handling his beasts. The performance takes place in one of the local theatres. One even has composed a piece (of music) which, though, is beneath contempt – although certainly, as to this rare appearance, something decent could be done. Also the whole arrangement is pathetic. Because the curtain does open, and you do see an enormous cage, separated in two by an interior wall. In one (cage) there are two big Asian lions, male and female, a Bengal tiger and 3 leopards. In the other the most beautiful animal I have ever seen, an African lion with a tremendous black crest, a most rare species, further an marvelous tiger and a panther. Van Amburgh now enters the cage, the animals jump up on him, he puts his head into the lion’s throat etc. – in brief, he does the most foolhearted that only one can do, so that one is inclined to believe in the story of Daniel in the Babylonian lion’s den. – The most beautiful, though, without doubt, is (occurs), if he does tease the big lion. This mighty animal does vertically raise at the bars, and with terrible roaring opens his enormous jaws, in that with one paw it does strike at him, – whereas van Amburgh solely raises his hand, with the lion todying into the corner – and he goes on to lay down between tiger and lion and does play with them. Then he does bring a sheep – tiger and panther get ready to jump – van Amburgh, fixedly, has an eye on them. The lion does allow the sheep to lick him and hardly does take notice. The tiger does roar and his eye is gleaming terribly, and yet he does not dare to wrangle. I still do believe, by the way, that the foolhearted man will lose his life, when performing such a maneuver. The groupings and postures of this magnificent animals altogether are often charming, namely if the marvellous leopards raise at the grid like supporters, grinning at each other [snarlingly]. If one would imagine this image woven into a clever drama, add a beautiful decor to that, and anyway the bars arranged differently, with beautiful music (since this has to be part of it, always) – given the eerie silence in the whole theatre, that should be delightful.‹
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»[…]. Gegenwärtig setzt ein gewisser Herr van Amburgh, ein Amerikaner, durch seine gezähmten Katzen das Publikum in Erstaunen, und in der Tat muss man die Augen aufreissen, wenn man diesen Menschen mit seinen Bestien hantieren sieht. Die Vorstellung geht auf einem der hiesigen Theater vor sich. Man hat sogar ein Stück dafür komponiert, das aber unter aller Kritik ist – obwohl sich bestimmt zu dieser seltenen Erscheinung etwas Ordentliches machen liesse. Auch ist das ganze Arrangement erbärmlich. Der Vorhang geht nämlich auf u. Sie sehn einen ungeheuren Käfig, der durch eine Zwischenwand in zwei geschieden ist. In dem einen befinden sich zwei grosse asiatische Löwen, Männchen u Weibchen, ein bengalischer Tiger u 3 Leoparden. In dem andern das schönste Tier, was ich je gesehen habe, ein afrikanischer Löw mit schwarzer ungeheurer Mähne, eine höchst seltene Art, dann ein wundervoller Tiger und ein Panther. Van Amburgh tritt nun in den Käfig, die Tiere springen an ihn herauf, er legt seinen Kopf in den Rachen der Löwen etc. – kurz er macht das Tollkühnste, was einer nur tun kann, so dass man geneigt ist, an die Geschichte des Daniels in den babylonischen Löwengruben zu glauben. – Das schönste ist aber unstreitig, wenn er den grossen Löwen reizt. Dieses gewaltige Tier hebt sich senkrecht am Gitter in die Höhe, u öffnet mit fürchterlichem Gebrüll seinen ungeheuern Rachen, indem er mit der einen Tatze nach ihm haut, – da hebt van Amburgh bloss die Hand auf u der Löwe kriecht in den Winkel – er legt sich dann zwischen Tiger u. Löwe hin u spielt mit ihnen. Dann bringt er ein Schaf – Tiger u Panther machen sich sprungfertig – van Amburgh hält unverwandt sein Auge auf sie. Der Löwe lässt sich vom Schafe belecken u blickt kaum auf. Der Tiger brüllt u sein Auge glänzt fürchterlich u doch wagt er nicht zu zanken. Übrigens glaub’ ich doch, dass bei einem solchen Manöver der Tollkühne sein Leben einbüssen wird. Die Gruppen u Stellungen dieser herrlichen Tiere zusammen sind oft enzückend, namentlich wenn die prachtvollen Leoparden wie Schildhalter am Gitter sich erheben u einander angrinsen. Denke man sich dieses Bild in ein patentes Drama eingewebt, schöne Dekorationen dazu u überhaupt das Gitter anders arrangiert, dabei eine schöne Musik, (denn die muss immer dabei [sein]) – bei der unheimlichen Stille, die im ganzen Theater herrscht, so müsste das entzückend sein.«(10)

This passage, in all its impulsive liveliness, does reveal much of Giovani Morelli’s personality, and not only of Giovanni Morelli as a young man. If we would not be aware that this passage was by Morelli, it would not cause a difficult problem of attribution either, since a combination of distinctive features does show here:

ALEXANDER PUSHKIN, EX UNGUE LEONEM (1825):

The other day it was that I penned down some verses
That unsigned I chose to edit in the following.
The shabby critic which did penetrate them pettifoggingly
And left, like I did, then unsigned his scrawl –
To him his follies were of little use,
Not more than ’twas my secrecy to me.
For to recognize my lion’s claw was simple here
And I, on my part, could appreciate a donkey’s ear.

(very free translation/paraphrase: DS; after Puschkin [1985], p. 210;
see also Cabinet II)

a) the author being impulsive as to the expression of his enthusiasm for physical sensation, here: the attraction of wild animals’ beauty, of physical strength, and of seemingly civilized wild nature, controlled by a single, extraordinary man, being seemingly foolhearted.

b) the author being impulsive as to the expression of his very dismissive critique of the staging of the show, immediately turning into an ambitious competitive thinking how this could be done better.

c) the author showing his very flexible mind, being able not only to think of the arrangement differently, but referring also to the literary, here Biblical tradition to interpret what he does see, if sceptically.

d) the author suddenly turning into a sceptic (or allowing the sceptic in him to raise his voice) as to the risk the wild animal tamer is obviously taking (here the scepticism is directed to what happens on stage; while it is also characteristic for Morelli, that these sudden sceptic turns are directed against his own writing and himself).

e) the author, finally, showing not only curiosity and a searching passionate enthusiasm, but also – and here rather implicitly – the need to be confirmed and guided by a mentor responding to his ideas, since his own ideas do show rather fragmentarily, impulsive and hence yet unformed.

What Giovanni Morelli does in this very passage, as generally in his letters to Genelli, is to show himself as a talented and promising writer (and thus, as also Genelli thought, he did show as a poet-to-be). Which is, the description of a wild animals show is also to be regarded as an exercise in writing. And if Morelli is describing visual sensations, it is not mainly for the sake of conveying a joy of looking, although, certainly, he did enjoy the experience of watching, but for the sake of a description resulting from that experience (which, in some sense, is revealing also in terms of a description of himself as the young man he was at that time). Looking and observing, at this time of his life – for a Sturm und Drang Morelli, as one might say –, is meant to gather materials, to find a perspective on things, and to develop as a writer. His looking, already influenced by having much read, finds its expression in writing, and his writing, one might say, again stimulates his again looking. To see more, to better express himself, to interpret more acutely what he does see. And young Giovanni Morelli also expressively turned to literature, if in need for models of acute observation of all things human, for example to Shakespeare and to Alessandro Manzoni.(11) His looking and writing, also being appreciative, that is showing the inclination to enjoy the sensations of life, seeks also for a deeper insight into human things, finding such an insight primarily in literature, as in his friend and mentor Genelli, whom, as we have seen above, Morelli did also see as someone having things, having life taped. Thus with the above quoted description we find Morelli drawing on resources, showing him how one might look at things, and we find him practicing, at one occasion, the looking at things, testifying his experience by giving an account to Genelli.
If the above quoted passage does show Morelli as an impulsive, passionately searching and also ambitious young man, it might not yet be obvious that his impulsiveness, not inclined to develop literary structure, literary drama patiently, might also have been one reason, and maybe the one reason why Morelli, in the end, did not become a writer. The elaborating of his ideas showed not to be his strength throughout his life, and he certainly was lacking patience and discipline, not only as to the elaborating of literary ideas, that, in just one impulse, he tended to sketch out fragmentarily, and certainly his scepticism worked as his inner critic, that, in the end, did not allow him to be convinced that he actually was a writer (beyond the wanting to be one, that is: the wanting to fit into such a role).
Which is certainly a pity, since much of Giovanni Morelli’s experiences in life and in looking at life did not find an expression in words, and has not been transmitted, since he dropped his ambition. Which is that, at least in some sense, these experiences are mostly lost. And his rich experiences only to a very little degree found their expression in connoisseurial writings during the second half of his lifetime.
But on the other hand, it is residing with biographers of Morelli, to recover these experiences. Which, to some degree is possible, because sources such as is the correspondence with Genelli, reveal much of Sturm und Drang Morelli and his visual apprenticeship, in his trying to develop a grasp of life that was also to become the backdrop of his looking at art. And here, at this very moment, we perhaps find the signature of Morelli’s whole life, with a tremendously vital look at life on the one hand, and a tremendously rich experience in various fields of life, while on the other hand the Morelli of art historical tradition is seen as one of the most single-minded art historians ever, because Morelli has become the embodiment of an extremly specialized and focussed looking at problems of attribution only, resulting with this later image of Morelli having replaced any other image, like that of Sturm und Drang Morelli, anxious to gather experiences in looking, and anxious as well as ambitious to express himself in writing. In sum: It resides with a visual biography of Giovanni Morelli, and it is the challenge of such an undertaking, to bring this other image, as many other images back, resulting also with a more vital image of Morelli, connoisseur of art, his looking at art, and with a paradigm of how one could address the issue of a most vital visual person’s most vital visual biography as such, addressing also the question, which might be one of the key questions of the biography of Morelli: how did he get from point a, the Sturm und Drang Morelli being anxious to gather visual experiences and to find insight into human and natural things, to point b, the connoisseur of art focussing on extremly sought-out and specialized problems of attribution? We perhaps will find the answer, if following farther our path, the path of a thinking pair of eyes’ biography, in a word, the path of visual biography.

*

RIVALRY AND FRIENDSHIP: MORELLI AND THE LITERARY WORLD OF THE FRIZZONI BROTHERS

It does not seem to be advisable to speak, if one is being a poet and in need of patron’s support, of the home country of one’s patrons disparagingly.
But exactly this August von Platen-Hallermünde, Graf Platen, had done: he had spoken disparagingly of Lombardy, the home country of the Frizzoni brothers, that, although being of Swiss origins, were no less Lombardic patriots than Giovanni Morelli was (who, as we have shown, and no less than his friends, was actually of Swiss origins).(12)
Graf Platen, in fact, as the Frizzoni brothers even had reported to no other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1830, had not particularly liked Lombardic cities (Venetia he had liked better, apparently, particularly Verona, but not Milan). And Goethe had mused that this perhaps might have been only due to the weather (see below).
One does not know what Giovanni Morelli thought, of Platen’s poem that was culminating in the poet hoping that ›never, o never‹ he would have to return to that brumous country, a country so dear to Morelli. But since Morelli probably considered the friendship of his friends with Graf Platen as a matter of his somewhat elder friends, he may have remained silent as to the matter.
The Frizzoni brothers, as patrons as well as friends, did not allow their friendship with Graf Platen to be troubled by this matter (although they seemed to have demanded a retrieval of Lombardy’s honor), and Morelli certainly, to some degree looked up to his friends, who had not only been mentored by a private teacher, a Saxonian named Gustav Gündel, and had acquired, as he was going to, a sterling education, but had also begun to entertain friendships with men of letters.
With Platen on the one hand, but also with Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, a particularly renowned German connoisseur of art, who did also write on Lombardy, but seems to have remained more cautious than Graf Platen.(13)
And if one thing is for certain, then it is that Morelli did not only look up to his friends, but also did particularly observe to whom exactly his friends owed their literary education, and also their education as to all things relating to the visual arts. In other words: Giovanni Morelli certainly had an eye on all men of letters that his friends were associating with (later also on Jacob Burckhardt), since his stance as far as the education of the Frizzoni brothers was concerned was an affectionate rivalry. That led, among other things, certainly to a careful studying of several writings by Rumohr from early on, even if it might have led less to a careful studying of the poems by Graf Platen.

One does not know exactly what had made Morelli caused to wrangle with Federico Frizzoni, but roughly, it seems clear that the latter had responded rather critically to one particularly exuberant and enthusiastic letter by friend Morell, a letter enthusiastically praising Homer and Shakespeare, while disparaging, in tendency, German epics.(14) Perhaps it had only been the pointing to the obvious (or a little chaffing as to the matter), that Morelli felt obviously attracted by sensual vitality and seemed to appreciate art if only characters were being made of flesh and blood, while he seemed not to appreciate, or less, the qualitities inherent to German epics, the emotions particularly and maybe also the intellectual content.
Which had resulted with Morelli, still affectionately, but more and more passionately and also more and more furiously to defend himself (also drawing on thoughts and expressions he had adapted from Genelli),(15) and in defending himself as well as his innate sensualism, to show two things that may particularly concern us here: because on the one hand he did indeed declare to be attracted to sensual vitality, to ›flesh and blood‹, in literature as well as in the visual arts, but on the other hand he did also show that he did know to respond to the criticism (and/or to the chaffing), and that he, indirectly, in defending himself, indeed acknowledged other ways, the Frizzoni way, as it were, to look at art. And why he was doing that, very significantly, also the name of Rumohr was dropped (indirectly, thus, Morelli was, and already as early as that, also wrangling with Rumohr, as he was in his later years, showing that he respected Rumohr, and indirectly his friends, but still trying to find a way, if possible, to show that he was in the right).(16)

This wrangling, in sum, is most significant, as to a showing to us, how these close friends were interacting, friends, whose ways to look at art were seemingly different, but also complimentary views.
In sum: Giovanni Morelli, although indeed responding very directly to sensual values – and one may understand ›flesh‹, particularly flesh, young flesh, very literally here – could also, especially if being stimulated to do so, appreciate the more intellectual, the more inherent values in works of art, because, in his passionate responding, he was ostentatiously doing so, saying that, naturally he could do so, and also showing that he could do so (albeit that someone was needed to stimulate him to do so, that is to reveal himself, in all sides of his nature, more clearly).
It might not have been characteristic for him to put his sensualism in second place, but since his friendship with Federico Frizzoni and Giovanni Frizzoni was close, he was, as it were, constantly confronted with more intellectually oriented views that he had to acknowledge, although his preferences of how to look at art were, at the moment, different, and while the sheer joy of looking, apparently to some degree did outshadow his also showing capability to interpret. Because this capability did also reveal, if opportunity was given, and particularly if Morelli went on, driven by his passionate enthusiasm, to describe works of art as for example the portrait of Don Quixote by Genelli (see chapter Visual Apprenticehsip II).
The literary world of the Frizzoni brothers, thus, meant a challenge to Morelli who did devour as much literature and poetry as he could (and he did also show that he indeed did so), but his preferences were slightly different, in that he did, being somewhat younger than the Frizzoni brothers, already look back at the Goethezeit, and at the age of the German Romantik, and in that, similar to the German writers of the Pre-March era, brought also a distinct irony (and less respect) into that looking back.
A looking back that was an expression of a wanting to find an own way into the future, but still showed, in not at all dismissing mainstream traditions, that it remained in close connection with these traditions.
That were not being considered as alternatives, resulting in particular identities, but as very diverse offsprings of own creations. And if we see Giovanni Morelli, no less than swirling across the literary landscape of his day, meeting with one writer after another (see our survey below); and the backdrop of his friendship with the Frizzoni brothers does remind us that he stayed in touch with friends that had incorporated and thus were living slightly different values, and that it was just this not quite agreeing that worked as an intellectual stimulus to Giovanni Morelli. Causing him, at times, to wrangle, but also causing him, driven by his own intellectual curiosity and his inclination to socialize, to swirl, to search and to explore.

The beginnings of Giovanni Morelli’s own literary ambition date of c. 1836 and hence not of the age of the Weimarer Klassik nor of the German Frühromantik, but of the Vormärz (›Pre-March-Era‹) and in some sense of the German Spätromantik. The Vormärz yet looked back at Classicism and Romantic school, and Morelli (in cooperation with Veit Engelhardt) spoke, in 1845, of the ›boundaries between classicism and romanticism that today could only be of importance for pedants and fools‹ (Engelhardt/Morelli 1845a, p. 2026: »jene Schranken zwischen Klassizismus und Romantizismus, die heutzutage nur noch für Pedanten und Schwachköpfe von Wichtigkeit sein können«).

Since it is thus possible, especially if we take into consideration the long neglected correspondence with Genelli, to study Morelli’s sympathies and antipathies, his interests and his passions as to reading more in depth, it is possible to situate Morelli very precisely within the literary landscape of his day. Which is also: that his relation to the literary heritage of the Weimarer Klassik and that to the heritage of the Romantik can be studied more in detail. But it does not make sense any longer – and actually it did never make much sense – to explain his later development to being a connoisseur exclusively with his being in touch with literary circles of the Spätromantik, or to see his own writings exclusively being inspired by the Frühromantik. Nor does one see – at any time of his life (as Edgar Wind once had it; see Wind 1985, p. 42, with the influential Reith lecture on Morelli of 1960) – a »cult of the fragment«.
In fact: Neither is there such a cult at any time of his life, nor does the intellectual biography of Giovanni Morelli owe anything to a frühromantische theory of the fragment, and – most important –: the intellectual biography of Giovanni Morelli shows him, until being 40-years-old, not much interested in becoming a connoisseur of art at all. That is: Explaining his development to being a connoisseur of art exclusively by his early being in touch with the Romantik, is in a double sense questionable, if not to say wrong: because, for one, there is no such being influenced by a theory of the fragment, nor, secondly, is there any interest to link a theory of connoisseurial practices with theories of the Romantik (except, and this is the significant, if rather hidden exception, with ideas of philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling).
In sum: being obsessed with a putative link between Giovanni Morelli and the Frühromantik runs in danger to block the view onto the actual intellectual biography of Giovanni Morelli which has much to do with literature (and Socratic or romantic irony is always being a part of it), and also with writers that we count among the writers of the age of the Romantik, but in a rather different sense than once Edgar Wind, simplifying the biography of Morelli in the extreme, did assume. And in the following we attempt to give a survey as to the relations of Giovanni Morelli to several writers, being active in the German Pre-March era, later followed by a survey on how Morelli saw the two Italian writers of the day that were of the utmost importance to him: Giovanni Battista Niccolini and Alessandro Manzoni.

GIOVANNI MORELLI AND THE GERMAN LITERARY SCENE OF THE PRE-MARCH ERA


Clemens Brentano in 1837, painted by Emilie Linder, and Guido Görres


Heinrich Heine in 1831 (on the left), and August Graf Platen


Friedrich Rückert (in 1818)


Again Rückert (before 1841)


Ludwig Tieck in 1838, the year in which Giovanni Morelli met him


Poet Ludwig Tieck sitting to the portrait by sculptor David d’Angers, and painted by Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein


Bettina von Arnim (1785-1859)


(Picture: Profile of Bettina von Arnim/youtube.com)

Munich I: The Cultural Climate.

The inspiration for his first literary work, the Balvi magnus (Morelli 1836), Morelli had taken from Das Narrenhaus von Wilhelm von Kaulbach (Kaulbach 1836; see also Waldvogel 2007; and for the link see Anderson 1991b, p. 33, with the letter by GM to Federico Frizzoni, 14 October 1836), a work containing comments upon the Kaulbach drawing of a madhouse, comments by Guido Görres, the son of publicist and historian Joseph Görres, who was, like Morelli, associating with poet Clemens Brentano.

Munich II: Conversing with Clemens Brentano.

»Mit [Clemens] Brentano komme ich weniger oft als früher zusammen, ebenso mit [Joseph] Görres, dessen neuestes Werk, Die Mystik, eine ganz merkwürdige Erscheinung ist.«
(GM to Federico Frizzoni, 14 July 1837 (Frizzoni 1893, p. XVIIIf.)

Translations

»Dass der himmlische Hanswurst [Clemens Brentano] diese Welt [hat] verlassen müssen [Brentano died in 1842], dies werden Sie wohl erfahren haben – ob es ihm dort gestattet sein wird, diese Rolle fortzusetzen, zu welcher er hier so manche Proben machte, ist halt die Frage, wenn er auch noch so sehr beteuerte, dass es im Himmel nichts weniger denn langweilig u steif zugehe.«
(Bonaventura Genelli to GM, 23 September 1842)

Erlangen I: Portraying Erlangen à la Heinrich Heine.

Given that Giovanni Morelli knew of the friendship of his friends, the Frizzoni brothers from Bergamo, with poet Graf Platen, who had quarreled with poet Heinrich Heine, a feud that it being remembered as the Platen-Affäre, as a part of which Heine attacked Platen in his Reisebilder, given all that – it was a subtly frivolous hint à la Morelli to his friends, if he did portrait the city of Erlangen à la Heine, that is in the style of the very Reisebilder (for Morelli, in 1851, referring to Goethe, Schiller, Uhland, Hölty, Heine and Rückert see also Frizzoni 1893, p. XLVI).

»Nicht nur als Universitätsstadt ist Erlangen berühmt, sondern auch durch seine Handschuhe, Pfeifenspitzen und Strumpffabriken, und in neuester Zeit durch seine vortreffliche Gedichtfabrik ist es in ganz Deutschland sehr hoch geschätzt – was aber Erlangen für Bayern, Preussen und Sachsen in besonderer Wichtigkeit erhält, ist die protestantische, fanatische Sekte der Mystiker. […]«
(GM to Federico Frizzoni, 15 October 1837 (Frizzoni 1893, p. XV))

Erlangen II: Portraying Friedrich Rückert.

»Rückert ist 49 Jahre alt. Sein Äusseres ist höchst bedeutend; für manchen vielleicht zurückschreckend, für solche aber, die besser lesen können, anziehend. Er ist sehr gross (in jeder Beziehung der grösste Erlanger; um einen Kopf höher als ich). Dabei aber proportioniert; denn seinem Rücken nach sollte man ihn für keinen Gelehrten ansehen. Sein stets ernstes Gesicht, das durch die Pocken etwas gelitten, gehört unter die imposantesten, die ich gesehen. Er hat eine ziemlich niedere, leichtgewölbte, vorstehende Stirn, tiefliegende, schwarze, funkelnde Augen, deren Feuer, besonders wenn er lächelt, recht glüht, einen etwas zusammengekniffenen, breiten Mund – eine kleine, formlose Nase (der einzige unbedeutende Teil in seinem Gesicht) und stark vorstehende Backenknochen. Das Gesicht ist nicht fett, sondern mehr eingefallen. Das etwas lange, grauliche Haar ist gescheitelt und hinter die Ohren gestrichen. Seine Bewegungen sind schnell und kräftig, was ich besonders neulich, als er mich besuchte und das Gespräch auf die indischen Gaukler kam, zu sehen Gelegenheit hatte, wo er sich im Eifer der Erzählung von ihren fast unglaublichen Kunststücken plötzlich vom Stuhle erhob und durch Aktionen und Gestikulationen aller Art seine Beschreibung lebendiger und anschaulicher zu machen strebte. Der Dichter der Geharnischten Sonette ist in ihm nicht zu verkennen. Sein liebstes Gespräch ist über die verschiedenen Sprachen, ihren Geist und ihre Formen, und nie verlasse ich ihn ohne einen grossen Nutzen. Um recht viel von ihm zu geniessen, habe ich mich nun an die Grimm’sche deutsche Grammatik gemacht und an die alten und mittelalterlichen Dichter, die ich schon seit lange etwas vernachlässigt hatte, weil es mir bei ihnen wie bei der altdeutschen, gepriesenen bildenden Kunst ging – ich erbaute mich an ihren nebelhaften und krüppelhaften, verhungerten Gestalten, denen alles Sinnliche abgeht, sehr wenig, und selbst die Nibelungen, so hohen Genuss sie mir verschafft haben, werden mir zuwider, sobald ich sie an den Homer halte. […]
Rückert gehört hier unter die wenigen Gelehrten, die ganz unabhängig und frei von den mystischen Faktionen […] geblieben sind; er lebt für sich eingezogen und still und hat bloss einen Freund (Professor Kopp, ein Mann von immenser Gelehrsamkeit), mit dem er umgeht. Von morgens 4 bis abends 10 Uhr arbeitet er fast ununterbrochen fort, und so erscheint seine Produktivität weniger wunderbar, wie auch seine enorme Sprachenkenntniss (Griechisch, Latein, Italienisch, Spanisch, Französisch, Englisch, Norwegisch, Dänisch, Arabisch, Hebräisch, Persisch, Sanskrit, und was weiss ich noch alles). Besuch machen ist nicht seine Sache; um so höher schätze ich seine Besuche, mit denen er mich schon einigemal beehrt hat. – Jede Woche bringe ich einige Stunden bei ihm zu und werde, seit ich gesehen, dass er mich wohl leiden mag, einige mehr dazu addieren. Neulich las er mir mehrere Gedichte eines gewissen Kotzenberg aus Bremen, die dieser ihm zur Beurtheilung überschickt hatte, vor. […]«
(GM to Federico Frizzoni, 15 October 1837 (one of the most hilarious letters ever written: see Frizzoni 1893, pp. XIXff., quoted above from p. XXIIf.; orthography slightly modernized; in 1836/37 (and until 1839) Friedrich Rückert was publishing his several volumes oeuvre Die Weisheit des Brahmanen)

Dresden: Hearing Ludwig Tieck Reading Aloud.

»Wenn ich nun die Individualität Alfieris gegen die Tiecks z.b. halte, wie erbärmlich erscheint mir nicht letzterer – als Mensch hat er nicht eine Spur einer dichterischen Seele, auf mich wenigstens hat seine höfische, berechnete, superfeine, – kurz seine falsche Art u Weise den unangenehmsten Eindruck gemacht u ich würde ihn nie wieder besuchen, wenn er fürs erste sich mir nicht so überaus gefällig u artig erwiesen hätte, u wenn ich zweitens nicht über spanische Literatur vieles von ihm lernen könnte. Auch kann ich seine Vorlesungen, zumal Shakespeare’scher Stücke, nicht genug bewundern; das nähere Verständnis Lears verdank’ ich z.b. ganz u gar seiner Vorlesung. Dass er alles u nicht nur den Shakespeare, wie es gewöhnlich heisst, gut vorliest, davon haben mich d. Alceste des Euripides, die ich vorgeschlagen hatte, u dann einige Lustspiele Heinrich v. Kleists überzeugt. Auch den Goldoni las er meisterhaft vor, u ein ungemein feines Gefühl lässt sich ihm keineswegs absprechen. Seine Natur ist so weiblich, dass sie sich an alles schmiegen u alles aufnehmen kann – ich meine, seine poetische Natur; – denn selbst hat er nichts weibliches in seinem Charakter, wenn man d. alten Weiber vielleicht ausnimmt […].«
(GM to Bonaventura Genelli, 14 June 1838; for Morelli referring, in 1864, to having read in his youth poems by Bürger, Hölderlin, Tieck and other poets of the Romantic school see Panzeri/Bravi (eds.) 1987, p. 128)

Berlin: Charming Bettina von Arnim (and being charmed by her).

»›Ei, das ist schön, Herr Morell, dass Sie auch Sinn für Malerei haben‹, sagte mir Bettina [von Arnim].
›Sie sind auch ein Kunstkenner?‹, fragte etwas vorwitzig der Herr Baron [Mayer Carl von Rothschild]. – Da ich ihm aber gar keine Antwort gab, so warf der junge Held einen lächelnden Blick auf die Damen und drehte dabei seinen Brillantring am kleinen Finger.«
(GM to Bonaventura Genelli, 12 November 1838)


Translations

›Upon this she [Bettina von Arnim] grabbed a worn out armchair, trundled it to a quite large sofa, above which a copy of the Io by Correggio was hanging, lied down on the sofa with legs full length (à la Schelmuffski), namely alongside, whilst she asked me to be seated next to her.‹
(GM to Bonaventura Genelli, 14, 23, 24 June 1838)

›I followed her [Bettina von Arnim] into the adjoining studio, where the Io is hanging. Beneath the door she yet said jokingly to [Mayer Carl von] Rothschild, that he should behave well. Then she locked the two of us in, throwed herself onto the sofa and with one hand tapped on the free space next to her – ›there, my friend, be seated‹.‹
(GM to Bonaventura Genelli, 12 November 1838)

»Sie [Bettina von Arnim] ergriff darauf einen versessenen Lehnsessel und rollte ihn zu einem ziemlich grossen Canapé, über welchem eine Copie der Io von Correggio hing, legte sich sodann ›mit gleichen Beinen‹ (à la Schelmuffski) aufs Sofa und zwar den langen Weg, indem sie mich an ihrer Seite Platz zu nehmen bat.«
(GM to Bonaventura Genelli, 14, 23, 24 June 1838)

»Ich folgte ihr [Bettina von Arnim] in das anstossende Atelier, wo die Io hängt. Uner der Tür sagte sie noch scherzend dem [Mayer Carl von] Rothschild, er solle sich gut aufführen. Dann schloss sie uns beide ein, warf sich auf das Canapé und klopfte mit einer Hand auf den freien Platz neben ihr – ›da, mein Freund, nehmen Sie Platz‹.«
(GM to Bonaventura Genelli, 12 November 1838)


Mayer Carl von Rothschild (picture: ub.uni-frankfurt.de)

*

THE SENSUAL SIDE OF LOOKING, THE SENSUAL SIDE OF ART

In 1878 62-year-old Morelli was to take note of his 31-year-old apprentice-to-be Jean Paul Richter praising enthusiastically the Antiope by Correggio (now rather called Venus, Satyr, and Cupid) in the Louvre. And wholeheartedly, as Morelli wrote to Richter, he wanted to join in praising that painting.(17)
What Morelli did not say, then, was that, many years earlier, in 1840, he had, upon Genelli’s request, made this particular painting the subject of an enthusiastic description, had praised Antiope as appearing to him even more beautiful than Io or Leda.(18) In fact 24-year-old Morelli had, in describing the Louvre picture out of memory in 1840,(19) elaborated his description in terms of a scene, evolving in time. But his text – unfortunately only fragmentarily being extant – only reaches the point of the story when the satyr arrives. Which is: we have a description of Venus (or Antiope) by Morelli, but we do not have his full description of what happened, in his view, with the satyr arriving (or even afterwards).
Correggio, as is the case certainly for many other viewers and writers, is without any doubt to be regarded as the one painter that confronted Morelli with sensuality, female sensuality. And since we also can trace how his views on Correggio, over the years, did evolve, we can also say that Correggio was the one painter who made Morelli also think about sensuality. Female sensuality. And sensuality in art as such. This subject, certainly a delicate one, inserts into an even more broad (and also delicate) chapter on ›Morelli and women, Morelli’s views of women, and women’s view of Morelli‹. A chapter, certainly comprising also many a secret compartment that we are neither able nor inclined to open, and a chapter we are also not going to elaborate as a chapter of its own, but should like to address, in that we try to characterize Morelli’s views of women in art, women in life, and on female sensuality in art and life. Naturally this is only possible in characterizing also his views of men, of masculinity,(20) and from the very start we should also take note that there was not one image of women or men that Morelli cherished, but many. And very diverse were also, maybe not the women Morelli was attracted to, but the women Morelli encountered during his studenthood and beyond, and did also describe.

One might mention here again (or not), that Morelli never got married. That throughout of his life he lived, sometimes referring to the fact more waggishly, and sometimes more wistfully, as a bachelor.(21) But this only bears on the very basic facts (and more interesting are here, as generally, the nuances), and we might also add, and also as a basic fact, that Morelli, as a man many women felt being attracted to, could not stand it to be monopolized by women. Although he enjoyed the company of very lively, intelligent and in every respect very attractive women, and usually also for quite some time.(22)
Nonetheless, if Morelli never got married, one might also relate this fact to the fact, that he also, and maybe more than anything, loved his freedom. That in some respect it was his freedom he was married to. Which resulted, among other things and in combining with other, and also economical factors, with the fact of Morelli never getting married. And since he kept a good and very solid relation to his mother, it was her being present in her son’s life, if only in the backdrop of her son’s life, more than any other woman.(23) Since no other woman, although Morelli several times did fall in love with a woman,(24) is to be found as the one woman in his life. And this, probably, also to Morelli’s chagrin, relativized though by his love of freedom and the satisfaction he got from many friendships and his studying of literature and of the visual arts.
If also from many affairs with women (and, possibly, also with men) is simply not known, due to Morelli’s general secretiveness, but we tend to think that this was rather not the case.

It is less easy to imagine Morelli going to the opera than imagining him going to the theatre or to the circus, but in fact he did go to the opera, and also enthusiastically, at least in Paris;(25) and it is striking that music as such did play a rather minor role in later years. Not during his studenthood though, when he actually did enjoy music on various occasions,(26) but music as an art form got indeed outshadowed by the time, first by his passion for literature and second, and more and more, by his passion for the visual arts and its study.
It was at the opera, nonetheless, that he fell in love, which means here, that he admittedly, and probably only for a short time, had a crush on opera singer Giulia Grisi,(27) whom he probably never did meet in person, since, while he felt being attracted to various women representing stage professions, as to Giulia Grisi, and later to an Italian singer, and as also in Paris to an Italian female circus rider, he felt that this was not exactly the milieu he should be attracted to.(28) Judged by his own moral or social standards.
But obviously he was (and also later), and Giulia Grisi as well as the Italian circus rider do represent probably women Morelli admired from a distance, representing the audience, having fallen in love with a stage personality, an artist, a star.

›If this divine creature, dressed like a nymph, with her coal-black long hair, her sparkling eyes, the gracious movements of her slim and ample body, on her Andalusian gray, in bright candlelight and to the most cheerful music in soughing gallop does ride by oneself, waving the garland of roses – one’s heart dances with joy in one’s body, for the human (being) being that beautiful a creature.‹
··························································
»Wenn dieses göttliche Geschöpf, wie eine Nymphe gekleidet, mit ihrem kohlschwarzem langen Haar, ihren funkelnden Augen, den graziösen Bewegungen ihres schlanken & üppigen Leibes, auf ihrem andalusischen Schimmel beim hellen Kerzenschein u der heitersten Musik in rauschendem Galopp an einem vorbei reitet & die Girlande von Rosen schwenkt – da tanzt einem das Herz im Leibe vor Freude, dass der Mensch ein so schönes Geschöpf ist.«(29)

The features of character that Morelli considered as being male features he was to enlist, many years later, in regard to Michelangelo Buonarroti, and features that he considered as being female in regard to other artists (with again Correggio among them).(30) But if he, then, wanted also to express what he considered to be male and female nature in its essence – he knew also that real life was much more complicated. Since for example he considered Lady Eastlake, the wife of painter-connoisseur Charles Lock Eastlake, as a mannish woman (»Mannweib«),(31) and this obviously due to her resolute nature and her being quickly decided and taking, then, usually a very firm stance.(32)
Which was exactly the opposite of Morelli’s scepticism, his oscillating judgment, that showed, if not to everyone, particularly in connoisseurship.(33) And Lady Eastlake, as also writer Malwida von Meysenbug, and also philantropist and collector (and also novelist) Henriette Hertz, tended to overlook this very sceptical and often uncertain side of Morelli’s nature, that, nonetheless and occasionally was inclined to a wanting to impress people and also women by taking a very firm stance in certain connoisseurial matters, and particularly with these woman, he was also successful in wanting to impress them.(34)
And thus, he seems also and particularly to have impressed Lady Eastlake, who, in her portrait of Morelli, did idealize him to no little degree, in enlisting, rather uncritically his alleged triumphs (that in the mean time have all been challenged again).(35)

Morelli’s views on men and women were seen as being rather conservative, and this from the perspective of a rather progressive woman like Louise M. Richter, who did know him from close (and who had translated one book of his into English), and who found that his judgment on Lady Eastlake showed that Morelli was, all in all, a man of the ›good old time‹.(36)
Lady Eastlake, on her part, seems also to be affirming this, due to her remark that writer Bettina von Arnim, with whom Morelli had intensely associated with in 1838, had not been the kind of woman Morelli was actually drawn to.(37) But as always with Morelli: various aspects add to a rather heterogeneous and often ambiguous picture: since the associating with remarkable personalities like Lady Eastlake, Bettina von Arnim, the Prussian Crown Princess Victoria (and daughter of Queen Victoria) and last but not least: with salonnière Donna Laura Minghetti was to be a constant in Morelli’s life, although he was, also a constant, occasionally in fear of being monopolized, particularly by women like Donna Laura or Bettina von Arnim (whom he in fact, contrary to Lady Eastlake’s asserting, had also liked).(38)
The other and corresponding constant might have been that he was rather drawn to gentle and rather passive women who also did admire him, or that he could admire these women, without being all too engaging. And several woman like a Miss Holzschuher of Nurimberg,(39) or other women, often not even named,(40) appear in the most diverse biographical scenarios, without ever playing more than a minor, and often – be it allowed to say – more decorative role. A cliché-role certainly, and corresponding to the role of the hotheaded man, having to defend somebody’s honor in duelling himself,(41) a role that Morelli did imagine himself in, while, arguably, he never did duel himself, nor did he ever marry. He could be hotheadded (as he could be sensitive, and even playfully and waggishly cuddly),(42) as much as he could be undecided, probably and generally fearing to commit, and to be all too explicit.
And if, for example, he did actually fight in the battle of Novara in 1849, remains unknown to the historian, nonetheless, we do also know that it was again Lady Eastlake, who must have asked about Morelli’s role in that very battle – since she was the only one to mention, that Morelli apparently had, on the eve of the battle, arrived on the scene.(43)

The challenge that now a painter like Correggio did present the Victorian Age with, can be described in addressing Morelli’s taking a stance in regard to Correggio’s sensuality. And as we have seen, he was, in his studenhood, most enthusiastic about the Louvre’s Venus (and waggishly he had referred to the copy of the Io, hanging over the sofa in the drawing-room of Bettina von Arnim; see picture within the presentation above).
But with Correggio, in later years he was also to associate a sensuality that was on the brink of being corrupted (as regards particularly the Danae), revealing also a potential to corrupt a beholder, that is: to corrupt others in exerting corrupting an influence.(44)
And if the Danae was, in his view, on the brink as to exerting such an influence, the topic did also play a role in his rejecting of the Dresden Reading Magdalen as being by Correggio. Since he perceived this particular work as a painting instrumentalizing sensuality for other, namely Jesuit purposes (a motif that was, later to echo, in Berenson).(45)
Sensuality could also be misused, in other words, and between the Danae and the Reading Magdalen Morelli was to draw his line – resulting also with the excluding of the Magdalen from the painter’s oeuvre as he saw it,(46) and revealing how moral standards, how various ways of sensuality could play a role in connoisseurship, revealing at the same time, maybe not Morelli’s moral standards as such, but at least his declared moral standards, and his – more or less declared – being receptive as to female sensuality (rendered by male painters) as a man.

*

AN INTERIM REPORT: YOUNG GIOVANNI MORELLI AND ART CONNOISSEURSHIP

How to sum up the unfolding panorama of Giovanni Morelli swirling across, with his Sturm und Drang verve, the sceneries of pre-revolutionary Biedermeier Germany and of (again) pre-revolutionary France, and soon also of Italy?
All-sided receptiveness met stimuli from all sides.
Resulting with young Morelli, ecstatically enjoying the feast of life (not without experiencing also sober and also most gloomy moments);(47) and with him feeling, rather constantly: the urge to ridicule what was to be ridiculed from the Sturm und Drang perspective of a gifted and intelligent young student. Who was passionate, cheerful, hilarious, and ecstatic as to everything made of ›flesh and blood‹ and as to everything radiating vitality as well as ingenuity; and who showed averse to everything dull, pedantic, pretentious and boring.
Among those things to be ridiculed, from the perspective of 24-year-old Morelli, was idle talk, particularly idle talk on artistic things; and among these things was also and particularly foolish art connoisseurship.
Not actual, not real connoisseurship, which was represented mostly by real and ingenious artists, and above all represented by Genelli; but it is crucial to say that Giovanni Morelli, at age 24, did not aim to become a connoisseur of art at all. Art connoisseurship was something he did observe and something that he, with Genelli, did ridicule, as far as it deserved to be ridiculed. And real connoisseurship was to be considered as being part of a general knowing of how to live. Including a being able to appreciate art which, due to its being ingenious and vital, was indeed worth of being apprecicated.
While his main interest was directed to the art of literature. And while, still, he had not given up his actual study of the natural sciences, which, however, had been outshadowed by his passion for literature already.
Genelli had become his mentor, his friend, and as a friend also his primal mentor. But one should not be mistaken to think that Genelli was his only mentor or teacher.
Beside the fact that Morelli had met Genelli rather at the end of his Munich stay, all-sided receptiveness meant, and this applies for Morelli throughout his life, that he was able to learn from everyone. From his friends as well as from his adversaries. And if Genelli, indeed, was his one and primal mentor as regards almost everything, one should not be mistaken, that Morelli did not also learn, as he did learn from Genelli about artistic things on all levels, from other artists, namely painters (since no less than seven other painters had been members of his beloved Munich lunch club, and this did not even include painter Carl Adoph Mende who was to become also a friend).(48)
At Paris Morelli had made also the acquaintance of Franz Xaver Winterhalter.(49) And this particular painter, a portrait artist to the establishment, might have been interesting for Morelli, just because Winterhalter was a portrait artist to the establishment. In other words: somebody who had met many interesting people, people interesting to meet and to observe as characters. As also portrait artist Franz von Lenbach, in later years a friend of Morelli,(50) had met and portrayed the European establishment and the high society.
And Morelli, as much as he also might have been interested in Winterhalter and Lenbach as artists, was also someone interested, as a man and as a writer, in the study of characters, of people, in a word: of human nature.

Having said that young Morelli was far from wanting to become a connoisseur of art, we face, with our first interim report, a Morelli still preparing, unvoluntarily, to become a connoisseur of art. With him being interested also in everything else, and with him bringing, much later, an assortment of ideas, eclectically assorted and synthesized, into connoisseurship.
Lacking was, nonetheless, the incentive to do what, later he was to do, also due to several incentives: Lacking, in 1840, was the actual need ›to know it better‹, which later was to become the essence of scientific connoisseurship: the aim to know it better, that is to know it with more certainty, that is: to attain a higher degree of certainty as to attributions.
But as long as Morelli regarded art connoisseurship as the subject matter of a comedy, he might have been focussed primarily on foolish connoissseurship, and only indirectly on real ingenious connoisseurship, not to mention the problem to know it, as far as attributions of works of art were concerned, better (which he might have, at the time, rather regarded as a pretentious doing).
In sum: scientific connoisseurship, understood as he did understand it later, was then, in 1840, certainly not (or not very often) on his mind.
Still, in 1840, he already had gathered several stimuli that we are to count among the stimuli that, later, he was to synthesize as a specific method. And while a general visual apprenticeship might have contributed to his later doing generally, we should confine ourselves here to name the more specific stimuli:
above all the various classificatory systems of the natural sciences, meant to become a general backdrop of his later thinking, although never transferred literally to art connoisseurship; a scientific culture also that expected a general commitment to a scientific ethos and to scientific standards (including the expectation that any claim should be backed up by reasons); and in addition to that: several less obvious stimuli as for example physiognomy (because early descriptions of people by Morelli are still redolent of physiognomic views),(51) that might have trained his eye for particularities of anatomy as well as his training in comparative anatomy might have trained more generally his eye for detail; and last but not least one particular stimulus: the experience of having been a sitter to various artists: because the virtually bodily experience to see one’s own body represented by various artists, imposing their invidual styles upon such representation, might also have contributed to a general sense for style, displayed by Morelli in his later years, if focussing particularly on such deliberately-unvoluntarily imposing of artistic impulses upon the representation of the human body. That, much later, were, in a context of scientific connoisseurship, to be regarded as resulting in visual properties, marginal details and clues as to the determining of authorship of works of art.

Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745)


Carl Friedrich von Rumohr (1785-1843)


Gustav Friedrich Waagen (1794-1868)


Karl Eduard von Liphart (1808-1891)


Johann David Passavant (1787-1861)

INTERIM REPORT (MORELLI AND ART CONNOISSEURSHIP) I (1833-1840)


Athanasius Raczynski (1788-1874; compare Kaiser 2010)

1833ff.: the probably first connoisseur of art Giovanni Morelli ever meets in his life (beside his Bergamo friends, the Frizzoni brothers) is Athanasius Raczynski, whom he meets in the Munich studio of Bonaventura Genelli (GM to Federico Frizzoni, 14 July 1837 (Frizzoni 1893, p. XVIII)); while studying at Munich Morelli associates with many artists and meets, above all, Genelli, who is becoming a dear friend.

1836: in his first literary work, the Balvi magnus, Morelli mentions various art historians, and among them also connoisseur [Jonathan] Richardson (Morelli 1836, p. 3; compare Anderson 1991b, p. 37; it is possible and even likely that Morelli studied also the works of Winckelmann; compare Spector 1969, p. 70).

1837/38: Morelli visits Erlangen, Nurimberg and Schloss Weissenstein at Pommersfelden (compare Bonaventura Genelli to GM, 24 December 1837; Frizzoni 1893, pp. XIXff.); before or after his Berlin stay he also sees the gallery of Dresden for the very first time; with his new friend, Erlangen professor Veit Engelhardt, he provides an article on drawings by Genelli (Engelhardt/Morelli 1839) that is probably directed against Raczyński 1839, pp. 224-227, and meant to defend or to better explain Genelli.


Christian Xeller and Mayer Carl von Rothschild (pictures: Wikipedia; ub.uni-frankfurt.de)

1838: in Berlin salons Morelli encounters (rather briefly) Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Karl Eduard von Liphart; he associates with restorer Christian Xeller and keeps on corresponding with Genelli, also on connoisseurial matters. Since he is intensely associating with Bettina von Arnim, above all, he also meets, in her salon, Mayer Carl von Rothschild.


Otto Mündler (1811-1870) (source: Kultzen 1999, p. 378; detail) and Ralph Nicholson Wornum (1812-1877) (picture: wornum.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk)

1838-40: in Paris Morelli shares a flat with his later mentor in connoisseurial matters, Otto Mündler. Ralph Nicholson Wornum stays in the same house, and Morelli, later, is recalling to have studied with both of them (see M/R, pp. 15, 23; Morelli 1890, p. 245f.), probably mainly in the Louvre; in Paris Morelli visits painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter, associates with wood engraver Kaspar Braun and painter/wood engraver Johann Rehle, and from Paris Morelli sends also his comedy Kunstkenner to Bonaventura Genelli in Munich; he is reading Johann David Passavant’s monograph on Raphael and also visits the ›Salon of ’39‹ (Frizzoni 1893, p. XXXVf.); last but not least he witnesses the introduction of the daguerreotype and the subsequent ›Daguerreomanie‹; in summer of 1840 he returns, travelling via Marseille, to Italy.



Etching after the Raczynski owned version of Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Die Hunnenschlacht (1834) (picture: goethezeitportal.de)




Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Zerstörung Jerusalems durch Titus (1837/1846)

**

TWO) NATURE, LANDSCAPE AND ONE’S HOME COUNTRY

STUDY OF LANGUAGE, STUDY OF POETRY A CAVALLO

In 1840 the Mont Ventoux was not as prominent a mountain as it is prominent a mountain today. Prominent as a symbolical mountain, and associated with Italian poet Francesco Petrarca who is mainly responsible for making Mont Ventoux prominent as a symbolical mountain, due to his letter describing an ascent of Mont Ventoux, and leading also to a musing about whether to turn rather to the inner self and to God, or to turn to the adventure of looking (including the looking at marvels such as landscape, and including the looking from high peaks of mountains at natural and also at cultural sceneries).(52)
It needed Swiss cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt, not to associate Petrarca with Mont Ventoux, but to identify Petrarca as the quintessential modern man and to associate the letter written by Petrarca with the quintessential adventure of the modern man. The modern man’s adventure of looking and the discovery of the world, of nature, of landscape, and of man itself, of man looking.
Petrarca’s text, also a literary adventure, is not necessarily reflecting, or not only reflecting, real experiences, but as far as the text is speaking of the being drawn to the looking at things and the danger to lose oneself and to turn away from one’s inner self and from God, the text articulates the possibility of real experiences, including the experience of ascending a mountain and find oneself facing the quintessential modern (here: late medieval or early modern) man’s dilemma, while embarking on a a discovery of the world. In a word: as to the core content of Petrarca’s letter it is completely irrelevant if the text is actually reflecting actual experiences on Mont Ventoux or not (if it was only about an account of having climbed this particular mountain, it would matter, but this is not what Petrarca’s formidable literary adventure is all about, nor it is about a competition in describing landscape or conveying an individual’s sense of landscape or observational skills).(53)
It is interesting that among the motifs that were to stimulate Jacob Burckhardt to write about Petrarca and the experiences of this, that is: of his, of Burckhardt’s first ›modern man‹, we find an anti-Berlin reflex, very similar to an only recently acquired anti-Berlin reflex that Giovanni Morelli was to cherish throughout his life.(54) Since Burckhard, in some sense, was to answer, in his Kultur der Renaissance in Italien and when dealing with Petrarca’s ascent of Mont Ventoux, to Alexander von Humboldt, who had dared to question, in his Cosmos, whether Petrarca had had any real sense of landscape.(55)
But in 1840, when 24-year-old Morelli, headed south, coming from Paris, when Giovanni Morelli as a young man, had embarked on the adventure of looking, neither Humboldt (whom Morelli had also met at Berlin) had yet questioned Petrarca’s sense of nature, nor had Burckhardt answered to Humboldt.
All this was only cultural history to come (as was the long and actually never-ending aftermath of Burckhardt writing on Petrarca), but nonetheless – it is very likely that Petrarca was already on 24-year-old Morelli’s mind when travelling through France and when heading from Paris towards Marseille in 1840.(56) But at that time it must have been rather a Petrarca seen through the eyes of Italian writer Vittorio Alfieri.

And as much Morelli, after returning to his home town of Bergamo, must have enjoyed to read Petrarca, a cavallo, as Alfieri had written sonnets a cavallo,(57) as much as also the poetry of Petrarca might have appealed to him in expressing feelings that he might have had at that particular time – the actual questions Morelli had, and the actual search of identity he had embarked on (in fact when staying in the North), Vittorio Alfieri had articulated; Alfieri, who, thus, must be seen as the actual companion of Giovanni Morelli when heading home. And the anti-Berlin, and in some sense also: anti-North reflex, that Morelli had recently acquired, had literally everything to do with Alfieri, and specifically with this writer’s autobiography, his Vita, that Morelli already had read as a boy, but when staying at Berlin had re-read.(58) And when he had enthusiastically praised Alfieri, when exuberantly and repeatedly he had spoken about his experiences with Alfieri, and with reading Alfieri in Berlin salons (it is not known which ones), one had, apparently, belittled him, looked down upon him and his beloved Alfieri, and this Morelli, apparently, was never to forget in his life. And if this insult had not had had actual consequences in the mind of young Giovanni Morelli, at least it was the first such insult in a series of such insults,(59) that he felt that he had to answer with fighting back,(60) because he had felt being patronized by some arrogant Berliners, and throughout his life, it seems, that this was to occur again and again, but maybe it was only this initial insult that, again and again, seemed to repeat.
While we do not know what exactly Morelli did in the South of France, we know that he headed towards Marseille. And we know that, after his return to Italy, more than anything, it was the reading of Petrarca on his mind, and while discovering the world of his home country, looking at it through the eyes of German Bildung, he actually did read Petrarca a cavallo, when, in the following, he was embarking on criss cross riding in the North of Italy.(61)
At least he told so in his letters to Genelli, and, again, at least this was the way young Giovanni Morelli wanted to be seen: as an Italian studying his home country, continuing his studenthood, as it were, and while studying the natural and also the cultural scenery of his home country, he also studied the poetry of Petrarca in the same way Vittorio Alfieri had studied it.
In sum: Morelli was modelling his self image after Alfieri, he identified, as he already had had at Berlin, with Alfieri, when he had felt being insulted, when Alfieri had been belittled, whose Vita,(62) by the way (or above all), also deals with the quintessential problem that Morelli now had to face: after having acquired Bildung in one language, he was expected to acquire status and a social position in another culture – a culture with another language, and he could not do so with writing in German as, up to this point, he had done. Hence: he had, as Alfieri had done, to study, to learn the Italian language anew, and if he was to carry out the plan that was on his mind, namely to develop himself as a poet and a playwright, he had to study above all the Italian classics.
Giovanni Morelli was never to dismiss his German Bildung, but he faced the task to actually settle in Lombardy, in Tuscany, in Italy. And while German Bildung, and above all Goethe had provided models how to travel to Italy and through Italy, if one was coming from the North: Morelli, if he wanted to live as a writer in his home country, and if he wanted to live in Italy, he had to establish himself as a writer. Thus, if he travelled, it was not only travelling on his mind, what he actually wanted now was simply to settle, and his now travelling in Italy was meant to prepare for settling in Italy: He wanted to know the country he was going to settle in, to know it better. And it was landscape in a double sense, with his returning to Italy, that Morelli now experienced. And we should like to look at how Giovanni Morelli experienced landscape (also in looking back). Natural landscape, nature, but also cultural landscape, and in progressing forward: the Italian literary landscape of the day.

GIOVANNI MORELLI EXPERIENCING NATURE


A view of Valorcine (picture: Thomasb)


A view of the Mont Blanc from Chamonix (picture: Aiguille)


An illustration to the Don Quixote by Gustave Doré (picture: diccionariosdigitales.net)




Wilhelm Schirmer, Die Grotte der Egeria (1841)


An illustration by Gustave Doré to the Orlando furioso

1838: An Expedition to the Mont Blanc glacier,
led by Louis Agassiz


Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) in 1840

»Sobald Einer oder der Andere eine Stelle gefunden hatte, wo sich das Phänomen [polished surfaces on granite] in seiner ganzen Schönheit zeigte, rief er, gleich einer Gluckhenne, seine Umgebung herbei; Jedermann lief herzu und befühlte die glänzenden Flächen. Man zählte die Streifen, verfolgte sie mit dem Finger, betrachtete sie mit der Lupe und freute sich der neuen Bestätigung, welche die Gletschertheorie durch ihre Anwesenheit erhalten hatte.«
(Source: Vogt (ed.) 1847, p. 95)

Translations


Alexander von Nordmann (1803-1866)

1839: Looking at the Atlantic for the very first time

»[…]. – Den andern Tag waren wir [Giovanni Morelli, Alexander von Nordmann and Henri Milne-Edwards] am Ozean!
Der Anblick des Meeres brachte eine solche Freude in mich, dass ich mich einer ähnlichen nicht erinnern kann. Ich sass lange allein am Ufer u betrachtete diese unendliche Wasserfläche mit ihren heiterschäumenden blauen Wellen, ohne zu wissen, was ich eigentlich fühle. Bald wurde ich wehmütig gestimmt, bald aber heiter, wenn mir Don Quixote einfiel, wie er mit Sancho an jenem hellen Sommermorgen zum erstenmale in Barcelona das Meer anblickt u Herr u Diener in grosse Verwunderung geraten [Don Quixote, vol. II, chapter 61]. Alle Ruidera-Seen zusammen genommen, sagte Don Quixote, sind beim allmächtigen Himmel, nicht so gross wie das Meer u diese Behauptung will ich mit meinem Schwerte gegen [einen] jeden, sei er auch wer er immer wolle, verteidigen! Und in der Tat scheint mir auch nichts geschickter, alle Beschränkthheiten u Einseitigkeiten unserer in [einem] engen Kreise gewonnenen Begriffe mit einem Schlage so zu vernichten, als wie ein Blick aufs Meer. – Wenn man auf offener See draussen auf dem Verdecke sitzt u dem Spiele dieser gewaltigen Wellen zusieht, die gleich jungen Löwen miteinander balgen, ohne ihre eigentliche Kraft zu kennen, – plump u doch graziös – rings um sich nichts als Himmel u Wasser gewahrt, hie u da ein weisses Segelschiff langsam u stolz auf den Wellen oder eine schreiende Möwe schnell über den Wellen ziehn sieht – der Himmel klar u heiter u die Sonne oben u die Sonne unten scheint, da [ists] einem wie ein ewiger Sonntag zumute u man vergisst bei diesem herrlichen Anblicke alles hohen u niedern Geziefers, das da auf dem festen Lande ›unter der Last eines drückenden Lebens grunzt u keucht‹ – u nur das Edle findet in einem Anklang. Bei Gott, welch anderes Leben führt nicht so ein Matrose gegen das eines meckernden Kathederhelden u Konsorten! Beim Jupiter, übers Reisen geht nix u wenn ich allein wäre u keine Mutter hätte, die mir über alles teuer ist, ich reiste wahrlich zu den Kannibalen. Ich denke mir diese Kreaturen viel lieblicher u angenehmer, als unsere Konversationslexikonsbrut ist. Aber freilich gibts dort nicht viel zu lachen u das tu’ ich gar zu gerne u deshalb ist es ein grosser Gewinn im fürtrefflichsten aller Weltteile, im Lande Europa, wohnen zu können u den Aufklärungsgesellschaften u andern Lampenputzern zuzusehen. Sehn diese Kerle nicht putzlustig aus? Was macht denn unser christlicher Neuntöter, der ölige Brentano? Ist er vor Frömmigkeit noch nicht zerplatzt?«
(GM to Bonaventura Genelli, 25 September 1839)


Henri Milne-Edwards (1800-1885)

1842: Looking at the Roman Campagna (with Goethe)

»Ich besuche jede Woche ein paarmal die Galerie Doria, wo sich die erhabensten Landschaften von Claude und von [Gaspard] Poussin befinden, und nachdem ich mich recht eingehend darin vertieft habe, begebe ich mich gleich in die freie Natur und suche das darin zu finden, was ich in den Gemälden gesehen und was jene Künstler gefunden und mehr oder weniger nachzuahmen gestrebt haben.
Solche Studien sagen mir im höchsten Grade zu, sie erweitern und läutern meinen Sinn [animo] und verleihen ihm einen erhabenern Begriff der Natur und der Kunst.
Glückselig derjenige, dem alles lebendige Idee und nicht mehr blosses Wort und Ueberlieferung ist!«
(GM to Niccolò Antinori, 20 April 1842 (Frizzoni 1893, p. XXXVIII); from Rome)

1851: Again: The Lake Como (at night)

»Wie oft spreche ich nicht von Ihnen [Bonaventura Genelli] mit meinem Florentiner Freund, wenn wir beide abends nach Tische am lodernden Kamin sitzen u. rauchen – wie oft erwacht nicht in mir der Wunsch Sie hier in dieser paradiesischen Einsiedelei zu haben! Welche Freude hätte nicht Ihr Geist, dieses blaue Wasser ringsum, diese mit hohen Myrthenbäumen u immergrünen Eichen bekränzten Felsen, diese lieblichen Säulengänge am Hause, durch die man auf die mit Schnee bedeckten Alpen schaut, zu sehen u. sich daran zu laben! Ganz für Sie! –
Auf unseren Spaziergängen u. Spazierfahrten zu Wasser geraten wir oft in Gegenden, die uns ganz an die ariostischen erinnern – wilde Felsen, über die Wasserfälle stürzen, hohe Lorbeerbäume darüber, tiefe Höhlen u Grotten, u. daneben Oliven u. Feigenbäume u Wachholdergebüsch, aus dem die Amsel gellend herausfliegt, u. über dies alles der reine südliche Himmel u. Frühlingsluft mitten im Winter. Es ist eine Seligkeit, welche Abende erleben wir nicht hier – u. wie herrlich die Vollmondnächte, aus denen nur der eisame melancholische Gesang des Schiffers, der mit schwerbeladenem Schiffe langsam über das Wasser hinzieht, ertönt, u. der die erhabene Stille ringsum erst recht fühlen lässt – gleich wie wir das Dunkel nur dann erst recht wahrnehmen, wenn dazwischen ein Licht, eine Fackel leuchtet u. dann wieder verschwindet! Ich könnte stundenlang an meinem Fenster stehen u. in die Nacht hinaussehen, ohne dass gerade an etwas Bestimmtes mein Geist gefesselt wäre – ich denke eigentlich an nichts – es ist ein angenehmes Schaukeln von Gedanke zu Gefühlen, u. Geist u Seele ruhen in einer Art crepuscolo – Halbdunkel. Wir leben nur hier ganz einsam u allein mit einer sehr alten Tante von mir – Meine Mutter ist schon seit fast zwei Monaten in das Stadtquartier gezogen; u wird jedoch anfangs des kommenden Monats wieder hier eintreffen. Morgens stehn wir gewöhnlich frühe auf u. arbeiten bis gegen elf Uhr, wo wir ein Gabelfrühstück zu uns nehmen. Dann spazieren wir ein wenig auf unserm sonnigen Hügel oder treiben gymnastische Übungen bis gegen ein Uhr, wo wir uns dann wieder niedersetzen u. lesen oder schreiben bis drei oder vier Uhr. Dann schaukeln wir uns bis zur Essenszeit gewöhlich auf dem See umher. Zeitungen werden keine auf dem Balbianello geduldet. So leben wir gewiss das heiterste Leben, das man in diesen trüben Zeiten leben kann.«
(GM to Bonaventura Genelli, 12 February 1851)


Hotel Bregaglia at Promontogno

1884: The Bergell and its Chestnuts

»Von Chiavenna erreicht man in zwei Stündchen ganz bequem das Dörfchen Promontogno, wo ich mich nun in einem jener saubern Schweizer Grand Hotels bequem niedergelassen und noch etliche Tage zu verbleiben im Sinn habe. Die Luft hier ist frisch und sehr bewegt, nicht so kalt wie im nahem Engadin, so dass man auch morgens frühe und nachts ohne Paletot spazieren gehen kann. Die grünen Matten hier haben alle schon den würzigen Bergduft, die Kastanienbäume sind einzig in ihrer Art, ja so schön wie ich mich nicht erinnere, sie anderswo angetroffen zu haben, und mitten durch sie hindurch windet sich schäumend der Bergstrom Mera, mit geräuschvoll jugendlichem Jubel dem Comersee zueilend. Ich habe kein anderes Buch als Begleiter mit mir genommen als die Georgica des Virgil, dazu noch ein paar Dutzend Fotografien von Handzeichnungen hinzugelegt, und in dieser Gesellschaft nun verlebe ich hier, bald sitzend, bald spazierend, ganz still vergnügt meine Tage.«
(GM to Jean Paul Richter, 24 August 1883)


Translations

What it had meant to Morelli, psychologically, to return to Italy, just for a visit in 1836, a visit after which he was to return to Germany again to continue his studies, he had expressed in a letter to his one teacher Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert.(63) And this particular letter does show us something, that was to reveal its full bearing only several years later, and after Morelli had returned to Italy, to stay in Italy.
Because this one letter does not only show Morelli referring to his staying in Germany as a having to work underneath the surface of the earth, namely in a mine, and to his returning to Italy as to the first experiencing of day light and fresh air, after having stayed, for long, underneath the surface of the earth.
But the letter does show Morelli capable of playing with any imaginable romantic imagery, and this, in a waggish gesture, in a letter to Schubert, who was no other than a transmitter of the tremendously popular subject matter of the mines of Falun to the German romantics (which, of course, Morelli knew, and also indirectly did show here to know).(64)
In other words: Morelli was displaying a German literary education, and the romantic side of this education in this letter, when he was offering an excuse to his teacher for not having found the time to properly say goodbye.
Because he had been longing for Italy (which was certainly a motif that any German man of letters was expected to understand, and thus to excuse the not having said good-bye).
The point we are getting at with this is simply: Morelli, when returning to Italy, knew to see Italy with the eyes of a German man of letters of the Pre-March era. Like a German traveller he saw the landscapes, the nature and the culture, since, while seeing, his mind recalled the ways German writers had seen and spoken of the landscape, the culture, the nature. Only that Morelli, unlike a German traveller, meant to stay and live in Italy. His German Bildung uttered opinions in his mind; and thus, not to a little degree, German Bildung, throughout his life, spoke, due to a shaping of his language, out of Morelli, and even out of a Morelli speaking Italian.
If Morelli, for example, was referring to the phenomena of brigandage, he could not do so, at least in letters to Genelli, who he knew would understand him, without referring to the German tradition of the Räuberroman.(65) And if one would have understood him in his home country, we do not know.
He brought a German education to Italy that also included his having seen, and apparently rather little appreciated also landscape painting of the Romantik.(66) But at closer inspection of how Giovanni Morelli did look at landscape, and how he did experience nature, it does seem that even his experiencing of landscape was also, and not a little, influenced by his having lived for long in Pre-March Germany.
Because what was to become most characteristic for Giovanni Morelli was, as to his later years, the importance that he tended to give to the notion of ›background landscape‹.(67) Whatever could be associated with that notion, however, did show also much earlier, if rather in other terms.

Moreli had met the most famous traveller of his time in Berlin: Alexander von Humboldt.(68) And he had, in letters to Genelli, expressed his wish to go on travelling,(69) only that he did rather limit his travelling, in years to come and to Genelli’s chagrin, to a travelling within his home country.
What he felt, in other words, when staying in Germany but also in general, was a longing for what was beyond a visible horizon, and, naturally, as to Italy, he had felt that longing particularly intensely. In other words: something was beyond the horizon, and a glowing of a horizon, a depicted horizon, might have meant, an alluding, by artistic means, an indirect referring to what was beyond the limited horizon of a, for example biblical scene. But beyond that horizon one might have imagined much more, infinity, nature, a promise to come, a longing, a hope.
In later years Morelli was to find an expression of his own longing in poet Alessandro Manzoni, namely in this poet’s tragedy Adelchi.(70) But as a young man, even if he had shown averse, at times, to romantic landscape painting, he was sensitive to exactly this promise of a horizon, of a background landscape, albeit it was, usually, about a warm glowing he did care. Since a warm glowing might have meant, above all, the being at home in a profound sense. A feeling one may associate with home in a profound sense, but also with nature in general, and Giovanni Morelli tended to presuppose, in later years, a most intimate relationship between any painter and the particular painter’s land, with ›land‹ referring to culture, nature and to having deep roots in both.(71)
After Morelli had, much later, come to discern types of background landscapes, for attribution’s sake.(72) And long after he had, at least, visibly, also left behind him the (also collecting) natural scientist’s and the explorer’s way to look at nature. Because to think of Morelli as a systematist of echinoderms is in the end a rather bizarre vision. Albeit that this way of looking at nature, the systematist’s way,(73) also might have stayed with him as a vision and as an imagination. Thus: as one layer of his multi-layered education, and as one voice commenting, from time to time, upon natural things seen, if the voice of his own exuberant Sturm und Drang sensualism, for once and particularly if experiencing nature, had, in him, remained silent.

Entering a literary landscape

It is generally known that Giovanni Morelli had, in 1979 and in the years to come, a high-profile appearance in the essay Clues by Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg.(74) But it deserves also mentioning that only a little later, in 1983, Morelli had also an appearance, a much less known appearance, in a book by writer Natalia Ginzburg (the historian’s mother). Who had written a book on the family, family life and family affairs of writer and poet Alessandro Manzoni.(75)
Which makes it rather easy to precisely locate Giovanni Morelli’s entering of the Italian literary landscape of his day (and after coming home in 1840): at first he had entered the Florentine literary circle of nobleman Gino Capponi, and now he was to enter the house of Alessandro Manzoni, to whom and to whose family Morelli became also attached.
And thus we do meet Morelli in no other place than in the novelist and poet’s Milan house. Where Giovanni Morelli, as a young man, did however not exactly rank as a poet-to-be. About twenty years later the poet yet might have seen in Morelli the connoisseur-to-be. But now, in around 1843, Morelli did in fact rank, and certainly to his rather mixed feelings, as a ›German doctor‹. Who was welcome to give medical advice, and, namely, was asked, by Manzoni’s (second) wife Teresa, about various types of mineral waters with helpful effect.(76)
Morelli, on his part, saw Manzoni, from early on, as one embodiment of insight into human nature. And if he did much less identify with Manzoni than he was, during the 1840s, inclined to identify with playwright Giovanni Battista Niccolini, this was due to Niccolini’s more appealing to his Sturm und Drang ideals (compare our survey below).
But only then, since in Morelli’s later years Niccolini was of no visible importance anymore, while Manzoni, and this certainly still due to the poet’s mildly ironical, but in-depth insight into human nature and into human ways, was considered by Morelli as the one great literary genius, next to the one great political genius of Count Cavour.
Morelli probably knew what his friend Giovanni Frizzoni had penned down in a diary, about the Frizzoni brother’s paying homage to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Weimar in 1830 (see also below). And since his interactions with his friends often do show Morelli competing with them, in some sense Morelli’s visit and becoming acquainted with Alessandro Manzoni has to be seen against the backdrop of the Frizzonis’ having visited Goethe at Weimar. And since we do have accounts of both visits, we should also study them in juxtaposing them, since all of these texts that follow can also be interpreted as the authors writing about themselves and mirroring themselves in the most high-profile literary figures of the day.

VISITING JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE AND ALESSANDRO MANZONI


Goethe in 1828 as painted by Joseph Karl Stieler

Visiting Goethe at Weimar:
The Frizzoni brothers in 1830

»Wir bitten Goethe durch ein Billet um Erlaubnis, ihm unsere Aufwartung zu machen, indem wir uns als Italiener ankündigen und von seinem Sohne [August von Goethe] sprechen, den wir auf seiner Reise kennengelernt. Um fünf Uhr will er uns empfangen. […]
Endlich kommt die ersehnte Stunde. Vor der Türe seines Empfangszimmers steht im Boden geschrieben ›Salve‹.
Wir treten in die lange, einfache, sehr geschmackvolle Stube. Er steht von seinem Sitz auf und geht uns auf halbem Wege entgegen. Sein Aussehen ist das eines vorgerückten, gesunden, ruhigen Greises.
Er lässt uns auf den beiden Stühlen, die schon für uns bereitet standen, niedersitzen, und fragt uns, wo wir seinen Sohn gesehen haben – sagt dann, er sei gegenwärtig von Livorno nach Neapel abgereist und erkundigt sich nach der Angelegenheit, die uns nach Deutschland geführt habe. Er erwähnt ferner die Via Mala, lobt die herrlichen Seen der Lombardei und die Annehmlichkeiten unserer benachbarten Hauptstadt Mailand, die auch seinem Sohn so gefallen habe. Hier berührt er sein Verhältnis mit [Heinrich] Mylius. Das Gespräch fällt sodann auf unsere kleine Stadt [Bergamo], und zu unserer grossen Freude erwähnt er mit der lebhaftesten Teilnahme unseres lieben Kapellmeisters Simone Mayr, den er auf das Freundlichste grüssen lässt.
Über Platen, dem die Lombardei aus natürlichen Umständen weniger gefallen muss als seinem Sohn, und der uns selber Mut gemacht, Ihn zu besuchen, spricht er sich mit den Worten aus: ›Er ist ein talentvoller Mann, der grosse Verdienste um unsere Literatur hat‹. Doppelt freundlich wird er gegen uns, als er gehört, dass wir mit ihm in Konnektion stehen. Dass es Platen in der Lombardei weniger gefallen habe als seinem Sohne, meint er allein den Zufälligkeiten des Wetters zuzuschreiben: das Land lobt er abermals in vielen Hinsichten und erkundigt sich nach dem Zustand der Musik, was ihm Anlass gibt zu einem anmutigen Scherze über die herumziehenden Sänger, indem er sie dem leichten Völkchen der Zugvögel vergleicht.
Immer wechselt er den Gegenstand des Gesprächs und lässt es nie zu, dass es ins Stocken gerate. Sein Gesicht, das wirklich mit dem olympischen Jupiter über ihm eine gewisse Ähnlichkeit hat, ist ruhig, doch beständig heiter und freundlich. Oft wiederholt er die herablassende, schmeichelnde Phrase eines ältern Mannes gegen junge Leute, wie: ›Nun, das ist recht schön‹ oder: ›Das ist recht gut‹, geht sodann gleich zu etwas Neuem über. Endlich nach einer kleinen halben Stunde bittet er um unsere Namen, um noch mit seinem Sohn von uns sprechen zu können. Wir verstehen den Wink; überreichen ihm dankend für seine Aufmerksamkeit und ausserordentliche Güte eine Karte und verlassen alsbald, nicht ohne innere Bewegung, die Stube des grossen Mannes.«
(Source: Rosenfeld (ed.) 1965, pp. 51-53; from a diary kept by Giovanni Frizzoni)


Translation

Alessandro Manzoni in 1841, painted by Francesco Hayez


Giovanni Battista Niccolini (1792-1861)

Visiting Manzoni at Milan (and Niccolini at Florence): Giovanni Morelli in the 1840s (and beyond)

»Für Morelli war es ein Festtag, als er zum erstenmal vor Manzoni trat. Der Dichter war tief in Sprachstudien und äusserte: Ein jeder Italiener, der gut schreiben wolle, sei verpflichtet, sich, so schwer es ihm auch falle, des toskanischen Idioms zu bedienen. Die Akademie der Crusca in Florenz sei die wahre Hüterin des italienischen Sprachschatzes. – Morelli erzählt: ›Der Dichter empfing mich lächelnd und hiess mich Platz neben sich nehmen. Um den Tisch sassen seine Frau, eine schwarze lebhafte Dame, seine zwei Töchter und sein jüngster Sohn… Es schien mir, als ob er mehr Dichter als Denker wäre. Sein konservativer Geist trieb ihn manchmal zu paradoxen Aussprüchen. Nur für einen Augenblick gelang es mir, ihn seinem Lieblingsthema, der Sprache, abwendig zu machen. Da berührte er die ausländische Literatur, nannte Goethe den Heros der modernen Poesie, kritisierte die geringe historische Treue Schillers, namentlich des Don Carlos, und sagte von der modernen französischen Literatur, er glaube nicht, dass sie ein Werk aufzuweisen habe, das ein Jahrhundert überleben werde. Alle diese Ideen entwickelte er mit viel Feinheit. So plauderten wir bis Mitternacht. Für den nächsten Tag lud er mich in sein Studierzimmer. Ich hoffte, er werde von Dingen sprechen, die mich mehr interessierten als die Crusca. Vergeblich. Kaum hatten wir uns gesetzt, als er den Faden der philosophischen Konversation wieder aufnahm. Dann trat eine junge Dame ein, die er mir lächelnd als seine ›Sibylle‹ vorstellte. An ihrer Sprechweise erkannte ich sofort die Toskanerin. Es war die Toskanerin, mit der er seine Schriften durchging.‹«
(Source: Münz 1898, p. 94; drawing freely from Carraresi (ed.) 1885, vol. 2, pp. 143-145)

»In Manzonis Haus tretend merken wir gleich unter der Tür am Pförtner, im Hof an den Kutschern, welche die Karossen putzen, und an diesem oder jenem Abate, der gesättigt aus der Küche kommend uns begegnet, dass wir im Haus eines Signore sind. Die nämliche Atmosphäre weht im Studierzimmer des Hausherrn. Da ist kein Luxus und keine Hoffart; an den Wänden ringsherum solid eingebundene ausgewählte Werke in den besten Ausgaben; alles ist bequem und heimlich [heimelig] geordnet, und lädt zum behaglichen Nachdenken ein. [Giovanni Battista] Niccolini dagegen wohnt in einem ehemaligen Kloster, das gegenwärtig der Akademie der schönen Künste heimgefallen ist, an welchem Institut er eine Anstellung als Professor hat. In einem kleinen, schmalen, unfreundlichen Zimmer neben dem Bibliotheksaal bringt der Dichter seine meiste Zeit zu. Von Luxus ist nun hier gar keine Rede, aber nicht einmal von Bequemlichkeit. Denn es sind kaum ein paar Stühle da, um sie den wenigen Freunden anzubieten, denen es erlaubt ist, ihn hie und da zu besuchen und zu stören; denn er hält die Zeit für das köstlichste Gut. Auf dem grossen Tisch darin begegnet das Auge vor allem einigen umfangreichen, respektablen und sehr betasteten Folianten. Das ist die Crusca. Der grosse Dichter, der vielleicht wie kein anderer, oder wie nur sehr wenige, die italienische Sprache kennt und beherrscht, zieht noch immer und nicht selten dieses Wörterbuch zu Rat, was ich seiner skrupulösen Gewissenhaftigkeit zuschreiben will. Rings um diese Kolosse liegen nun neuere geschichtliche Werke, französische Übersetzungen deutscher Biografien von Päpsten, englische wissenschaftliche Bücher, und nicht selten steht mitten darunter ein geleerter Suppenteller, den der Diener hat stehen lassen.«
(Source: Engelhardt/Morelli 1845a, p. 2018f.; certainly this passage owes much or all to Morelli alone; see for the detail of the Abate also Carraresi (ed.) 1885, vol. 2, p. 144)

»›Manzoni ist ein Mann von mittlerer Grösse, grauen lockigen, auf der Seite gescheitelten Haaren, schöner gerader Stirn, feiner Nase und sehr feinem scharfgeschnittenem Mund. Sein Auge ist grau, und im gewöhnlichen Gespräch matt und wenig sagend, wenn er aber etwas in Eifer gerät, wird es sehr lebendig, und sehr klug und scharf, wenn das Gespräch diese oder jene Saite berührt.‹«
(Source: Engelhardt/Morelli 1845a, p. 2025, note; this passage also certainly by Morelli alone)

»Manzoni, obwohl der romantische Neuerer, ist seinem Charakter nach durchaus schüchtern und konservativ; der Florentiner [Niccolini] dagegen, wiewohl er gegen den Strom der modernen nordischen Ansichten in der Literatur ankämpfte und sie als Ketzereien verwarf, ist von Natur kühn, leidenschaftlich und unternehmend. Der Mailänder [Manzoni] hat als Erbteil einen scharfen kritischen Geist, eine unvergleichliche Beobachtungsgabe und jene mit diesem Talent fast immer verbundene feine und edle Ironie und Satire, die, immer selten, in unserer unruhigen und gärenden Zeit fast nicht mehr anzutreffen ist. Niccolini aber hat eine freiere Seele, mehr poetische Schwungkraft und Enthusiasmus; er ergreift eher das Ganze, die Masse, weil es ihm an Sonderungs- und Beobachtungssinn mangelt. Wenn er satirisch ist, was selten geschieht, so ist seine Satire nicht lächelnder ironischer Art, nicht die des Sterne oder des Cervantes, wie bei Manzoni, auch nicht schalkhaft gutmütig, wie die des Ariosto, sondern mehr die ernste derbe Satire der Alten. Dieser Mangel an seinem Beobachtungsvermögen macht bei seinem einsiedlerischen Junggesellenleben, dass in seinen Dichtungen die leidenschaftlichen und gefühlvollen Situationen meistens mehr gedacht als gefühlt sind, und mithin des elektrisierenden Funkens der Realität entbehren. Er bewegt sich mehr in der äussern als in der moralischen Welt, und die Geschichte des Menschen interessiert und berührt ihn mehr als die Geschichte des menschlichen Herzens. Für ihn haben die Individuen nur insofern einen Wert, als sie dazu dienen, eine politische Idee, ein bedeutendes Staatsereignis darzustellen und zu vergegenwärtigen. Dieser Mangel an tieferer Kenntnis und Vertrautheit mit dem menschlichen Denken und Fühlen, seine lyrische Exuberanz, seine Magniloquenz, seine freiheitatmende edle Seele, sein hohes patriotisches Gefühl, so wie das fast leidenschaftliche Bedürfnis, überall, wo sich nur irgendeine Gelegenheit darbietet, philosophische und historische Betrachtungen und Sentenzen seinen Personen in den Mund zu legen, und endlich sein liebenswürdiger und bewundernswerter Charakter als Privatmann gibt ihm eine grosse Ähnlichkeit mit Schiller.«
(Source: Engelhardt/Morelli 1845a, p. 2018; for Morelli having visited Manzoni in 1851 see also GM to Niccolò Antinori, 10 December 1851 (Agosti 1985, p. 27f.))

»›Die beiden grössten Geister Italiens in meiner Zeit waren Revolutionäre – Cavour ein Revolutionär in der Politik, Manzoni ein Revolutionär in der Literatur. Sie waren auch einander vom Herzen zugetan. Und merkwürdig: Auf verschiedenem Boden aufgewachsen, der eine in Turin, der Andere in Mailand, waren sie doch Beide von den in einem erlesenen Kreise Genfs verbreiteten Ideen beeinflusst. Cavour hing durch seine Mutter, eine geborene di Sellon, Manzoni durch seine Gattin, eine geborene Blondel, mit Genf zusammen.‹«
(Source: Münz 1898, p. 93; the author recalling this remark made orally by Morelli in the 1880s)



In later years occasionally referring to Manzoni’s ›Lombardic sky‹ (Morelli 1891, p. 199f.; compare also GM to Jean Paul Richter, 24 August 1883 (M/R, p. 281), with Morelli referring to Manzoni’s Adelchi), Morelli also once refers to his »Perpetua«, bringing him the cartes de visite of German art historians that pay him a visit in his flat at Milan’s Via Pontaccio (namely Henry Thode and Wilhelm von Bode), thus referring to the character of the parish priest Don Abbondio’s housekeeper, named Perpetua, in Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (see GM to Jean Paul Richter, 28 October 1889 (M/R, p. 558)).

Translations

*

THE ROME OF MALER MÜLLER, THE ROME OF MORELLI

Morelli’s enthusiasm to have arrived in Rome can be grasped with hands.(77) He had seen Venice, he had seen Florence,(78) and now, finally, he had arrived in the Eternal City. But one should not be mistaken that everything he saw in Rome, in spite of his exuberance, delighted him. Since, among other things, what he found in Rome was also Berlin.
And this not only because we was to wrangle, again, with a Berliner, and in a Roman café;(79) but in spite of everything he had disliked about Berlin – Berlin had still been the city that represented what also Prussia represented for him: progress in science and education; a fundament upon which, as he saw it and probably had also discussed it with Engelhardt, a state’s strength was generally based.(80)
Morelli’s later wrangling with diverse Berliners, also his later wrangling – it can generally be seen as the expression that, firstly: Morelli most deeply hated to be patronized; and that, secondly, even more than to be patronized, he hated to be patronized by representatives of a scientific culture that, by his own standards, represented progress and success, in science as well as in education, a progress that he admired and respected. Only that too little of such progress was yet to be found and to be seen in his home country. That is: in his Italy, not yet being unified. And certainly rather little of such progress was to be found in the Church State, in 1842 and in the years to come.(81)

But for the moment his enthusiasm to have arrived in Rome might have been prevailing. And also other cities, other urban experiences were in him and with him in Rome, the city of all cities.
Munich for example, the embodiment of a city upon which, just now, a ruler was imposing his will. To reconstruct that particular city according to a certain urban, a certain South European urban and architectural ideal.(82)
Paris he had seen, a city marked by a series of revolutions (and he was to see Paris again, in 1848, and in the middle of a new revolutionary outbreak).(83)
And while he was exploring Rome, the urban Rome, but also the Campagna Romana, Morelli stayed in touch with Capponi as well as with Genelli. He remained in dialogue, about artistic things, about artistic things in Rome, and Genelli, particularly, did tell him about how he, Genelli, and years ago, in 1822, had also experienced Rome.(84) And how he had liked Rome, the Rome of Maler Müller, Joseph Anton Koch and others. And while these dialogues went on, Morelli was to explore Rome, his Rome, the Rome of Morelli. That we was going to see, throughout the 19th century, how it was to change, that is: how it was to become the capital of Italy, and how it also was going to be modernized. After democracy, as he was going to say, had also raised (to his dislike) its banner on the ruins of Rome,(85) and with him, one might add, having become a senator.

If throughout of his life many voices spoke out of Morelli, the voices of the poets he had read, and occasionally, but certainly less often the voices of scholars he had read – in Rome it was the one quintessential German poet who spoke out of him. And it would be interesting to know if Niccolò Antinori, his bosom friend, was aware that Morelli, who was reporting about what he was doing in Rome, did realize that Morelli not only was emulating what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had, according to the Italienische Reise, been doing in Rome, but also, and in some sense rather cheekily, simply adapted Goethe’s words, when speaking about his doings, and when telling Antinori about it.(86)
Morelli, thus, did rely on no other guide than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, when exploring the galleries of Rome and, subsequently, the Roman Campagna; he explored his home country with Goethe, albeit one detail set him apart from all the other travellers from the North that were travelling with Goethe: and this detail was the fact that Giovanni Morelli intended to stay.

How may we characterize Morelli as a reader of Goethe? Did he read him as a guide on how to live? Or, more specifically, as a writer fostering his own visual apprenticeship?
As to the quoted passage from the Italienische Reise (that is: from a letter by Morelli), these two things obviously fuse into one: Morelli was reading Goethe as a guide on how to live, since life, as the Roman scenery does show beautifully, does include to become acquainted with nature and with art, and does include the developing of notions that might define an individual’s relation with both.
On the whole one must say that Morelli referred to Goethe not very frequently, but now and then, and according to his more impulsive nature, his referring to Goethe – in that for example he referred to Italy as the ›land of the golden oranges and of the sun‹ –(87) is also an impulsive one, rather spontaneously born out of the moment, out of certain circumstances, and thus probably not reflecting systematic studies, but rather a searching browsing and reading. Although Morelli might have looked in more or less all writings by Goethe available to him.(88)
As always with Morelli, though, it is not that simple, since it is also important what he never explicitly acknowledged. And this, here, is no less than the actually spectacular fact that Goethe, in some sense, and with his apprenticeship novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, from which the proverbial speaking of Italy as the ›land of the golden oranges‹ is derived, had already yet invented Morelli as a character. And certainly Morelli, later in life, was to become aware that his own desire to become a playwright, but also his giving up of that plan, made him look, in retrospect, simply as a Wilhelm Meister, whose ›theatralische Sendung‹, his vocation to achieve something as a dramatist, turned out to be a projection, an ambition, a dream, a vision, or simply: a mere illusion.
But again it is not that simply with Morelli, since, in some sense, and as we are going to show in chapter Visual Apprenticeship III, Morelli remained also a dramatist after the giving up of his ›Sendung‹, providing us with no less than a great comedy of connoisseurship, the one play he did never write but lived, and had others, his followers and adversaries, stage with him.
It is difficult to say if Morelli delved also much, when being in Rome, into the Rome described to him by Genelli.
This was, for example, a Rome where Genelli had forgot (or not been able) to settle some debts (that Morelli was going to settle for him).(89) And this was also a Rome where Maler Müller, an author to be associated with the subject matter of Faust, had lived – in the Goethezeit, i.e. at the time of Goethe.(90)
Since Friedrich Müller had been in touch with the Weimar scene, and also with Goethe, who might be the most prominent writer to be associated with a Faust drama, but was not the only one.
And at least Morelli, while staying in Rome or afterwards, got much informations, and got also to hear much literary gossip as to the earlier generation of authors, the generation of Tieck living in Rome (and planning a sort of coup, to overturn the literary monument that, for this generation, for the Romantics, was Goethe).(91)
This might have amused Morelli when reading about it, but his attention certainly was drawn mostly to the comtemporary Rome, when being at Rome, as it certainly was to the Rome of the Renaissance, and to the Rome of Catholicism.
A Rome, about which there was – in the more specific economic sense – probably nothing to learn from Goethe; a Rome that, even many decades later, when Rome had become the capital of unified Italy, he tended to regard as economically underdeveloped (he had also seen the middle classes as the actual driving forces in the Lombardic uprisings of 1848),(92) and the Austrian journalist Sigmund Münz also was to transmit many years later that Morelli had not been exactly enthusiastic, in the 1880s, about Rome becoming and being the capital of Italy.(93)
Morelli in sum, did probably not travel on Goethe (for example when embarking on this actual Italienische Reise with painter Mende),(94) but he took from Goethe what seemed to be of use for him as a person and as an apprentice of how to live. While throughout his life many occasions provided him with the opportunity to display, by referring spontaneously to Goethe, also his having read of Goethe.(95) A having read that in the deepest sense and later might also have been a reading of himself as a character in the apprenticeship novel of his own life: finding himself, the tragicomedy of his failing as a playwright, and perhaps even his turning to become a politician, anticipated by Goethe and in some sense displayed in the Wilhelm Meister.
While the Wilhelm Meister and while Goethe could not have foreseen that Morelli, on his part, would be able to turn the scenario of his own life also into the scenario of a picaresque novel. A novel that also might be read as an apprenticeship novel, but turned into a novel of someone with a distinctive proclivity for comedy.
And became a novel that included visual apprenticeship, fostered also by Goethe (like Goethe seems to have fostered the visual apprenticeship of many art historical classics of the 19th century),(96) but the Wilhelm Meister that Morelli in some sense was to become, if giving up his ›theatralische Sendung‹, was actually to live mainly in Italy, and in some sense as an Italian or italianized Wilhelm Meister who was able to contribute to art history and connoisseurship, as he was able, and also in Rome, to contribute to Italian politics.

*

A GRAND TOUR OF ONE’S HOME COUNTRY: PASSPORTS, BORDERS AND BORDER CONTROL

The motif of the passport that shines out in Morelli’s late writings, that is: his actual connoisseurial writings, was used by Giovanni Morelli as a metaphor.(97) The connoisseur of art, to keep the picture, was asking a picture, perhaps a rogue, for its papers of identity. And it was the connoisseur of art to whom Giovanni Morelli addressed the warning of not to allow a rascal painting to fool him, the connoisseur. By showing a fake passport, that is: a misleading cartellino for example, or other misleading declarations of a forged identity.
This much later ironical speaking of the passport had its origins in very simple facts: travelling was restricted in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia. The Austrian rule, as Austrian historians have reconstructed in great detail,(98) attempted to restrict and to control mobility, and also inner mobility within the Kingdom.
Which meant that Giovanni Morelli, if only he wanted to travel from Bergamo to Venice, apparently had to head to Milan first, to get a passport.(99)
Since a trip from Bergamo to Venice meant a trip from the one part of the Kingdom, Lombardy, to the other, Venetia.
We can only speculate if Giovanni Morelli ever attempted to ›simplify‹ things, or if he complied to the rules, but certainly he did know of practices to facilitate the crossing of borders, and perhaps also of manipulating the type of passport that the Austrian rule had introduced (see picture).(100)
It is well worth noticing that at least one 20th century scholar, namely Maurits M. van Dantzig, one wayward Dutch scholar who – in some sense following the footsteps of Morelli, in that he suggested a new method as to the authentication of pictures, namely ›Pictology‹ – knew, as we can read in John Brewer’s The American Leonardo, something of how to fake identity papers and documents.(101)
Morelli, on the other hand, knew, as every resident of the Kingdom knew, how the Austrian rule attempted to secure that the owner of a passport indeed was entitled to have that passport and to travel with it: and this by enlisting the features (not yet depicting them) that made the outer appearance of a person: hair, forehead, etc. But surprisingly not the ear, that, nonetheless could have figured among the header of ›special marks‹.
And this detail from everyday life at the day of Morelli is well worth noticing as just another clue as to how an individual’s attention might have been drawn to anatomical properties of a person, in real life or in the contemplating of art: simply by contemplating a passport, issued by the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, and by musing about the system of control that was at the origins of that passport. And any traveller, at the day of Morelli, had much time to do that.

The results of Giovanni Morelli travelling, in more than one sense, can be found in the books Giovanni Morelli wrote. Late in his life, and books that were not written, at least not recognizable at first sight, as travel accounts.
But scattered we do find his views on land and people. And in 1843 he had embarked on a journey from Northern Italy to Sicily. And accompanied he was by a German painter, Carl Adolph Mende.(102)
If there was a program or plan, for example the plan to visit the sites that also Goethe had visited, we do not know.
We do know little of actual adventures, if such did occur on occasion of this trip, but, as said, what the two geographers in the field might have experienced on their giro d’Italia, on their Italienische Reise – there was a geographer in Morelli who later was to turn to be a cartographer and also a social geographer, who was to map Europe, and who was to map the regions, also and very in particular the artistic landscapes of Italy.
Morelli did obviously think about what he saw while travelling; and he did think about, very in particular, how people in various countries, various regions were different. And in what exactly they did differ. As being gifted producers of art, or as not being inclined to produce art.
And also he did think about, whether it was possible to understand art, produced by a certain people or tribe, if one did not belong to that people or tribe.(103)
It was also in Goethe, in a sentence uttered by Goethe’s Mephisto, to be precise,(104) that Morelli found an expression of his sense that one was only to understand the mind of someone, if the mind of that someone in some sense resembled one’s own mind, that is, if there was a potentiality at all of understanding.

In his later writings Morelli was to boast that he knew pretty much all the peoples of Europe.(105) By which he meant that he had gotten to know what made a Frenchman particular, that is, and if one likes so, the national character of the French. Or the Swiss. Or the English. And throughout his life Giovanni Morelli expressed also the view that such distinct national characters did exist.
While travelling from North to South to see Italian regions and cities, he must have come to the conclusion that also within one country or nation, the various ›tribes‹ had their distinct character.(106)
He never did much muse explicitly about how to explain that character, but ostentaciously he did speak, at various occasions, of national characters like for example the South Italian.(107)
The causes to explain such differences could be diverse. And it was probably due to his complicated own identity that Morelli never did stress, as many other 19th thinker did or were to do, biological causes.
Rather it does seem that Morelli found the reason for cultural differences, for various cultures being different and also looking different and producing different forms of art, in being embedded of individual cultures in a certain landscape on the one hand, but also in actual forms of living, the way of life in that particular culture. In growing up outside for example, as he had described (with Engelhardt) the growing up of young people at Bergamo, his chosen home.(108)
The problem of cultural identity did concern him, but his complicated identity seems also to have prevented, that is in some sense: warned him of simplifying the causes for diversity too much. There was not simply ›race‹ for Morelli, although he also, occasionally, did use the notion.(109)
There was art that had responded to the needs of a particular (regional) culture. And one could look at this art as something that naturally had ›grown‹ and thus had its roots in a particular cultural context.(110)
But behind this organic view of art history that to some degree reminds natural history, Morelli saw also processes of learning, processes of cultural socialisation. And this, probably, also due to the fact that his own cultural socialisation in early childhood, beside the fact that much of his childhood and youth he had spent abroad, was what made him an Italian. And this, above all, he wanted to be. Although, if criteria of genealogy, biological criteria that is, had played a major role, his claim would have rested on weaker grounds.
Throughout his life these questions did concern him, and if we have mentioned Mephisto – at the end of his life he found a very similar thought in a rather notorious book, namely in Rembrandt als Erzieher by Julius Langbehn.(111) And if the frequent Morellian rhetoric of denying someone the proper understanding of Italian art might have been of a more rhetorical, polemical use to Morelli – the question of how to explain cultural identity and in the end: how to explain artistic expression, how to explain styles, regional styles, and perhaps even national characteristics of style did concern him.
And everything he said has to be read against the backdrop of his own biographical constellation on the one hand, and against more accidental experiences on the other. Because as much Morelli seems to have cherished cultural stereotypes – his manyfolded preconceptions seem also to have vanished on individual level. Because if he was to mock the South Italians per se – in the next moment he was warmly welcoming a South Italian friend.(112)
Which does not mean that the frequent stereotyping of Morelli does not cause a 21st century reader some problems. Because what is there in Morelli, and what other, less sensitive thinkers or individuals would work into theories of races (and about how various ›peoples‹/›races‹ did look differently; that is, here: perceived differently),(113) are the questions that the 19th century did ask: in what did peoples, cultures, nations, races differ. And it was, paradoxically the complicated identity of Giovanni Morelli that throughout of his life caused serious problems, that prevented him, along with his intelligence and sensitivity, to come to all too simple, and in their suggestive simplicity also: dangerous pseudo-answers.

Replying to one of the typical hilariously exuberant letters by Morelli, Genelli, for once and in the 1850s, referred to his friend Morelli as a landscape painter.(114) Since Moreli had (in one of his unfortunately not extant letters) pictured himself as a squire. Who cared for his gardens and lands, for vegetables and cypresses, and in doing that had also pictured himself within a landscape that he was, in some sense, designing according to his own ideals.
This was only possible – the actual designing as the describing, or perhaps better: the suggestive momentarily envisioning – since there was also a sort of squire in Morelli. Who had, in 1845, bought, most likely with money he had inherited from his father, a manor nearby Lake Pusiano.(115) And had, already then, being describing himself as being a (very satisfied) squire, if not a man of leisure.
Genelli, on his part and remarkably showing scarcely any sign of envy, had given some hints how to be a squire with dignity by carving poetry into a tree,(116) but knew also that Morelli was easily disctracted from being a gardener, a man of leisure or a squire, and would, taking any occasion, soon turn to be an urban man again, a man of letters in an urban setting, and a traveller. A traveller who felt attracted by friends who had stayed in urban surroundings, or who had even been expelled by certain (female) visitors, that is: expelled from his own manor.(117)
As we have shown in our introductory essay, dedicated to a Morellian geography at Lake Como, he was, in the late summer and fall of 1846 on the move again, and did not welcome Engelhardt only at his own manor that was located nearby one of the ›satellite lakes‹ of the ›king of freshwaters‹, but in his circle of friends at Lake Como. And one might say that the squire had remained very mobile, albeit Morelli seems to have spent much of 1847 at his manor again, and again with painter Mende.(118)
An owner of land he was, on the eve of the European revolutions, and certainly not a careless one, albeit he was to become an owner of land and a squire reading Proudhon, only immediately after the two revolutionary years.(119)
That certainly had not only made him suspicious as to new (anarchist or socialist) social movements, but also as to his economic future as such. Since taxes and a forced loan made him and his mother, again change residence and to replace the Lago Pusiano manor with another, probably smaller manor at Taronico, nearby Bellagio.(120) Beside that Morelli and his mother kept residence also in Bergamo (and had stayed, in 1851, for a while at Villa Balbianello).(121)
But it was the Taronico manor that Morelli probably depicted for Genelli, inspiring his friend to refer to him depicting a manor with him being busy to keep it well, as a landscape painter.
Thus we do see the two revolutionary years framed by rather idyllic pictures that do not stand for their own. The idyll has to be seen against the backdrop of revolution and war, and vice versa. The squire, remarkably accompanied by Mende, turned to be a fighter, a diplomat, a soldier in 1848. But remained also a man of letters, reflecting, while things were happening, about what was happening. And the italianized ›Wilhelm Meister‹, the son of a merchant who still was envisioning to leave his stamp in renewing the Italian theatre (and this while the opera was booming),(122) was not only turning to be a soldier, and later a politician, but remained a man of letters who was, at times thinking, as we will see now, of what he was experiencing as a ›theatre of war, politics, diplomacy and revolution‹. And it was to be not the least this ›theatre‹, this ›school of life‹ that was to mark Morelli as a man.

**

THREE) HUMAN ROLES IN WAR AND PEACE TIME, HUMAN MASKS

THE NEWSPAPERS, THE DIPLOMAT, THE PROPAGANDA

How does one explain a revolution one had actively joined to the members of a foreign parliament, seeking also the support of that very parliament for that very revolution – if among the members of that parliament one does find also one’s own former teacher of history?
Who might, for example, point to the fact that, what one was eager to describe as a revolution, was in fact none (and that to describe it that way might actually be called propaganda).(123) Whilst oneself, one was already sensing that the revolution one was supporting would certainly, with few exceptions, not win the support of that foreign parliament. Although one was not yet sensing that the revolution – or the uprisings, or the subsequent war of independance – was finally destined to fail.
And that it would need another war (1859), and another (1866) – to actually liberate and to unite Italy, in that the North and the South of Italy were being united, something that, in 1848, one was not actually envisioning at all, nor hoping for.(124)
To explain the Lombardic revolution of 1848 to the members of the German National Assembly at Frankfurt am Main, to win support, if possible, for that revolution, and to report back to the Provisional Lombardic Governement at Milan, was, roughly described, the task of Giovanni Morelli and Count Porro in the summer of 1848. With Morelli’s former teacher of history, Peter Kaiser, being among the members of the parliament.(125)
But the mission was, certainly already then and not only in hindsight, a rather vaguely defined one. And it is little surprising that, in the following, Giovanni Morelli also had felt the need to interpret it in his own way, that is: according to his own wishes and needs.(126)
Was one, for example, to stress the task of just informing the members of a foreign parliament, as well as the task of just reporting back what was happening at Frankfurt?
Or was one to distribute propaganda (and to fight the propagada of others), to the benefit of a more favourable outcome of the yet unfinished Lombardic revolution, a revolution still being on its way?
Or was one even to act on behalf of the Lombardic revolution, and as actual ambassadors of the Provisional Governement – evaluating the chance to win support and, moreover, to convince the members of the parliament, that this very parliament should act as a mediator between Austria and Lombardy?
With the further aim to mobilize Germany, indeed the nation of Germany, to support the nation of Italy, envisioning a going together of these two great nations that were, as it were, destined to a going together as allies?
The latter, at any rate, was also envisioned by 32-year-old Giovanni Morelli at Frankfurt,(127) although he did sense rather early, or the realist in him did sense that there was little support to win, and above all: little interest in the Lombardic question at Frankfurt.(128) And that the wish of a going together of the two nations was to remain utopian (at least until the year of 1866).
And that he was not, in spite of his ardent wish and his doing of all that he could, going to achieve something at all at Frankfurt in the end.(129)
Far from being able, thus, also to reconcile both loyalties that he had within himself, the loyalty to Germany due to his German Bildung on the one hand that had become part of his cultural identity, and the loyalty to the country that he regarded as his home.
And this was, as far as he himself, as an individual, was concerned, one tragic or even the one tragic aspect of the events of 1848/49: Giovanni Morelli was not able to reconcile the two identities that he had within himself, a German and an Italian identity, and he was destined to live with that inner conflict of loyalty throughout his life (again trying to recommend a going together of the two nations in his later writings),(130) as he was destined to fail, in 1848, as the mediator between Lombardy (representing Italy) and Germany (represented by the parliament), that is: as the mediator he ardently had wished to be, although with that particular mission, certainly, no one had entrusted him with but himself.

Much can be found in Morelli’s brochure of 1848, his actual speaking to the members of the German National Assembly, that is characteristic for Morelli.
His passion was there, his pride was there, and his anger he could hardly keep back, although he, allegedly, had tried to do so.(131) But, very significantly, while writing, his anger had come back, and more and more his anger also had shown. Between the lines, but also in them.(132)
But it is, also significantly, a marginal detail that, perhaps, is the most significant detail as to Morelli’s character shining out, revealing itself, in the Worte eines Lombarden an die Deutschen, in a brochure that he had chosen to publish anonymously, that is, as a brochure that pretended to have been written by the persona of ein Lombarde. Who directed his words to the Germans, first speaking as a nobleman, proud, but calm and objective, but, apparently, becoming, while writing, more and more angry.
And this marginal detail, to be found in a note on page 14, consist in the fact that, in spite of his not writing under his own name, Morelli was eager, as to a certain person – and if this person should wish so – to be recognized. As the actual author of the Worte eines Lombarden.(133)
Morelli was eager, in a certain sense, to install a channel of communication with that particular person (whom he advised, in his note, to ask for the actual name of the author, if he wished so, in a particular printing office at Frankfurt), a person that particularly had made him angry, but was also a person that Morelli obviously had also met in person, and probably had also liked and respected as a person.(134) Because otherwise he, Morelli, would not have been that dedicated to care for such, given his actual mission at Frankfurt, rather marginal, if not to say irrelevant detail.
And this person was Moritz Wagner, a traveller, a travel writer and explorer, who had enraged Morelli with some article on the state of affairs as to the Austrian rule in Italy.(135) And Morelli had probably met Wagner in Erlangen, and in the house of Professor Rudolf Wagner, the explorer’s brother, who might also have been the actual reason why Morelli had, in 1837 and as a scholar, turned to Erlangen at all, since Rudolf Wagner was a renowned anatomist and physiologist.

If Morelli appeared, though, of not having changed at all, and still being, also in times of war and revolution, a person much attached to people, he was already, in summer of 1848, looking back at quite extreme situations, including the death of people he might have known, and the deaths of other people.
And this we may say with certainty, just because Morelli, in his brochure, was referring to such events, as well as he was trying to establish a particular channel of communication.
The revolutionary year of 1848 had not begun, for Morelli, with the Palermo uprisings of January 12 to 15.(136) His own revolutionary chronicle he might have opened with the probably first scenes of violence that ever he had witnessed in his life, if we disregard the punishment of Italian recruits at Verona that Morelli, as a very young child, might have witnessed.(137)
Since as a man of 32, in early January days of 1848, he witnessed, in a Milan passage, how an innocent was beaten to death by Austrian soldiers, an innocent who obviously had not joined at all the provocative ›tobacco strike‹ (›sciopero del fumo‹; a denying of Austrian taxes on tobacco goods, inspired by the Boston Tea Party) that had been answered by ostentacious and provocative cigar smoking of Austrian soldiers in the streets.(138) Turmoils had followed, and nearby or amidst them we have to imagine Morelli as an observer, as an eye witness.(139) Who certainly, as we may imagine, reacted with shock, and later with rage, seeing how a noninvolved man, Carlo Manganini, 74-year-old superior counseller at the court of appeal, got killed, probably by sabre strokes, and perhaps rather accidentally, because turmoils had gotten out of hand.
And Morelli was to refer to that scene, expressing scarcely held back rage, in his brochure Worte eines Lombarden.(140)
In March, when being among the volunteers that were pressing on one Milan city gate from outside, Morelli witnessed how an officer got killed by a bullet.(141) And we have to come back to that scene at the end of this chapter. But worth mentioning is also a scene of violence prevented, with perhaps Morelli also being near, or perhaps even, although we cannot know this, being involved.
Since on the way to Milan, the group of volunteers that Morelli had joined or even led, had passed through Monza, and the sources speak of an Austrian soldier that almost had been mishandled by freedom fighters.(142) If not an unknown man – we might imagine Morelli in this honorable role – had stepped in to prevent the mishandling of the prisoner, raising (like an educated man) a rhetoric question, namely the question ›are we cannibals?‹, to stop his comrades (and the term ›cannibals‹ is a term that actually Morelli used once in a letter to Genelli).(143)
But this mosaic of single scenes that show Morelli involved, perhaps acting, perhaps only observing would not be complete without mentioning another story that certainly contributed to the rage that Morelli was hardly able to hold back when sitting down to write in summer of 1848: and this was the sad story of a group of volunteers, 22 in number, who had embarked on their mission to fight the Austrians, had gotten into dangerous territory, been captivated and simply being executed publicly at Trento.(144)
Since it is easy to imagine how as sensitive a man, as a sensitive a patriot as Morelli might have reacted to such news. People he might have known or not, perhaps very young people, had given their lives, had lost their lives, for embarking on a rash mission that had led to nothing, but had gotten mercilessly killed, for being foolhearted and without much reflection.

People, when hearing, many decades later, Morelli joking about ›the diplomat in me‹,(145) or when becoming aware how diplomatic, how ambiguous Morelli in fact could be in his later ›profession‹ as a connoisseur of art, certainly had no knowledge at all that, in 1848, when Morelli indeed had turned to be a sort of diplomat, that as a diplomat he once obviously had lost his temper, like a diplomat is actually not allowed to loose his temper.
This had happened when Morelli had been on his way to Frankfurt, and apparently had been questioned by a German journalist.
And one might add as another reason to cause rage in Morelli, the way German newspapers had reported on the Lombardic revolution, but at this one occasion Morelli must have lost control rather unexcusably, since what we do find in the sources is a sort of declaration that Morelli later claimed not to have given at all (at least not as it did appear in print).(146)
But a journalist, who also explicitly did name him, must have put it together, and the short article does read like a bewildered journalist having summing up enraged words of a diplomat not being able to control his temper, revealing much more than actually he might have been allowed to reveal, and this in the public arena of the mass media. And also his friends at home must have been puzzled when reading the following news about a very emotional and unreflected, indeed aggressive Lombardic ambassador having arrived at Frankfurt:(147)

›According to the Augsburger Postzeitung an ambassador of Lombardy named Morelli (as we hear, accompanied by a Count Porre [sic]), has appeared in Frankfurt, to address mediation by the Reichstag to make peace with Austria, with the rough conditions that the Adige (?) would be the future border of the Empire. Lombardy would be willing, with recognition of independency attained, to assume parts of the public debts. If this however should not be agreeable, one would either know to win – with the latter concession to be dropped, or one would loose – and then one would be willing to seek the embrace of the French. Thus the declaration.‹
·························································································································································································································
»In Frankfurt ist laut der Augsburger Postzeitung ein Abgesandter der Lombardei, namens Morelli (wie wir hören in Begleitung eines Grafen Porre [sic]) erschienen, um die Vermittelung des Reichstags für die Erlangung eines Friedens mit Oesterreich anzusprechen, auf die ungefähren Bedingungen hin, dass die Etsch (?) künftig die Gränze des Kaiserreichs bilde. Mit der erlangten Anerkennung der Unabhängigkeit der Lombardei wolle dieses auch willig einen Theil der Staatsschulden übernehmen. Sey dieß nicht genehm, so werde man entweder zu siegen wissen – und dann falle das letztere Zugeständnis hinweg, oder man werde besiegt – und dann wolle man den Franzosen sich in die Arme werfen. So laute die Erklärung.«(148)

This certainly might be called the worst possible way for a diplomat to introduce himself, to the public, the media, to the political scene, and this certainly might be called the worst possible way for a diplomat to recommend himself as being an able diplomat to those who put faith in him at home.
But something still does decome visible here, at least in hindsight and if the note is read against the backdrop of someone just having lived through extreme emotions, triggered by extreme situations and extremely depressing news: and this is probably the amount of rage (probably also fear and grief) that had accumulated and, on that one occasion, perhaps only had exploded, resulting with Morelli showing as undiplomatic, as unreflected as one can be. But all in all, and as far as we know: only at this one occasion, and probably becoming aware immediately that he had made a serious mistake. A mistake that he wasn’t to repeat ever again.

GIOVANNI MORELLI IN 1848/49

1848

3 January: Morelli, at Milan, witnesses, according to his own account (Morelli 1848, p. 23), how during the turmoils following the so-called ›tobacco strike‹ (›sciopero del fumo‹; ›Tabakrummel‹; compare a later depiction on the left) an innocent is being killed in a Milan passage by Austrian soldiers.

February: with his friend, painter Carl Adolph Mende, Morelli stays at Sanfermo at Lago Pusiano; 20 February: in a letter Morelli is mentioning that Mende, on the lake, is hunting ducks; 24 February: February Revolution in Paris.

March: 13 March: revolution at Vienna; 18-22 March: Cinque Giornate di Milano; Morelli is joining the fights, resulting with the Austrians being expelled from Milan, by joining or even leading a group of volunteers heading from the Brianza to Milan via Monza; on March 21 he is participating in storming an Austrian casern at Monza (compare Ambrosetti/Pozzi (eds.) 2010); on March 22 he is participating in attacks from outside the city of Milan on one city gate, the Porta Comasina (today: Porta Garibaldi); Federico Frizzoni, apparently, at that time, stays at Milan, his brother Giovanni is participating, or is being embroiled, in the revolts at Bergamo (Honegger 1997, p. 124f.).

April: probably at that time Morelli sees his admired and loved friend Giovanni Frizzoni for the very last time.

May: after staying at Sanfermo in early May Morelli is, with young Count Porro, being sent to Frankfurt a. M. by the provisional Milan government of patriots; he is meant to explain to the representatives, constituting the German national assembly, the Lombardic ›revolution‹; this relatively vaguely defined mission as a political lobbyist or diplomat, entrusted to Morelli certainly due to his German Bildung, Morelli is going to expand or interpret subsequently in his own way; 17 May: instructions for Morelli and Porro; 18 May: constitution of the (in the end failing) German national assembly (18 May 1848-31 May 1849).


Heinrich von Gagern (1799-1880)
June: 10 June: Morelli at Frankfurt (Mende who had been travelling with him to Lindau is probably going to Lipsia); Morelli meets with Heinrich von Gagern, the president of the national parliament; 21 June: Morelli, already with resignation, writes to Genelli, describing also the situation at Frankfurt; 24 June: workers’ uprisings (subsequently beaten down) at Paris; 29 June: Archduke Johann of Austria being elected by the German national assembly as the so-called Reichsverweser.


Johann of Austria (1782-1859)
July: 12 July: the Reichsverweser grants an audience to Morelli; 17 July: Morelli hands 300 copies of his brochure Worte eines Lombarden an die Deutschen to the members of the German national assembly; he corresponds with the provisional Milan government and also with Gino Capponi; 25 July: Battle of Custozza (being a turning point as to the First Italian War of Independence).

August: 5 August: Morelli, who also has been in Paris (apparently to help in the buying of weapons) writes to Capponi; 8 August: ceasefire between the Piemontese and Lombardic forces and the Austrians; 17 August (to 12 September): Gino Capponi is, with in the end little success, presiding a new Tuscan governement for 40 days; 18 August: the German national assembly is debating the Italian-Austrian question.

October: Capponi provides to Morelli, who has returned from Frankfurt, an introduction by letter to Daniele Manin, the leader of the newly established, but ephemeral Republic of San Marco; 28 October: Morelli apparently has become tenente della fanteria; 31 October: Vienna stormed by Monarchist troops.

November: after the murdering of Pellegrino Rossi at Rome, Pope Pius IX is fleeing from the city.

December: Austrian troops regain the Veneto; 2 December: Franz Joseph ascends to the throne as Franz Joseph I; 10 December: Louis Napoleon is the new president of the French republic (that three years later he is going to turn into an Empire).


1849


February: Morelli still at Venice; 5 February: he writes to Giovanni Frizzoni.

March: Morelli has left Venice for Genoa; 4 March: he writes again to Giovanni Frizzoni; 12 March: the Piemontese king Charles Albert again declares war to Austria; 23 March: Battle of Novara which means the end of the First Italian War of Independence; apparently Morelli did arrive at Novara on the eve of the battle ([Eastlake] 1891, p. 238).

July: end of the Roman republic; 3/4 July: Morelli, staying again at Genoa, is writing again to Giovanni Frizzoni; probably at around that time he is becoming acquainted with Eleanora Rinuccini Corsini (GM to Jean Paul Richter, 11 February 1886).

August: 24 August: end of the Republic of San Marco.

September: probably about in September (and after the annunciation of an amnesty by Radetzky in August) Morelli heads to the Engadin (St. Moritz) to recover himself (GM to Otto Mündler, 21 August 1859 (Kultzen 1989, p. 381)).

November: in about early November Morelli returns to Milan; his friend Giovanni Frizzoni, after an actually successful eye operation, has become infected with typhus and dies; Morelli arrives at his death bed shortly after he had died.

December: Morelli again stays at Sanfermo; 12 December: from Sanfermo he writes to his Florentine friend Niccolò Antinori.

*

SCENES AND SITES OF REAL POLITICS

It might seem frivolous to look at the dramatic events of 1848 with the eyes of a dramatist – but this is exactly what Giovanni Morelli, among other things – that is: besides of looking at things with the eyes of a diplomat – did do.
In some sense Morelli anticipated, in 1848, what he was going to do as an art collector: in that he collected, in 1848, distinctive characters, he collected portraits, human roles.
And this we know, because he also did send such portraits to his friends.(149) And the characters he did portray he found at the Reichstag, the German parliament, but also in the backrooms of politics, and not the least: in an embassy at Paris where it seemed to him that the time had stood still.
Impressed he was by only one rhetor at Frankfurt: the revolutionary Robert Blum.(150) And if Blum was lacking sterling education (something that Morelli noted too), it was Blum who seemed to have matched the ideal of a passionate politician, being able to enthrall an audience with – at least with his passion. Even if certainly Morelli never felt attracted to republicanism at all. He did in fact describe the origins of the German political parties, the Left, the Right and the Center,(151) but it seems that he less did care about actual political programs (he actually dismissed all these three ›parties‹), diagnosing the lack of something that in Italy seemed not to be lacking: a public life, a political life that was more vital than the parliament of German professors – in his view – seemed to be.
And this was also the antitype to Blum that Morelli found as well: the professoral politician who seemed to have stepped down from his study, into the public arena of the parliament – behaving like a pedantic professor. And while the house, as it were, was on fire, one was discussing, at length, the acquisition of a fire engine. All in all, as Morelli wrote from Frankfurt to Genelli, he felt being reminded of the comedies by Ludwig Holberg.(152)
But this was serious, tragical and comical at the same time, as if a tragicomedy evolved, with Morelli himself as a partly tragical, but partly also comical character being involved. Who on the one hand was decidedly critical of everything he saw, while in fact he was, in spite of his mission, feeling powerless. And all he could in fact do was to observe, to learn and to describe, and not least – to ridicule, to satirize. And this was to his liking, and here, perhaps, might also have made him feel less powerless. By mere describing what he saw.
And this he did do, in that, for example, he portrayed the Reichsverweser who had granted an audience to him and indeed jovially, or seemingly jovially, had also conversed with him at length, in a letter to Capponi (all the more than the Reichsverweser had also referred to Capponi whom he had known as a child). And Morelli also pretended that he was able to see through the mask of this Austrian politician whom he described as nothing less than a savy fox (while, in his view, at Frankfurt, one seemed to see a fox in every Italian).(153)
A short trip to Paris, as if he was to travel to the French capital to buy works of art, but in fact he travelled to Paris for other reasons, to help in the buying of guns, and on this trip he managed to collect portraits of only ridiculous characters, of diplomatic staff like fallen out of time, or as if being encapsulated in a time bubble of the restored ancien régime.(154)
Whilst in Lombardy, and at other places, on other sites (including the German parliament) future had actually begun. But in some sense these people, these ridiculous people, some members of some diplomatic staff, might just have been as powerless as in fact Morelli was himself.
In some sense we doe see much of the connoisseur of art Giovanni Morelli already in 1848. In that he learned that the big stage was important (the political public as the public of science), but that the backrooms were at least as important, and that what happened in the public arena was in some sense suspicious of being mere illusion (or actually mere illusion and of not real importance).
Interesting characters were to be found everywhere, but real politics was being made rather in the backrooms. Where he, himself, was allowed to converse with important political persons, and for moments even felt that he actually could do something, perhaps even something spectacularly important to the benefit of his home country, like the arranging of an alliance between the two nations of Italy and Germany. Even if this turned out to be as illusionary as much seemed or turned out to be illusionary and ridiculous what happened on the stage of the parliament.
Morelli certainly took his lessons from all that on many levels. The complicated games he was to play in later years, his late appearance, half disguised, on the scenery of art connoisseurship, showed a Morelli who had gotten to know the various sites of politics in 1848 (and later). The big stage, the public arena, as the backrooms where the strings were pulled, or seemingly were pulled (or where it seemed that strings could be pulled).
And one of the main lessons he certainly did take was that one had to maneuver on both scenes, the public stage, where it was about enthralling an audience, but that also one needed the backrooms, not only to pull the strings, but to discuss things, political matters as connoisseurial questions, in small circle, to arrange things, to develop strategies, and to design a public appearance, not the least. And certainly, albeit he later was to have himself an appearance in the Italian parliament of the 1860s, the small circle was more to his liking. In art connoisseurship as in politics.(155)

*

VITA ACTIVA AND VITA COMTEMPLATIVA IN WAR TIMES

Venice was, as it were, the third chapter of Giovanni Morelli experiencing times of war and revolution.(156) The third chapter after the preliminary events of January and the first actual chapter being the Five Days of Milan, and the second chapter being his stay at Frankfurt, with also its short subchapter of Paris.
In the fall of 1848 Morelli did join the troops of the Republic of San Marco, that was to turn out in the subsequent year as a short-lived republic;(157) but what Morelli experienced in the fall of 1848 was the interlude without actual fightings taking place in Venice, since European powers sought to mediate peace, with the Austrians, however, already winning back the Veneto, but still ceasing to attack the city of Venice, and the troops of the Republic.
This was to come, in 1849, only after Morelli had left the city again, for reasons – and on paths – that we don’t know.(158)
Thus, he did experience an army preparing for the Austrians to attack the city, officers thinking about defense measures, but he also might have experienced chaos and a particular atmosphere of mistrust, since also former Austrian officers were among the officers of the Republic, and it might even have been that the actual superior of Morelli was in fact such an former Austrian officer.(159) And since inside the Republic various factions were in conflict as to the political strategy of the Republic.(160)
What exactly Morelli did in Venice is not clear, but since no fighting occured, he might have had spent time with simply waiting for things to come, time to think about what he had experienced already. And he also seems to have encountered a strange literary figure again at Venice, namely the German poet Heinrich Stieglitz,(161) who was, unlike Morelli, to stay in Venice until the end, which means until Stieglitz, in 1849, died in Venice. Not as a fighter for the Republic in strict sense, but due to his having become infected with the cholera.
Morelli had met Stieglitz whom also Genelli did know, in former years at Bergamo, and had been somewhat embarassed, due to Stieglitz’s quaint dressing, to show him around; and he had referred to Stieglitz, in his letters to Genelli, as him being a perfect Don Quixote of the day, if only Stieglitz had had more ingenuity, that, in his view, the poet was lacking.(162)

And while such encounters may have taken place in Venice again, Morelli might also have heard about the execution of an actual bearer of hope, namely revolutionary Robert Blum, whose appearance in the Frankfurt Paulskirche had that much impressed Morelli, resulting with him regarding Blum as the most impressive rhetor of all the members of the parliament, a rhetor, in his view, only lacking the refined education that would have allowed him to wow everyone.(163)
And now Blum had been executed by the Austrians on November 9, after the Monarchy had also regained Vienna. And Morelli might have, perhaps briefly, recalled his having seen and admired Robert Blum at Frankfurt; and he might have, perhaps only briefly, thought of things to come, or of how fast – how shockingly fast – things may change in times of war and revolution.
We don’t know, again, why and under what circumstances he did leave Venice in the spring. But certainly, also due to his innate scepticism that already had shown in Frankfurt, he probably did not leave Venice in other than a very sceptical mood. Although, if he turned to Genoa, the mere act of turning to Genoa showed that he also still had, that is: still also had a revolutionary verve. Albeit that now, at least apparently, he mainly stayed to be an observer,(164) of things happening on the various revolutionary sceneries all over Europe, and of things to come concerning North Italy, Rome and not the least: concerning the Venice he had left. Perhaps entrusted with another diplomatic mission, that, subsequently he had interpreted in his own way.(165)

In some sense Morelli did sum up, later, what he had experienced in 1848/49. By transmitting an anecdote that, in a literal sense, might not even be true, but in more than one sense does contain and display the essence of what he had experienced in these two revolutionary years, the two perhaps most extreme years of his life.
This anecdote, transmitted in two slightly different versions (a minor change is apparent, that might be due to the copyists or not), speaks of nothing less than Morelli having witnessed his own death.(166)
Based on the historical fact that while a group of volunteers had been pressing, from outside, on one of the Milan city gates, to help the insurgents inside to expel the Austrians from the city, an officer had been killed by a bullet. And according to the story told by Morelli, at first it had been assumed that the killed man had not been the officer, but due to a close resemblence, Morelli himself.
One version of the anecdote has it that Morelli, being close by, now witnessed how his apparent death caused mourning. While the other version has it that it did not only cause mourning, but also complaints about the suddenly deceased were raising.(167)
The essence of this anecdote is very clear: Morelli could witness how people next to him revealed what they might not have revealed while Morelli, now assumingly dead, had been still alive. In brief: people had dropped their social masks and revealed what they had thought of the deceased (or at least what they now wanted to express). By complaining about him, or by mourning. To the instruction of the silent witness, who, again being a silent observer, had the chance to learn. About how he had been seen. And about how people, usually, were hiding their real self (or parts thereof) behind a social mask.
And this was in more in one sense the essence of what Morelli had experienced and learned in 1848/49.
On a superficial level: since politicians, like for example the social mask of Viceroy Rainer had been, in his opinion, torn down, because documents that had fallen into the hands of the insurgents apparently had shown that the alleged kind patron of the Milanese had in fact been one driving force behind the brutal repression of the ›tobacco strike‹.(168)
Moreover: at Frankfurt Morelli had been meeting with politicians that, according to his own assessment, were wearing masks.(169) And Pius IX, the Pope that had been the Italian patriots’ bearer of hope and also Morelli’s bearer of hope was to show, at least in a certain sense, that his liberal face had been nothing but a mask, because at least from now on an ultra-conservative Pius IX did show.(170)
But someone having experienced scenes of violence and had lived through extreme situations must have learned also about how humans behaved in extreme situations, when the masks of everyday life were dropped, and brutal impulses did show; or if, on the other hand, noble, unexpectedly noble behaviour did show. All this can also be subsumed under ›people wearing, people dropping masks‹. And Morelli, who had already seen social life in terms of the stage in Berlin in 1839,(171) had not only an eye for people wearing masks, but, as will be shown later, also a proclivity for wearing masks himself. In sum: he did not only learn, in 1848/49, that people were hiding behind masks, but he did learn also how important it was, for example if being a diplomat, not to drop one’s mask, and about what it meant, if a mask got dropped too soon.
Finally: Morelli recalling having witnessed his own death might also be read as an expression of someone having experienced dangerous moments, also fearing to die all of a sudden, and thus as an expression of someone working through the experience of having experienced great fear, and no less than the fear to die.
And this someone, in a certain sense, imagined how people close to him, would have reacted to his sudden death. Not those most close to him, his family at home, but at least his fellow soldiers, his comrades.
All in all: on a literal level the anecdote of Morelli having witnessing his own death, might have been only an invention by Morelli or not (which we don’t know). But in fact it did speak, albeit rather indirectly, of fear, and it did speak of human experiences within and as an observer of a ›theatre of war, politics, diplomacy and revolution‹. And this was the essence of what Morelli had experienced, in 1848/49, and this was the essential experience Morelli, as a man, had to work through after the events had happened, and this was the essential experience that Morelli, as a writer, certainly also planned to draw on in the future.(172)

**

FOUR) SECLUSION, INTROSPECTION AND COLLECTING

EGMONT TURNS EGMONTE

Things seemed not have changed much, a reader of Morelli’s letters of 1851 might think, since these letters show him, as usual, as warm as ever, as waggish as ever, and as being torn between enthusiastic, indeed ecstatic moods, for example if experiencing nature, and sceptical outbursts, furious attacks on the other hand, outbursts again dulled by his warmth.(173)
But in fact things had changed, focal points had shifted, simply because time had passed, and not only the year of 1850, following the revolutionary two-year time span of 1848/49.
And also, but not only and exclusively due to the two years of revolution and war having been fraught with far-reaching experiences of all kinds, including extreme situations, violence and death.
Morelli had changed, due to time having passed, since he found himself now as someone transmitting experiences, transmitting knowledge to someone else, namely to an only slightly younger friend: Niccolò Antinori, with whom he was spending some time at a veritable castle of dreams: Villa Balbianello at Lake Como.(174)
Where Antinori was not only tracing drawings by Genelli, but also, advised and guided by his friend Morelli, translating a political drama by Goethe into Italian: the 1788 tragedy Egmont.(175)
And if Antinori was advised and guided by Morelli, who was also preparing Antinori for a longer stay in Germany, encompassing the very cities that also Morelli had particularly gotten to know,(176) he might have been also observed by Morelli, who might also have observed himself in his new role – as a mentor.
And thus he might have realized that time had passed, that he already was looking back – at the period of his life he had spent in Germany. When he was now giving advice to Antinori, by telling him what he should do and see.
And this giving of advice, of course, does also read as a source, as to Morelli’s studenthood, a source that shows him, again, working through the experience, newly living through that experience that, nonetheless was about to evade with time, while he was picking out what he felt was worth seeing, and who was worthy to pay him a visit. Or her. At Berlin.(177)

Morelli, to Antinori, represented German education. And it was clear who was mentor and who was pupil. This shows also clearly, because Morelli was pondering about and concocting own comedies, and also about general questions as to the esthetics of the stage.(178) He was also going to explain to Antinori later that the Egmont was actually not a good play,(179) and some letters to Genelli, whose daughter was about to become an actress, show Morelli revealing some of his views as regards the theatre and also as regards acting.(180)
And it does seem that, at least for some time, he may have been involved himself with an Italian singer, who, as he told Genelli, was not married, and was staying, at the time of writing, at Turin.(181)
But probably, in 1851 and in Villa Balbianello, he was also learning from his pupil, in observing that very pupil (as he did later, when having become a connoisseur of art, he was to observe his pupils). Since some of his later thoughts read as an elaborating on thoughts that might have originated here, at the shore of Lake Como and in Villa Balbianello.
It might have been for example an outcome of observing Antinori tracing drawings by Genelli,(182) that, much later, Morelli was to speak of the connoisseur having not only to observe form, but also to ›feel‹ it.(183) Including a bodily experience, gained by one’s own attempts to draw or, by simplifying the matter, by doing tracings of particular shapes, that, as Morelli had known already in 1846, were not lacking small defects that might have had no bearing on his actual experiencing of these works of art by Genelli, but were to have a tremendously important impact later.
And also if Antinori was translating a play by Goethe, the mere act of translating, even if the outcome might not even have been convincing, could be seen as an exercise to get acquainted with how a poet used formal strategies, structures of language that might to turn out as being untranslatable.(184) And thus: again as particular forms, structures of language upon which a particular individual’s mind had imposed his own will and his distinctive individuality. But within that language, while in another language this was only possible to remodel, by using other means and strategies.
In sum: one was getting to know drama, structures of language, and visual form, that is shapes, and the experience of getting to know this, also went along with getting a physical or an almost physical feel of form.

When Antinori embarked, in 1851, on his Nordic Grand Tour – it was to be a particularly rainy, indeed miserable summer –, Morelli was mentally with him.(185) Not only because he had prepared his bosom friend, and provided him with informations. But also because Genelli reported back of having welcomed Antinori.(186)
And Genelli drew also a portrait of good-looking Antinori, whom his wife, as he also mentioned to Morelli, had compared with Schiller’s Fiesco.(187)
This was referring to the world of the stage, but also to the world of German Bildung, in which Morelli was still at home. And he might have become aware when mentoring Antinori, to what degree he was still at home in German Bildung, in the writings of the German romantics as well as in the Weimarer Klassik, and in the writings of Vormärz authors (after the revolutions had passed).
In dramatist Niccolini he had found an Italian writer who, in his view closely resembled Schiller (see above). But his ideal obviously would have been a combination of Goethe and Schiller, of Manzoni and Niccolini, since as much as he admired verve, passion, sense of history and magniloquence, as much he also admired the power of observation, the subtle irony and the knowledge of the human heart (all skills being less represented by Niccolini).
Thus generally, in 1851, Morelli must have looked back upon his cultural socialization, prior to having settled, for real, in Italy. And as problematic his relation with all things German had become, with 1848/49 – also his friendship with Mündler had, for the moment, been terminated – why mentoring someone as important to him as his bosom friend Antinori, why preparing him for a journey to Germany, if Germany was no longer important to him? And why could German literature appeal to him, if art answered, as he explained also to Antinori, to the needs of a particular culture, and was, thus embedded in such culture, if he was now, as it also did seem, mainly embedded in Italian culture?(188)
His own way to see things not only been shaped by the Italian culture and by an Italian socialization, and it was becoming more and more difficult to explain to Genelli why he did not want to travel anymore to Germany himself.(189) With Genelli probably putting salt in a wound, if passing the remark that someone writing in German should also stay, from time to time, in Germany.(190)
Morelli, on his part, while things, on a political level, had come to a standstill, was getting older, and it is not surprising that his attention, during the decades of the 1850s, shifted to history.

*

GIOVANNI MORELLI, HISTORY AND THE HISTORIANS

If history could be defined as an encounter and a conversing of one time throughout of all time, and with other times, it could also be defined as a conversing with historians. About times, and throughout of all time.
And the decade of the 1850s was, as regards Morelli, to become not only a time span of looking back more and more intensely, upon his own life, but also the period he was conversing, in various degrees of intensity, with several historians. And thus encountering the past, and particularly the one past that has to be regarded as the one touchstone of his own day, namely the Renaissance period, the Golden Age, the model age, the distant ideal, but also the distant mirror.(191)
And he was to encounter the one historian, if not yet in person, that was to become the historian of the Renaissance: Jacob Burckhardt.(192)

Morelli never would have compared himself with Jacob Burckhardt. Which is obvious because Morelli did rather look up to Jacob Burckhardt, referred to Jacob Burckhard, proud that, as he, Morelli, had gotten to know indirectly, Jacob Burckhardt had reacted favourably to the book of Morelli, the book by ›Lermolieff‹ (while Burckhardt probably had an inkling who might be Lermolieff, even in 1875, because of his having been in touch, occasionally, with members of the Frizzoni family).(193)
But since the decade of the 1850s is also the decade of Morelli’s first encounters with Jacob Burckhardt – intellectual, not real encounters – it is worthwhile to raise the question what these two men might have had in common, and in what significant ways they might have been different.
And also the question, if it does make sense at all to compare these two man, that, each in their way, have been and still are to be seen as being influential.
Jacob Burckhardt, by the way, was not the first Swiss historian Morelli had read, since he had been enthusiastic also about Johannes von Müller, particularly as to portraits of ancient writers by von Müller;(194) but this enthusiasm for the one Swiss historian was certainly outshadowed by the enthusiasm for the other, particularly as to the Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, but probably also as to the Cicerone.(195)
For mysterious reasons it has remained rather unknown that Burckhardt and Morelli, if the latter had accepted the offer of the newly founded polytechnical institute of Zurich, the ETH Zurich, had become collegues in 1855.(196) The former teaching history of art, the latter – a rather unfamiliar picture – teaching Italian literature and aesthetics.
But this encounter – perhaps memorable also in shape of an purely imaginary encounter – did not take place. Since Morelli could not reconcile himself, as we arguably may assume, with the idea of a) leaving Italy and b) of becoming a university teacher, a professor of literature. Having a) mocked the academia often enough as such, and b) still cherishing the wish to be a writer himself, and not a teacher of literature.(197)
Why does it seem to make sense, nonetheless, to stage an imaginary encounter of these two classics of art history, that, by the way, have much more in common than it might appear at first sight?
Not because they have much in common, such as for example the waggish humour that shows, as far as the writings of Jacob Burckhardt are concerned, perhaps only occasionally as the very tip of a buffoon’s costume, while this type of humour does certainly show more clearly in the letters by Burckhardt,(198) as it does show in the letters of Morelli, and generally in the here unfolding biography of Morelli.
Or the conservative stance, that these two man had in common as well.(199)
It is not about measuring the greatness or the amount of influences here. Since the genre of visual biography, as we understand it here, is not about the greatness or the amount of impact that certain writers may have had (and Burckhardt’s impact, if compared with that of Morelli, might seem overwhelmingly mighty).
It is about the ways of seeing that these, as many other 19th century writers (we name John Ruskin as a third and male example)(200) do represent. And if compared on this level of how to look at art and of how to look at life (at politics for example), it does show that Burckhardt and Morelli had also many things in common (not the least due to Morelli’s being influenced by Burckhardt), but the ways of seeing represented by these two man, and visual biography is about ways of seeing here, are to be regarded as rather complimentary, and therefore it might be only to the advantage of a visual biography, be it a visual biography of Burckhardt or a visual biography of Morelli, to have as many distinctive ways of seeing or looking represented within such visual biography. To have diverse ways of seeing complimenting each other, to the benefit of learning more about ways of seeing and visual apprenticeship. With Giovanni Morelli for example representing the ambition not only to offer methodological suggestions, but to raise the question if attributional studies should organized based on scientific standards, and Burckhardt representing a certain interest in that question, but also a withdrawal into, what has been called, a pre-scientific nonchalence as to questions of attribution, and thus as to the basics of art history as such.(201)

At Silvaplana, in the summer of 1885 and of 1886,
Morelli wrote a (not extant) satirical piece that,
as he wrote to Layard, dealt also with speculation in pictures:
»[…] Hélas, ce n’est que trop vrai ce que vous me dites des tableaux
anciens – tant chez vous que sur le Continent, ils passent,
comme objets de spéculation, dans les mains des Juifs ou bien dans celles
des banquiers et spéculateurs, qui sont sûrs de bien employer leur argent.
J’ai écrit jadis une espèce de satyre sur cet argument que je ferai
traduire an anglais pour la soumettre un jour à votre jugement,
quant vous aurez le loisir de la lire. […]« (Gibson-Wood 1988, p. 281f.;
GM to Austen Henry Layard, 20 May 1888; for Silvaplana see GM to Jean Paul
Richter, 26 July 1886 etc.; picture: Adrian Michael)

If we have already named what these two art historians, Morelli and Burckhardt, had in common (such as a waggish sense of humour and a conservative stance), we have to speak here also of a more or less drastic resentment that these two men shared as well, namely an anti-Jewish resentment, that can be named, as drastically it does show in Burckhardt, as a dramatic embarassment to traditional Burckhardt scholarship.(202) While this resentment, that shows perhaps less dramatically in Morelli, is nonetheless also an embarassment to Morelli scholarship.(203)
It poses a problem to a 21st century reader how Giovanni Morelli, occasionally, did refer to ›the Jews‹, to a ›Jewish race‹ and to individuals that he wanted to describe as being ›Jewish‹. And this embarassment, this irritation, does not disappear at all, and it should not disappear at all, if we repeat what we already have said in our preface: that it is easy to understand why Morelli was tremendously liked by many of his contemporaries and was being regarded as a rare combination of excellent human qualities, in sum: a complete man, a universal man, a rare man.
This contradiction is also part of our image of Giovanni Morelli. If we name it, we become aware that the character of Morelli was not without flaws, not lacking contradictions, because his preconception as to Jews is – beside very conservative views in politics that one may share or not – actually the only major irritation as to the (easily idealized) character of Giovanni Morelli, an irritation that a 21st century citizen cannot ignore (even if, it should be stressed, Morelli was certainly not an anti-Semite in that he would have been a proponent of pseudo-scientific biologistical theories of races).
As we also had said Morelli cherished many preconceptions, and many of these preconceptions that he revealed, for example in passionate rhetoric outbursts, he used to relativize himself: by seemingly forgetting about all his preconceptions, if having to deal with human individuals, with individuality.(204)
How his notion of ›the Jew‹ developed can be shown; and it did develop from equalling ›the Jew‹ with a mercantile, with a profiteer, a wheeler-dealer, or simply a capitalist and speculant mentality that he did dislike (probably as early as in 1839, when he met, with Mayer Carl von Rothschild a member of the Rothschild family),(205) resulting, on at least some occasion, that he referred to his editor as being a ›Jew‹ (because Morelli wanted to say that his own editor cared only for making money).(206) The preconception, thus, had also a life of its own.
But by this criteria all of Morelli’s Bergamo friends, the rich silk merchants of Bergamo, for example the Frizzoni brothers, but also his own father, had to be referred to as being ›Jewish‹ or the sons of ›Jews‹, since everyone involved in the economy of silk was making money on a capitalist basis and this very efficiently; and also Morelli lived, in spite of his despising of commercial activity, exactly on such money, such heritage.(207) In sum: By such criteria he himself was nothing but a profiteer of profiteers.
Thus we may also interpret his preconception as to Jews as a projecting of his own bad conscience, his own dislikes onto the ›Jewish race‹, which however, did not prevent him at all, to sell pictures to Jewish collectors on the one hand (joining the profiteering, if one does like so),(208) or to built a kind of friendship with Ludwig Mond and Henriette Hertz (without a preconception becoming visible or apparently playing any role at all).(209)
It does seem that Morelli’s preconceptions were fuelled by very few individuals and on very few occasions. The Rothschild family he might have particularly disliked, for having become involved in the financing of the Lombardic railways;(210) and in the context of art connoisseurship it was particularly art historian, curator and collector Friedrich Lippmann that seemed to have enraged Morelli tremendously.(211) Resulting with Morelli, at least on one occasions, stating that the ›Jewish race‹ could not understand Raphael, the artist Raffaello Sanzio, at all.(212)
This was pointed to Lippmann, and Morelli was, in essence not stating anything but that Lippmann did not agree with him in questions of attributions, and he, Morelli, not with Lippmann.
Buch such disagreements, subliminally, seem to have been more dramatic disagreements than disagreements with other connoisseurs of art, since sensitivities associated with political or economic matters were touched upon (as perhaps the own bad conscience of being involved in commercial activities more than one actually wanted, and including the speculating with pictures, which was what Morelli did, literally, if buying high quality pictures cheep, in order to sell them, later, if he might have the chance, more expensively).(213)
Since it is always a problem to take Morelli simply literally, it should, finally, also be said, that at times his rhetoric turned to be quite aggressive, also as to ›Jewry‹,(214) while on the other hand, when hearing about actual pogroms or repression in Russia during the 1880s, Morelli seems to have counted such things among the foolishnesses of his time.(215)

Morelli seems to have, on a much later occasion, namely in 1882, to have found an understanding with Jacob Burckhardt also on the grounds of a common anti-Berlin reflex or complex.(216) Although also this complex, as to both men, and particularly as to the relation that both men had with the Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm and (English born) Crown Princess Victoria, played no role at all. Because Burckhard as Morelli came to like the destined rulers of Germany tremendously after having had the chance to get to know them personally.(217)
But this was to come later, and after Morelli had appeared on the scene of art connoisseurship. Which had to do, to some degree, with having met Jacob Burckhardt, with having read or heard about Jacob Burckhardt as well. Because the Cicerone by Burckhardt certainly had a direct or indirect impact on Morelli. Since his mentor Otto Mündler recommended this book to anyone.(218) And even if Morelli was not to become a colleague of Jacob Burckhardt at the newly-founded Zurich polytechnical institute in 1856 – at about this time Morelli got to know Burckhardt, was becoming a reader of Burckhardt (who was to admire particularly the Kultur der Renaissance in Italien), althought at this time Burckhardt did not yet know Morelli.
The Morelli who, also at about this time, had become a collector of art, a collector, later being admired by Burckhardt, who, in some sense, was present in Morelli’s mind when becoming a collector, and who was to praise the Morelli collection, with a public lecture at Basel, in 1892, after Morelli had died.(219)

Jacob Burckhardt in 1843

GIOVANNI MORELLI AND JACOB BURCKHARDT

1816: Giovanni Morelli born at Verona.

1818: Jacob Burckhardt born at Basel.

1838: young Giovanni Morelli associates intensely with Bettina von Arnim at Berlin.

1841-43: Burckhardt studies in Berlin (he also visits Bettina von Arnim and describes her in a letter of 29 January 1842 to his sister).

1846ff.: Burckhardt travelling in Italy (in 1853/54 for the Cicerone).

1855: Jacob Burckhardt, Der Cicerone.

1855 (16 October): semester begins for Jacob Burckhardt as a professor of archeology and art history at the newly founded Zurich polytechnical school; if Giovanni Morelli would have had accepted the offer to teach Italian literature and aesthetics at that school, he would have become a collegue of Burckhardt as well as of Gottfried Semper (but he did decline in recommending Francesco de Sanctis instead; compare Seybold 2014c).

1858: Burckhardt appointed as a professor of history at Basel.

1860: Jacob Burckhardt: Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien.

1862: Otto Mündler and Jacob Burckhardt are corresponding (Burckhardt consults Mündler on a painting he has bought).

1864 (August): Morelli suggest to appoint Jacob Burckhardt as a member of the comittee deciding over a new façade for the Florentine cathedral (Agosti 1985, p. 41: GM to Niccolò Antinori, 13 August 1864); he refers to the Cicerone as ›a sort of guide to Italy, the best, the most spirited that as yet has seen the light of day‹, and to the Cultur der Renaissance in Italien (first volume) as the »delizia de’ miei studi« (p. 42).

1867: Jacob Burckhardt: Die Renaissance in Italien; Federico Frizzoni visits Burckhardt in Basel.

1869: Mündler publishes his supplements to the second edition of the Cicerone (published as a brochure in 1870: see Mündler 1870).

1875 (8 October): Gustavo Frizzoni writes to Jacob Burckhardt about a Boltraffio painting (mentioning also that he studied Leonardo in the Louvre with Morelli).

1880: Giovanni Morelli (under the name of Ivan Lermolieff), Die Werke italienischer Meister in den Galerien von München, Dresden und Berlin.

1881: Morelli hears, to his delight, that Jacob Burckhardt has reacted rather favourably to Lermolieff (see GM to Jean Paul Richter, 23 February 1881; the informer being art historian [Wilhelm] Lübke).

1882: in the evening of June 21 (and probably again in the morning of June 22) Morelli meets Burckhardt at Basel, St. Alban-Vorstadt 64 (Carlo Ginzburg 1988, p. 118, note 2); subsequently, when travelling to Germany, Burckhardt enjoys to shock certain German art historians with certain connoisseurial views; but Burckhardt is not inclined to delve into attributional studies all too much, which is also being confirmed by his writing of a sarcastic poem entitled Klage des alten Cic.[Cicerone], written in Dresden on August 22, wherein Burckhardt does rhyme ›Morelli‹ (spoken here: ›Morälli‹) with Lälli (which is referring to the Basel folklore figure Lällekönig; see image below); the fifth verse of the elegy goes: »Und wenn dann um Provenienz / Von der und jener Tafel / – Sei’s Mailand, Padua, Florenz / (Und sei’s auch wahrer Basel) – / Braunschweiger und Berliner Kind / Am Ende einmal einig sind, / Dann kommt und zeigt den Lälli / Der schreckliche Morelli« (see: pp. 69-81, the poem quoted on p. 73; ›And if once as to provenance / Of this panel or other / – Milan, Florence or Padova / (Or yet more likely Basel) – / Berlin and Brunswick children / Have reached consensus in the end / Then comes and shows a ›Lälli‹ / The Terrible Morelli‹ (my translation, DS); Brunswick is a hidden reference to Wilhelm Bode).
The last verse goes: »Den aber [Morelli] laß ich nun fortan / Im Koffer ungelesen [speak: ›ungeläsen‹] / Und wandle meine freie Bahn / In diesem schönen Dräsen. / Das Beste, was in Bildern steckt, / Ist doch am Ende: was uns schmeckt. / Und dieses schon ergiebt sich / Aus Anno Sechsundsiebzig« (›Him, though, from now on I leave / In my case and unread / Seizing my day of Dräsen [Dresden, pronounced as it is in Dresden] / By strolling my free way. / The best that we do find in pictures / In the end is all that smacks / And all of this arises/sticks / Since ever Anno Seventy-six.‹)

1884: in a letter to Burckhardt (7 November) Wilhelm Bode criticizes the Morellian approach to connoisseurship.

1889: in a letter to Burckhardt (14 December) Wilhelm Bode calls Morelli a ›Swiss anatomist‹ and again criticizes the Morellian approach to connoisseurship as well as Morelli’s polemicizing.

1891: Giovanni Morelli dies at Milan.

1892: Jacob Burckhardt, at Basel, does give a lecture on the painting collection of Giovanni Morelli that he has given to the Accademia Carrara of Bergamo (Jacob Burckhardt [2003], pp. 637-639).

1897: Jacob Burckhardt dies at Basel.




The Lällekönig (picture: Rynacher)

*

INTERIM REPORT (GIOVANNI MORELLI AND ART CONNOISSEURSHIP) II

One does not know if it was a friendship that languished. Because if we would take only the last letter by Genelli to Morelli as a reference, the last letter being extant (dating of 1856),(220) nothing seemed to be indicative that this letter was to remain the last one.
Except perhaps the fact that there had been less and less letters during the last years.(221)
But Morelli had began, in the 1850s, to withhold things from Genelli, things that were about to have actual biographical importance; and both men were on the brink of turning points in their respective lives, knowing also that Morelli’s excuses of why he wasn’t able to come to Munich again had grown a bit thin over the years, but this had arguably less to do with Genelli as a person than with the problem that Morelli wanted to be Italy the center of his life, while his relation with all things German was a love-hate relationship.(222)
All this might have added to a languishing of friendship, and we don’t know if the two friends ever saw each other again, since Morelli only visited Weimar in 1869.(223) And it was in Weimar that Genelli had found, finally, a new home, since he had found a patron,(224) enabling him to leave Munich, a city Genelli never had much liked. And in Weimar Genelli was also to die, in 1868.
The two men that had met, for the last time, in Munich in 1841,(225) had probably not seen each other again, but entertained a correspondence, redolent of sympathy and warm-hearted friendship. And given that, we have to ask: what was it then that Morelli was withholding from Genelli? And why?
Plainly speaking it was that Morelli had found another mentor, another role model, that represented art connoisseurship for him, but in a different way. And while Genelli had represented, as to a looking at connoisseurs of art, the satirizing gaze, it was another German, namely Otto Mündler who was to represent the pragmatic look at connoisseurship, applied connoisseurship, that is: on making a living on dealing with pictures.(226) And the appeal of this role model probably was, essentially was, that by living on applied connoisseurship one could, a man of letters could, a man of letters whose financial situation was deteriorating, also due to his having become a collector, could save freedom and independency to a certain degree or even to the full.
And it had been in 1853 that Morelli had seen Mündler again, after having terminated the friendship in 1849,(227) and from there on, the new way of looking at things must have seemed more and more relevant, more and more appealing to Morelli.
And it is easy to understand that Morelli never told a word to Genelli that he was turning away from satirizing foolish art connoisseurship and also from his idea to become a playwright, and that, already in 1856 (and perhaps even earlier), he had begun to deal with pictures.(228)
And that, in some sense, he was not the Morelli anymore that Genelli had known. His new role model, in writing on art as in applied connoisseurship being now Otto Mündler,(229) and in spite of all the sympathy Morelli still had and ever was to keep for Genelli, the role model of the artist was the old one and had lost its appeal. Not fully, but to a degree large enough that Morelli himself indeed could become a connoisseur of art himself. With all the risk, and Morelli was the one to know it best, to be seen as one of the foolish connoisseurs of art he once had been eager to ridicule. And with the risk to become associated with commerce, and commercial interests – even as, or particularly: as a scholar.
Yet, at the end of the 1850s, Morelli was still one step away to become the connoisseur of art that the art historical tradition does know of. Since there was still no urgent need to know things better himself. Just because, simply because there was another mentor, from whom Morelli could learn, and to whom he did look up, and with whom he could also share responsibility (and profits).(230)
If Morelli took now responsibility for attributing pictures, it was still lacking the full (public) responsibility, the time pressure, the more urgent economic pressure and not the least: the open and public agonistic rivalry with other connoisseurs that was to complete to the picture only in the 1860s. The picture that was to become the context of Morelli thinking about how to know things better, that is: about how to attain a higher level of certainty, if determining authorship.(231)
For the time being, judging by the early letters to Mündler, there was mainly enthusiasm for spending time and studying with, and for learning from Mündler, an enthusiam not lacking the typical, the very characteristic Morellian hilarious playfulness, although the pragmatic use of applied connoisseurship was already becoming obvious.
But the economic situation of Morelli was gravely deteriorating only in the 1860s, when at the same time, Morelli was for the very first time meant to take full responsibility for own attributions, and publicly, and at a time that also other Italian connoisseurs were concerned with the question of how to best protect and to reorganize the artistic heritage of Italy, the new Kingdom of Italy.(232)
Albeit that Morelli never was to accomplish the first project associated with full public responsibility, the task to write a guide to the Pinacoteca di Brera.(233) And albeit that his visual apprenticeship went on, actually, never to be completed.
Morelli tended, when asked about his relation to Genelli later, to dissimulate the factors that certainly had contributed to a languishing of that friendship:(234) since it had certainly not been the fact alone that Genelli was not able to understand that Morelli gave priority to serving his country as a politician, and therefore, or mainly therefore, as Morelli suggested, had turned away from literary projects. Mentioning art studies Morelli, in 1874, dissimulated, like other connoisseurs, and particularly: like first-ranking other connoisseurs were later also dissimulating, that he (as they) lived on applied connoisseurship, albeit (and unlike them) to as little a degree as possible, with only occasional acquiring and selling of pictures.(235)
And if this fact has remained to be little known, it was simply due to the fact that Morelli was better in hiding and dissimulating. But him, he was to become an advocate of scientific connoisseurship, was perhaps not to be called savy, but he certainly was a most smooth operator as to his involvement in the picture trade. That actually, if acknowledged, may certainly change (or complete) the picture of the man, while it remains a question to be raised, if and to what degree this fact may change the view of what Morelli contributed to the idea of scientific connoisseurship. And what he did contribute was to become most relevant also as to practices of other connoisseurs – if being active in the picture trade, equipping them with a tool, thought to hand over definatory power to them.(236)
As Science, in a word, had not been born out of nothing, science was not to remain science alone.
And also against this backdrop, this particular backdrop, everything Morelli was to say has to be put under scrutiny as well. But science, on the other hand, does expect nothing but exactly this: Scientific connoisseurship, the results attained by scientific practices in connoisseurship, do in fact expect to be verified (or falsified) by science. Because this is the very principle of science: it evolves, driven by the one driving force which is critique. And it actually does not make a difference in principle, if Morelli had joined the art trade or not. The fact might be interpreted as a reason more to look even more careful, if interests had biased someone’s judgment; but one reason more does not mean that there would be no reason, if there wasn’t this one reason: because everything Morelli said has to be put under scrutiny anyway. Because this is what science connoisseurship does demand in principle, and albeit it remained little understood, and thus did inspire little consequence in practice: this is what Morelli, as the advocate of scientific connoisseurship, demanded of every connoisseur. To fully reveal one’s argument, for the argument to be put under scrutiny (and we will discuss in our Giovanni Morelli Study more in-depth to what degree Morelli did actually live up to this basic idea and ideal).
At the end of the 1850s Morelli had gathered the necessary influences to synthesize what was to become the Morellian approach to connoisseurship. And here also, if writing intellectual biography, we face the problem of Morelli dissimulating as much as possible (by telling as little as possible).(237)
Why for example he did never acknowledge that his intellectual biography had been enriched by his friendships with the Frizzoni brothers and with Genelli, because his intellectual biography, obviously, was also shaped by these people discussing and also, and even wrangling with him.(238) And to the intellectual influences and inspirations named in Interim report I (from his probably early becoming acquainted with physiognomy, perhaps as early as in Aarau school days, to his splendidly rich, even universal studenthood experiences) had now added: his again meeting with Schelling in 1841 (with the subsequent translating of Schelling);(239) his being pointed by Genelli to the idea of automimesis;(240) his wrangling with Giovanni Frizzoni about whether one should acknowledge small defects in a drawing by Genelli or not in 1846, as other activities such as for example observing his friend Antinori tracing drawings by Genelli and thus: developing a ›feel‹ as to form (later claimed by Morelli to be a skill to be developed by a Morellian connoisseur).(241)
And to this inspirations now had added, during the decade of the 1850s, the influences represented by Otto Mündler, who was an admirer of Jacob Burckhardt, had learned from Gustav Friedrich Waagen, and occasionally was publishing critical objections to gallery catalogues in a form very similar to the ways Morelli later was making his objections.(242) Only that Mündler had not the background of studies in the natural sciences, and was less inclined to define connoisseurship as something to be developed into a science, but rather as something being art and science at the same time.(243)
This was, in a picture that for the first time draws also on an intellectual biography of young Morelli, his friendships with Genelli and the Frizzoni brothers, the way to what was to be called ›scientific connoisseurship‹. Whether scientific connoisseurship ever did exist or not, that is: was ever more than a vision and a mere idea, remains also to be discussed.
We tend to say here that it did exist, albeit fragmentarily; and much of Morelli not fully living up to the idea that he was to become an advocate of, had to do with the above named factors: rivalry, responsibility, time pressure, economic pressure, in sum: with connoisseurship being an embattled field, a nasty field, actually (and somewhat ironically) not much to Morelli’s general liking. And that he joined it was the outcome of complex circumstances. For the time being, that is, for the decade of the 1860s he was in need of a tool. And this tool, this aid, was to become what later was to be called the Morellian method. The idea of scientific connoisseurship was, subsequently and rather consequently, oscillating between two ways of looking at things: of interpreting what Morelli claimed to have found as a mere tool on the one hand, or of interpreting just this tool as the seed of something that was to be unfolded only in the future, as a Kunstwissenschaft, that is: as an institution, as the positivistic 19th century could envision a Kunstwissenschaft as an institution,(244) and based on connoisseurship, as the all-sided receptive Giovanni Morelli could envision this practice in terms of a science. Morelli who was, on the whole, influenced from all sides, and as much influenced by the natural sciences, as by – as we have seen, but also will see again – by literature. Satirical literature, and, in a word, by comedy. And a particular kind of comedy, committed to ideals, and inclined, by ways of satirizing, also to ask if a reality (of science) was complying to certain ideals (or was to be called just mere nonsense).(245)
And one might conclude that what Giovanni Morelli was to contribute to art history and to connoisseurship, was to oscillate between (hard) science and comedy.

INTERIM REPORT II (1840-1856)


1840: in summer Morelli has returned, after spending many years abroad, to Italy. He begins to discover the country with fresh eyes and anew, and as far as he hadn’t yet seen many Italian regions at all, he literally begins to discover his home country, the country that, in the years to come, will be united.

1841: Morelli, when accompanying Gino Capponi to Munich, sees also philosopher Friedrich Schelling, whose Rede über das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zur Natur of 1807 he is going to translate in the years to come (Morelli 1845); Genelli alludes, in writing to Morelli, to the theory of ›automimesis‹ (Bonaventura Genelli to GM, 30 November 1841).

1840s: on various occasions Morelli sees art dealer/connoisseur Otto Mündler, if the latter is travelling in Italy. Morelli’s main interest however, as also Mündler sees it, is literature, and his ambition is to become a playwright; in Rome Morelli studies art, thinks about a play entitled Gli Artisti, buys several 15th century medals, and thinks also about buying some Renaissance antiques (GM to Niccolò Antinori, 20 April 1842 (Frizzoni 1893, p. XXXVIII)).

1846: Morelli almost swears, after having quarrelled with Giovanni Frizzoni, never to enter a gallery of art ›accompanied by a so-called connoisseur of art‹ (see introductory essay).

1847: an unknown French connoisseur of art has visited Morelli at Milan or Bergamo (Bonaventura Genelli to GM, 21 April 1847).

1848: when staying at Frankfurt a. M., Morelli might also have encountered, among the elected representatives of the German parliament, Johann Hermann Detmold, author of Anleitung zur Kunstkennerschaft oder Kunst in drei Stunden ein Kenner zu werden (Detmold 1834), a book that, in a later edition, was also being part of Morelli’s own library.

1849: after an inadvertedly offensive remark by Otto Mündler, Morelli terminates the friendship with him, as it turns out – to the chagrin of both.

1850: Otto Mündler, Essai d’une analyse critique de la notice des tableaux italiens du Musée National du Louvre

1853: Morelli sees Otto Mündler again, after he had terminated the friendship in 1849.

1855: Jacob Burckhardt, Der Cicerone.

1856: Morelli begins to collect pictures and to deal with pictures (see GM to Otto Mündler, 25 May 1856 (Kultzen 1989, p. 380)).

1857: last attempts to get his career as a playwright going.

1858: Giovanni Morelli has turned to art historical studies. His personal financial situation is not the best, all the more as he has come to be a collector.

***

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ANNOTATIONS:

1) Genelli stopping working: Bonaventura Genelli (henceforth: BG) to GM, 4 December 1843; 3 June 1847; avoiding the English Garden: BG to GM, 31 August 1839. (back)

2) For Genelli criticizing Morelli see for example: BG to GM, 14 October 1844 (as regards Morelli feeling bored and being lazy); 24 February 1846 (as regards Morelli being too volatile and undecided); for ›counterattacks‹ see below. (back)

3) For Genelli responding to Morelli see GM to Federico Frizzoni, 1 January 1837 (Anderson 1991b, p. 45, note 39, beginning on p. 44). Compare also GM to BG, 14 June 1838, and correspondence, passim. (back)

4) GM to Federico Frizzoni, 1 January 1837 (Anderson 1991b, p. 44f., note 39). (back)

5) Compare for example GM to BG, 6 February 1845. (back)

6) GM to Federico Frizzoni, 3 March 1837 (Frizzoni 1893, p. XVf.). (back)

7) BG to GM, 2 February 1841. (back)

8) See Culhane 1990, pp. 12ff, respectively pp. 17ff. (back)

9) Culhane 1990, p. 20f. (Hawthorne described a show that he had seen September 4, 1838). (back)

10) GM to Bonaventura Genelli, [no specific date, but probably September] 1839; from Paris. (back)

11) For Morellian views on Shakespeare and Manzoni see the excerpts of sources below. (back)

12) See Rosenfeld (ed.) 1966, p. 360 (the sensitive poem being Flucht nach Toskana). Compare also Dilk 2010, pp. 44ff., for a summary of the relation between Platen and the Frizzoni brothers. (back)

13) See Stock (ed.) 1943, Bastek/von Müller (eds.) 2010, and again Dilk 2010. (back)

14) See GM to Federico Frizzoni, 21 February 1838 (Frizzoni 1893, p. XXXIff.). With this letter Morelli adressed certain critical remarks by either Giovanni or Federico Frizzoni, brought forward in a letter that, however, is not extant. (back)

15) In Morelli’s ›defense speech‹ echoes for example Genelli’s view of Rubens (compare BG to GM, 24 December 1837, with Frizzoni 1893, p. XXXIII). (back)

16) Name of Rumohr dropped: GM to Federico Frizzoni, 21 February 1838 (Frizzoni 1893, p. XXXII). For ›wrangling‹ see also our introductory essay as well as Cabinet II, question/answer No. 6, note. (back)

17) M/R, pp. 40, 43, 48 (GM to Jean Paul Richter, 5 April 1878)). (back)

18) On request: BG to GM, 30 March 1840; compare also BG to GM, 17 April 1840 (Io, Leda). (back)

19) GM to BG, 5 April 1840. (back)

20) Compare Morelli 1891, p. 205, and Morelli 1893, p. 256. (back)

21) Compare GM to Jean Paul Richter, 15 February 1880; 23 January 1887; 26 July 1888. Compare also Seybold 2014a, p. 87. (back)

22) Morelli showed, throughout his life a fear to be monopolized. Compare for example: GM to BG, 21 August 1845. (back)

23) Morelli’s mother finds frequent mentioning in his letters to Genelli and Mündler. (back)

24) As to Morelli being in love compare BG to GM, 15 November 1840 etc. (back)

25) GM to BG, 12 November 1838. (back)

26) References to music are significantly more frequent in early letters by Morelli. Compare for example GM to BG, 12 November 1838; 24 April 1839. (back)

27) Giulia Grisi mentioned by Morelli: GM to BG, 12 November 1838; 25 April 1839. For her biography see Forbes 1985. (back)

28) For Morelli being self-critical as to being attracted to the theatre milieu see GM to BG, 25 April 1839. (back)

29) GM to Bonaventura Genelli, 25 April 1839. (back)

30) Compare again Morelli 1891, p. 205, for ›männliche Eigenschaften und Leidenschaften der Seele‹, as well as Morelli 1893, p. 256 (›fast weiblich sich anschmiegend‹). (back)

31) GM to Jean Paul Richter, 10 October 1877 (M/R, p. 15): »Sie ist eine Art Mannweib, energisch und absolut in ihren Ansichten, aber dabei sehr gut und dienstfertig.« (back)

32) Compare also Jean Paul Richter to GM, 1 February 1878 (M/R, p. 28). For Lady Eastlake generally see Robertson 1978, Eastlake Smith (ed.) 1895, and Sheldon (ed.) 2009. (back)

33) And this in appreciation as well as in attribution. For the latter see for example Cabinet II (question/answer No. 27; the question of the ›Raphael‹ owned by Morris Moore); for the former see for example Morelli’s changing views as to his favourite work by Raphael (see chapter Visual Apprenticeship III) or other artists. – Compare also Jean Paul Richter to GM, 7 November 1881 for »Urtheil in Oscillation« (referred to as a general phenomenon in connoisseurship). (back)

34) For Henriette Hertz’ view of (the one and only) Morelli see her diaries, passim; for Meysenbug’s also most respectful view of him see Meysenbug 1898. (back)

35) See [Eastlake] 1891; for views challenged again see for example Hope 2003. (back)

36) See Louise M. Richter, Diary No. 7, 19 February 1896; and for Louise M. Richter see Seybold 2014a, pp. 81ff. (back)

37) [Eastlake] 1891, p. 237 (»not exactly the woman to attract him«). (back)

38) Very characteristic is Morelli’s affectionately speaking of people that often works as a self-correcting after having spoken less affectionately of people before (see for example, as regards Bettina von Arnim: GM to the Frizzoni brothers, 10 August 1838 (Stock (ed.) 1943, p. 97): »Ich habe Bettina übrigens sehr lieb gewonnen […].«) (back)

39) See GM to Federico Frizzoni, 15 October 1837 (Frizzoni 1893, p. XXVIII). (back)

40) See again introductory essay (daughter of a castellan at Lake Como); and compare Morelli speaking, very in general, of charming English women or of the women of Vienna (GM to Jean Paul Richter, 25 May 1878 (M/R, p. 60f.); Münz 1898, p. 102). (back)

41) For the imagined duel see chapter Interlude II; for Morelli musing about two types of wives see GM to Niccolò Antinori, 2 August 1868 (Agosti 1985, p. 46) (compare again GM to the Frizzoni brothers, 10 August 1838 (Stock (ed.) 1943, p. 97)). In Morelli’s rhetoric the fiery, brilliant, but monopolizing salonnière does appear in contrast to the simple, unpretentious ›peasant girl‹. (back)

42) For Morelli becoming suddenly waggishly cuddly see GM to Jean Paul Richter, 20 November 1880. (back)

43) [Eastlake] 1891, p. 238. (back)

44) See Morelli 1890, pp. 287ff., particularly p. 294. (back)

45) Berenson 1952, p. 209. (back)

46) See the second of our expertises by Morelli in Cabinet III. (back)

47) Gloomy moments were the more hidden complement of Morelli’s exuberance. For his rare speaking of it see for example: GM to Jean Paul Richter, 27 May 1884 (compare also Seybold 2014a, p. 89). During his studenthood occasional depressive moods might have occured, for example after the getting to know of his Aarau friend, composer Theodor Fröhlich (see again GM to Giovanni Frizzoni, 24 November 1836 (reproduced in Panzeri/Bravi (eds.) 1987), [table 3, after] p. 208)). (back)

48) GM to Federico Frizzoni, 14 October 1836 (Anderson 1991b, p. 33f., note 32). For Mende see our Mende study. (back)

49) GM to BG, 2 December 1839; compare also Kultzen 1989, pp. 390, 392f., 395f., 400. (back)

50) For Lenbach and Morelli see M/R, passim (pp. 397f., 412, 416f., 501, 503, 545, 563 (Lenbach as a reader of Lermolieff)), and see also our biographical Sketch and Cabinet IV. For Lenbach and photography (and working after photographs) see Wichmann 1973. For the fragment of an undated letter by Morelli to Lenbach (kept at Cologne) see Baranow 1980, p. 122, and for Morelli travelling (or making a trip) with Lenbach see Ranke 1986, p. 221. (back)

51) Compare Morelli’s description of Rückert (above), as well as his description of Genelli’s Don Quixote (chapter Visual Apprenticeship II). (back)

52) Compare Stierle 2003, pp. 318ff.; the reading of Petrarca that I am developing here is, nonetheless my own reading. (back)

53) This as to the perhaps all too much debated question if the ascent to Mont Ventoux actually reflected a real experience, or if is (as some tend to think) to be considered rather as a ›fake‹. (back)

54) Compare Jacob Burckhardt [1985], pp. 202ff.; and see below our survey of the Morelli-Burckhardt relationship. See also Bode [1939]. (back)

55) See again Jacob Burckhardt [1985], pp. 202ff. (back)

56) In 1840 Morelli wrote from or about Marseille to Genelli. See BG to GM, 7 July 1840. (back)

57) For Morelli studying a cavallo see BG to GM, 1 August 1840; for Alfieri reading and writing sonnets a cavallo see Stierle 2003, p. 811. (back)

58) For Morelli telling Genelli about the wound of having been belittled see GM to BG, 14 June 1838. (back)

59) Compare Morelli in 1848 (Frankfurt; see below) or in 1873 (Vienna; see chapter Visual Apprenticeship II). (back)

60) In one of his last letters Morelli does mention his innate impulse to defend himself, also in regard of incidents that had occured in his youth: see GM to Jean Paul Richter, 5 February 1891. (back)

61) For Petrarca as referred to in the Morelli-Genelli correspondence see BG to GM, 1 August 1840. (back)

62) See Alfieri [2010]. (back)

63) GM to Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, 20 August 1836, Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg; for Schubert see Petermann 2008. (back)

64) For Schubert and the tale of the Bergmann von Falun (whose body had been conserved, underneath the earth and over time) see Petermann 2008, pp. 216ff. The tale had also been included into Schubert 1808, the book that certainly Morelli also knew. (back)

65) Brigandage/Räuberroman: GM to BG, 27 August 1852. (back)

66) Morelli saw the (today lost) Felsgrotte am Meer (im Hintergrund Palast der Königin Johanna von Aragonien bei Neapel) by Carl Blechen in the collection of Bettina von Arnim (see Anderson/Morelli 1991a, p. 117; and compare GM to BG, 12 November 1838 (op. cit., p. 61); for Blechen and Morelli see also Interlude II). This was exactly the kind of subject and genre of painting that could not appeal to young and exuberant Morelli, anxious for everything sensual: »Da ich für solche viel und doch nichts sagende und längst schon abgehaspelte Ideen und Darstellungen der Vergänglichkeit keinen rechten Sinne habe, so machte auch dieses sonst gewiss geistvoll gemalte Bild keinen sonderlichen Eindruck auf mich – um aber meinem Schnippelfrack ein Genüge zu leisten, musst’ ich doch das Bild, über das der junge Rothschild, eh’ ich es nur zu betrachten anfing, schon alle Superlativa losgelassen hatte – als ein Wunderwerk anerkennen.
›Ei, das ist schön, Herr Morell, dass Sie auch Sinn für Malerei haben‹, sagte mir Bettina.
›Sie sind auch ein Kunstkenner?‹ fragte etwas vorwitzig der Herr Baron. […]« (back)

67) Compare for example Morelli 1893, p. 171. (back)

68) Humboldt: BG to GM, 3 July 1838. (back)

69) Morelli on his passion for travelling: GM to BG, 6 February 1845. (back)

70) GM to Jean Paul Richter, 24 August 1883 (M/R, p. 281). (back)

71) Morelli 1890, p. 14 (compare also chapter Visual Apprenticeship III, with section on Morelli reading Agassiz). (back)

72) For (background) landscape and attribution see also Cabinet III (first example), as well as our feature on ›How to tell Titian from Giorgione‹. (back)

73) Compare – as another example how humanities and natural sciences might occasionally come together – how Nabokov scholar Dieter E. Zimmer delved into the intricacies of taxonomy (since Nabokov showed, as is well known, also to be an able lepidopterologist). (back)

74) Carlo Ginzburg 1979a, 1979b etc. (back)

75) Natalia Ginzburg 1988. (back)

76) Natalia Ginzburg 1988, p. 287 (1846: ›a certain German doctor‹ [Morelli]; Boario water) and p. 364 (May 1855: Morelli against Recoaro water, and again in favor of Boario water). See also pp. 294f. and 384. (back)

77) Enthusiasm about Rome: GM to Niccolò Antinori, 20 April 1842 (Agosti 1985, p. 20f.). (back)

78) Venice: GM to Niccolò Antinori, 21 April 1844; 29 July 1844 (Agosti 1985, p. 21 and p. 22); Florence: BG to GM, 2 February 1841. (back)

79) Wrangling with a Berliner: BG to GM, 6 October 1847. (back)

80) ›Preussens Erfolg‹: GM to Niccolò Antinori, 23 October 1870 (Agosti 1985, p. 37, note 5). (back)

81) Romans being economically immature: Münz 1898, p. 89. (back)

82) Morelli on Munich (in hindsight): GM to Niccolò Antinori, 5 August 1851 (Agosti 1985, p. 24). (back)

83) See chapter Interlude II. (back)

84) Genelli on Rome: BG to GM, 31 July 1842; for Capponi speaking about Rome to Morelli see Gino Capponi to GM, 20 April 1842 (Carraresi (ed.) 1885, vol 2, p. 80). (back)

85) Banner of democracy: Morelli 1890, p. 81 (as already in Morelli 1874-1876, that is in Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 9 (1874), p. 1). Compare also Münz 1898, p. 89. (back)

86) GM to Niccolò Antinori, 20 April 1842 (Frizzoni 1893, p. XXXVIII). (back)

87) GM to Jean Paul Richter, 16 October 1882. (back)

88) Morelli owned, already as a student, a Cotta edition of the works by Goethe (see Anderson 1987a, p. 51; compare also the watercolor rendering of Morelli in his study, with probably also the rather small sized Cotta volumes on the bookshelf). (back)

89) Debts of Genelli: BG to GM, [before] 4 December 1842; 4 December 1842. (back)

90) Letters on Maler Müller: BG to GM, 31 July 1842; 23 September 1842. (back)

91) Coup against Goethe: BG to GM, 23 September 1842. (back)

92) Compare again Münz 1898, p. 89 (Rome); middle classes: Morelli 1848, p. 4, with note 2: »Die Bewegung ging vom Mittelstande aus; […].«. (back)

93) Münz 1898, p. 89. (back)

94) Giro with Mende: BG to GM, 7 March 1843. (back)

95) For some references to Goethe in Morelli’s published writings see Morelli 1890, pp. 22, 30, 99 (note 1); Morelli 1893, pp. 76. (back)

96) Jacob Burckhardt and Goethe see Tauber 2000; for Heinrich Wölfflin and Goethe see Ay 2010. (back)

97) See Morelli 1890, pp. 32-35. (back)

98) Heindl et al. (eds.) 2000. (back)

99) Getting a passport at Milan: GM to BG, 24 June 1846. (back)

100) Compare Heindl et al. (eds.) 2000, pp. 496ff. (subchapter 6.3 on ›Illegales Reisen‹ (Andrea Geselle)). (back)

101) Brewer 2009, p. 222. (back)

102) Compare our Mende study. (back)

103) Morelli 1880, p. 292, note 1; Morelli 1893, p. 155f., note 1. (back)

104) Morelli 1890, p. 106. (back)

105) Morelli 1891, p. 356. (back)

106) Morelli 1891, p. 356. (back)

107) Morelli 1891, p. 243. (back)

108) See our biographical Sketch. (back)

109) For an example of Morelli using the notion of ›race‹ see chapter Interlude I (survey on ›Morelli and the cholera‹). (back)

110) For ›art in the cultural context of its time‹ see GM to Niccolò Antinori, 20 April 1842 (Frizzoni 1893, p. XXXIX). (back)

111) For Langbehn see Morelli 1893, p. 41. And compare GM to Jean Paul Richter, 15 February 1890; 11 November 1890. (back)

112) Morelli awaiting a South Italian friend (Francesco De Sanctis, accompanied by two other Neapolitans): GM to Niccolò Antinori, 24 September 1859 (Agosti 1985, p. 12, note 20, beginning on p. 11). For Morelli’s stereotypes of South Italians see Münz 1898, p. 88. (back)

113) Compare Morelli 1891, p. 356f. on the ›German eye‹. (back)

114) Morelli as a landscape painter: BG to GM, 16 November 1852. (back)

115) Morelli bought his manor at Sanfermo nearby Lago Pusiano apparently in summer of 1845 (compare BG to GM, 29 June 1845). (back)

116) Carving poetry: BG to GM, 14 October 1844. (back)

117) Expelled from own manor by female visitors: GM to BG, 21 August 1845. (back)

118) GM to Niccolò Antinori, 20 February 1848 (Agosti 1985, p. 6, note 8; with reference to Mende hunting ducks). (back)

119) GM to Niccolò Antinori, 11 February 1850 (Agosti 1985, p. 23). Proudhon was among those contemporary personalities (with for example also poet Heinrich Stieglitz) that Morelli compared with ›Don Quixote‹. (back)

120) In summer of 1855 Morelli had moved to Taronico: compare BG to GM, 29 September 1855. (back)

121) See below. (back)

122) For the (indeed lacking) theatre of the Risorgimento see Procacci 1983, p. 277, with also a short reference to the opera of Giuseppe Verdi. (back)

123) Modern historians tend not to speak of an actual revolution (compare Dipper 2000). (back)

124) See Procacci 1983, as an classic account. (back)

125) For Peter Kaiser see Roedel 1960. (back)

126) In the end Morelli attempted to get support by Capponi (GM to Gino Capponi, 5 August 1848 (Carraresi (ed.) 1885, vol. 2, p. 425)), for a mission that he obviously reinterpreted, since he also let Capponi know that he felt not being taken seriously by his superiors. (back)

127) Compare Morelli 1848. (back)

128) Little interest: see Altgeld 1984, pp. 278ff., and more specifically pp. 320ff.; Dipper 2000, p. 75. (back)

129) In a letter to Giovanni Frizzoni Morelli expressed the view that it was too late to yet achieve something in Frankfurt (see Ginoulhiac 1940, p. 3). (back)

130) Morelli 1890, p. 4. (back)

131) GM to Giovanni Frizzoni, 4 July 1848 (Anderson 1991a, p. 525). (back)

132) His anger reveals if the brochure is read in full, especially as regards the discussion of several special issues like taxes, infrastructure of Lombardy etc. (back)

133) Morelli 1848, p. 14, note. (back)

134) Compare also Morelli 1848, p. 11. (back)

135) Moritz Wagner, Eine deutsche Antwort an Heinrich Stieglitz in der österreichisch-italienischen Sache, Beilage to Allgemeine Zeitung No. 161 (9 June 1848), pp. 2569-2571. (back)

136) To start a chronicle with the Palermo uprisings might be called the conventional view of things. (back)

137) Punishments of recruits: Frizzoni 1893, p. XII, note 1. (back)

138) For the ›tobacco strike‹ (»Raucherstreik«) see Saurer 1989, pp. 352ff. (back)

139) Morelli 1848, p. 23. (back)

140) See again Morelli 1848, p. 23f. (back)

141) Jean Paul Richter 1891, p. 2. (back)

142) Schweinitz 1856, p. 113. (back)

143) See GM to BG, 25 September 1839 (quoted above). (back)

144) Morelli 1848, p. 30, note; compare also Honegger 1997, p. 126f. (back)

145) For ›the diplomat in me‹ see Cabinet III (first expertise). (back)

146) GM to Giovanni Frizzoni, 4 July 1848 (Anderson 1991a, p. 525). (back)

147) Otherwise he would not have felt a need to deny the having given of a certain ›declaration‹. (back)

148) Allgemeine Zeitung No. 162 (10 June), p. 2579. (back)

149) Morelli kept on portraying people in letters to Gino Capponi and Bonaventura Genelli (see below for details). (back)

150) GM to BG, 21 June 1848. (back)

151) See again GM to BG, 21 June 1848; and compare Siemann 1985. (back)

152) See again GM to BG, 21 June 1848. (back)

153) GM to Gino Capponi, 5 August 1848 (Carraresi (ed.) 1885, vol. 2, p. 420ff.). Compare also Münz 1898, p. 95f. (back)

154) For the Paris trip see also GM to Gino Capponi, 5 August 1848 (Carraresi (ed.) 1885, vol. 2, p. 421f.). (back)

155) Compare Layard 1900, p. 12: »[…] he was unwilling to take any active part in politics, although always ready to give his advice to his political friends, by whom he was constantly consulted.« (back)

156) As to Morelli’s Venice stay in 1848/49 sources are scarce. But compare GM to Giovanni Frizzoni, 5 February 1849 (Anderson 2008, p. 451). (back)

157) For the history of the Republic of San Marco see Ginsborg 1979. (back)

158) Letters show that Morelli moved to Genoa in the spring (see GM to Giovanni Frizzoni, 4 March; 3/4 July (Anderson 2008, p. 452)). Compare also GM to Jean Paul Richter, (as to, probably at that time, having associated with Eleanora Rinuccini Corsini). (back)

159) According to Morelli himself he acted as »aiutante del Generale Solera« (Anderson 1991a, p. 524, note 32, beginning on p. 523). This might refer to Francesco/Franz Solera who actually had been in Austrian services. Sources mention also a second Francesco Solera, probably a son of the former. (back)

160) Compare GM to Giovanni Frizzoni, 5 February 1849 (Anderson 2008, p. 451). (back)

161) See BG to GM, 27 January 1850. (back)

162) GM to BG, 21 August 1845; 1 January 1846. (back)

163) See again GM to BG, 21 June 1848. (back)

164) For Morelli observing and commenting about news see the various letters by Morelli to Giovanni Frizzoni in 1849 (see notes 158 and 160). (back)

165) It is possible to think of another mission that might have had to do with getting the recognition of other Italian political entities for the paper money issued by the Republic of San Marco. But this is mere speculation. (back)

166) See Jean Paul Richter 1891, p. 2; [Eastlake] 1891, p. 237. The historic core of that anecdote might arguably be the sudden death of Girolamo Borgazzi sotto le mura di Milano. (back)

167) Perhaps significantly it is the Richter version of the anecdote that includes also ›complaints about the deceased‹. (back)

168) For the role of Rainer during the ›tobacco strike‹, as seen by Morelli, compare Morelli 1848, p. 24f., with note. (back)

169) Compare again GM to Gino Capponi, 5 August 1848 (Carraresi (ed.) 1885, vol. 2, p. 420). (back)

170) For Pius IX seen by Morelli in 1846 see BG to GM, 27 October 1846; for 1848 see Morelli 1848, p. 20. (back)

171) Compare chapter Interlude II (motto). (back)

172) See Interlude II for more details. (back)

173) Compare for example Morelli on Lake Como (above). (back)

174) For Morelli having – most likely enthusiastically – announced his stay at Villa Balbianello see BG to GM, 27 October 1850. (back)

175) For Morelli describing their doings at Villa Balbianello see GM to BG, 12 February 1851. (back)

176) Compare GM to Niccolò Antinori, 5 August 1851; 22 August 1851 (Agosti 1985, p. 23f. and p. 25ff.). (back)

177) Antinori was, literally, much to repeat what Morelli had done in Germany, including paying Bettina von Arnim a visit (compare BG to GM, 18 July 1851). (back)

178) Esthetics: compare GM to Francesco de Sanctis, 4 August 1856 (De Sanctis 1965, p. 127-129); and compare, as regards this letter, chapter Interlude II. (back)

179) Why not a good play: GM to Niccolò Antinori, 7 February 1852 (Agosti 1985, p. 28). (back)

180) Morelli on principles of acting: GM to BG, 7 June 1851. (back)

181) The ›aimable singer‹: compare BG to GM, 27 October 1850; GM to BG, 12 February 1851. Here again Morelli seems to show not a little as a ›Wilhelm Meister‹. (back)

182) Antinori doing tracings of Genelli’s illustrations to Homer and Dante: GM to BG, 12 February 1851. (back)

183) For ›feeling, conceiving, perceiving form‹ (›Form empfinden‹) (and for, in some sense, foreshadowing ›tactile values‹): compare GM to Jean Paul Richter, 22 July 1881 (M/R, p. 170). (back)

184) For Morelli on principles of translation see Locatelli 2009. (back)

185) Morelli kept on corresponding with Antinori (being in Germany), as well as with Genelli. For ›rainy‹ see: BG to GM, 18 July 1851. (back)

186) Genelli reporting: BG to GM, 18 July 1851. (back)

187) See BG to GM, 18 July 1851. For Morelli quoting from the Fiesco see GM to Jean Paul Richter, 8 May 1881. (back)

188) See again GM to Niccolò Antinori, 20 April 1842 (Frizzoni 1893, p. XXXIX). (back)

189) Morelli did not speak of a mental barrier that most likely had to do with his torn cultural identity. But most likely such a barrier did exist and prevented Morelli from travelling to Germany again, while the reasons for not travelling that he actually did give to Genelli were outward and perhaps rather pleaded reasons (which Genelli also seems to have sensed: see BG to GM, 24 July 1854). (back)

190) BG to GM, 2 July 1850. (back)

191) The Renaissance as the Golden Age (of art), compared to the Silver Age and to the ›cupreous‹: compare GM to Jean Paul Richter, 14 November 1886. – It is also worth noticing that Morelli recommended the work by Leopold von Ranke on Italian epic poetry to his friends (see Frizzoni 1893, p. XXIV) and also had his view of the great Italian (Renaissance) writers shaped by another great historian of the 19th century. (back)

192) For Jacob Burckhardt see for example the fine portrait by Kurt Meyer (Kurt Meyer 2009). And compare our survey (above). (back)

193) For Morelli feeling flattered due to Burckhardt’s apparently favourably reacting to Lermolieff: GM to Jean Paul Richter, 23 February 1881. For the relations between the Frizzoni family and Burckhardt see the letters to Burckhardt (burckhardtsource.org). – The pattern of Morelli, with a certain reserve, approaching the intellectual friends of his friends (as for example, in earlier years, Carl Friedrich von Rumohr) does obviously repeat here. (back)

194) Morelli referring enthusiastically to Johannes von Müller: GM to BG, 24 April 1839. (back)

195) Morelli on the Kultur der Renaissance and on the Cicerone: GM to Niccolò Antinori, 13 August 1864 (Agosti 1985, p. 41f.). (back)

196) See Seybold 2014c. (back)

197) See GM to Johann Konrad Kern (De Sanctis 1938, pp. 34-38). Compare our biographical Sketch, and compare also BG to GM, 5 February 1856. – Genelli, by the way, had declined a professorship himself (see BG to GM, 2 March 1841). (back)

198) See generally the letters by Burckhardt (Jacob Burckhardt 1949-1994), but specifically the letters written from Germany, immediately after Morelli/Lermolieff had paid a visit to Burckhardt in 1882 (vol. 8, pp. 66ff.; and compare our survey, above). (back)

199) See, for Burckhardt, Kurt Meyer 2009, p. 39 and passim. For Morelli referring to ›his‹ party, the conservatives, see GM to Jean Paul Richter, 16 December 1881. (back)

200) See Wolfgang Kemp 1987 (and also Wolfgang Kemp 2000). (back)

201) See Agosti/Manca/Panzeri (eds.) 1993, vol. 1, pp. 69ff. (Wilhelm Schlink). (back)

202) But compare also the more dispassionate view of Kurt Meyer 2009, pp. 172ff. (back)

203) Which shows perhaps also in the fact that it has never been an issue. (back)

204) On an abstract level all the stereotypes cherished by Morelli (as to Italian regions, peoples of Europe, German professors and also women) had a similar structure, in that they were of rhetorical importance, while Morelli in a certain sense, dismissed (or countered) every single one of these stereotypes by actions. (back)

205) For Morelli on Mayer Carl von Rothschild see GM to BG, 14 June 1838. (back)

206) E. A. Seemann referred to as a ›Jew‹: GM to Jean Paul Richter, 1 January 1886. (back)

207) Financial means had been invested in properties, but someone who had inherited income on property was only to dissumulate effectively that he or she was living on other people’s work (and this in a double sense). And when Morelli was forced to earn money with pictures (compare next chapter) he even adapted what actually (or at least rhetorically) he did dislike: a capitalist mentality, or simply: economic affairs (for Morelli mentioning such affairs that apparently ›disgusted‹ him see for example GM to BG, 7 January 1850). (back)

208) For banker John Samuel see Fleming 1973, p. 9, and also GM to Jean Paul Richter, 28 January 1878 (M/R, p. 27). (back)

209) For Morelli and Henriette Hertz see Seybold 2013. (back)

210) Railways: see Pichler 1995, p. 255. And compare GM to BG, 15 August 1855, with a particularly aggressive outburst. (back)

211) For Lippmann see Bode 1903/1904. For Morelli on Lippmann see for example (and as an example of how much Morelli did dislike Lippmann) GM to Jean Paul Richter, 4 February 1885. (back)

212) See GM to Jean Paul Richter, 22 June 1881. And compare also chapter Visual Apprenticeship III (survey as regards ›Morelli and Raphael‹). (back)

213) See Interlude I. (back)

214) See again GM to BG, 15 August 1855. (back)

215) GM to Jean Paul Richter, 8 September 1884 (M/R, p. 347). (back)

216) For Jacob Burckhardt, apparently, having agreed with Morelli as to the questionable status of the Berlin art historians see GM to Jean Paul Richter, 7 April 1884. (back)

217) See Bode [1939], p. XIII, for Burckhardt. And for Morelli and the Royal Highnesses see chapter Visual Apprenticeship III (with survey and quotes). (back)

218) Mündler recommending Cicerone: Mündler 1870, p. III. Compare also Kultzen 1993, p. 327. (back)

219) See Jacob Burckhardt [2003], pp. 637-639; and see also chapter Visual Apprenticeship III. (back)

220) See BG to GM, 5 February 1856. (back)

221) During the 1850s Genelli and Morelli exchanged about three letters per year. (back)

222) For Genelli sensing that Morelli’s excuses were not exactly matching the full truth see again BG to GM, 24 July 1854. (back)

223) Gibson-Wood 1988, p. 187. (back)

224) Ebert 1971, p. 155f. (back)

225) Compare the letters by Genelli after Morelli had briefly (and as regards Genelli: unexpectedly) come to Munich: BG to GM, 28 June 1841 etc. (back)

226) Any investigation into Mündler should start with Anderson 1985. (back)

227) See Kultzen 1993, p. 325f. (Mündler writing to Friedrich Rückert, and thus also informing the poet, about Morelli’s literary ambition). (back)

228) The first extant letter to Mündler (25 May 1856) speaks of dealing, but not yet of financial crisis (see Kultzen 1989, p. 379f.). (back)

229) For Morelli addressing the role of Mündler and thanking him: GM to Otto Mündler, 1 January 1860 (Kultzen 1989, p. 384). (back)

230) Sharing profits: GM to Otto Mündler, 20 February 1861 (Kultzen 1989, p. 391). (back)

231) GM to Jean Paul Richter, 25 May 1885 (referring to c. 1860, in speaking of ›25 years ago‹). (back)

232) See chapter Visual Apprenticeship II. (back)

233) See again chapter Visual Apprenticeship II. (back)

234) GM to Lionel von Donop, 25 May 1874 (Bora (ed.) 1994, p. 95f.). (back)

235) For the comparison Berenson-Morelli (and a discussion thereof) see Cabinet IV. (back)

236) See Cabinet II. (back)

237) Compare all of our three Interim Reports or check the overall picture given in Cabinet II, question/answer No. 6. (back)

238) See above and see our introductory essay. (back)

239) See Locatelli 2009, pp. 28ff. (back)

240) BG to GM, 30 November 1841. (back)

241) See above and see Cabinet II, question/answer No. 6. (back)

242) Compare Mündler 1850. (back)

243) See Kultzen 1989, p. 376, with quote (compare also chapter Visual Apprenticeship II). (back)

244) Compare Cabinet I and Cabinet II, question/answer No. 24. (back)

245) Compare chapter Interlude II and see Cabinet V. (back)

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THE GIOVANNI MORELLI MONOGRAPH PART I:

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI VISUAL BIOGRAPHY | Visual Apprenticeship I

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI VISUAL BIOGRAPHY | Interlude I

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI VISUAL BIOGRAPHY | Visual Apprenticeship II

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI VISUAL BIOGRAPHY | Interlude II

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI VISUAL BIOGRAPHY | Visual Apprenticeship III

Or Go To:

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI MONOGRAPH | HOME

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI MONOGRAPH | Spending a September with Morelli at Lake Como

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI MONOGRAPH | A Biographical Sketch

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI MONOGRAPH | Visual Apprenticeship: The Giovanni Morelli Visual Biography

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI MONOGRAPH | Connoisseurial Practices: The Giovanni Morelli Study

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI MONOGRAPH | The Giovanni Morelli Bibliography Raisonné

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI MONOGRAPH | General Bibliography

Visual Apprenticeship I

When Giovanni Morelli was forty years old, he started to collect works of art. This might also be interpreted as a kind of turning point in his life, since up to the year of 1856 little had pointed to his – rather late in his life – becoming a connoisseur of art, although the visual arts had also, next to many other things, ranged among his interests. Thus, the biographical panorama that leads through the first forty years of his life, up to the year of 1856, shows in a way the ›other‹ Morelli. It shows with Morelli studying, with Morelli discovering his literary ambition, with Morelli travelling and experiencing nature, with Morelli experiencing war times, and last but not least: with Morelli discovering the roles one has to play in society (and politics), the necessary backdrop to his later becoming a connoisseur of art, and of his becoming a personality that some who knew him were inclined to call also an expert as to human nature and a man of the world.

And a section that one may call also ›The Young Morelli‹ shows a Johann Morell/Giovanni Morelli, conversing with German and French 19th century artists (and connoisseurs), which also might be interpreted as a necessary counterpoint to his later developing his expertise for Renaissance painting and drawing and (to some degree) also for Dutch painting, since, especially as a collector, he did not at all dismiss all other periods of art, even if he was inclined to speak of the Renaissance period as the ›Golden Age‹.

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI VISUAL BIOGRAPHY:

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI VISUAL BIOGRAPHY | Visual Apprenticeship I

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI VISUAL BIOGRAPHY | Interlude I

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI VISUAL BIOGRAPHY | Visual Apprenticeship II

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI VISUAL BIOGRAPHY | Interlude II

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI VISUAL BIOGRAPHY | Visual Apprenticeship III

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI STUDY:

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI STUDY | Cabinet I: Introduction

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI STUDY | Cabinet II: Questions and Answers

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI STUDY | Cabinet III: Expertises by Morelli

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI STUDY | Cabinet IV: Mouse Mutants and Disney Cartoons

THE GIOVANNI MORELLI STUDY | Cabinet V: Digital Lermolieff

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