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This Edition 
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| <1>
The papers published here are the product of a symposium hosted
by the Deutsches Studienzentrum in Venice (Centro Tedesco di Studi
Veneziani) on 11 and 12 May 2001. I would like to thank Dr. Susanne
Winter, the head of the Studienzentrum, and Mrs. Giovanna Dettin
for organising the event. The occasion for the conference was an
exhibition – which later travelled to Dresden – of the
work of Anton Raphael Mengs at the Fondazione Palazzo Zabarella
in Padua, which contributed an important part of the colloquium’s
funding, for which thanks are due to the President of the Fondazione,
Mr. Federico Bano. |
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<2>
The idea for a scientific colloquium to complement the exhibition
originated from a knowledge deficit concerning the manifold points
of contact between Roman classicism – Mengs being one of its
protagonists – and the Venetian cultural sphere. The reciprocal
contacts of the Dresden court and its art with Venice, a city that
also acted as a cultural interface with Rome, served as a point of
departure for this endeavour. Mengs’ own development and ideas
are a case in point: It is no accident that it was the German artist
who rediscovered the importance of Titian as a colourist. Yet when
this constellation is placed in a wider context beyond individual
examples, its epochal significance reveals itself. This was the goal
of the symposium, which also focussed on the architectural reception
of antiquity as well as engravings and prints. |
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<3>
Compared to previous examinations of the artistic relations between
Venice and the North, and between Venice and Rome, the texts assembled
here take a somewhat different overall view. Art-historical efforts
to survey the eighteenth-century interaction between Venice and the
North have thus far been concentrated on the work of notable Venetian
artists at the courts north of the Alps and on the resulting indirect
influence of Venetian painting on European developments. This approach
was illustrated by the 'Glory of Venice' exhibition at the Royal Academy
in London in 1994. The current reception of Venice’s cosmopolitan
nature as a fertile breeding ground for the arts typically follows
in Francis Haskell’s footsteps. Therefore, the close cultural
and artistic links between Venice and Northern Europe, particularly
England, are well represented, whereas the situation from the German
perspective, for instance the Saxon electors’ trips to and acquisitions
of art in Venice, has received scant attention. One of the few exceptions
is the catalogue of the 1999 Pietro Rotari exhibition in Dresden –
a Venetian painter who worked in Dresden from 1755 and later in St.
Petersburg. |
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<4>
From the Northerners‘ point of view, Venice – visited
before or after Rome – was the first and, apart from Rome and
Naples, also the most important destination in Italy, rather than
just one of many. To the prominent travellers from the North, the
allure of the city on the lagoon rested in no small part on the baroque
spectacle of its festivities and the carnival, as Wiebke
Fastenrath Vinattieri’s paper demonstrates. But her report
on the Saxon Electoral Prince’s grand tour (1738-1740) also
highlights the artistic and cultural stimuli, which a traveller of
his standing received during his encounter with Italy. The impact
of the cultural relations between Dresden and Venice extended beyond
the visual arts to music and literature. By virtue of her diverse
musical and literary interests, the Saxon Electoral Princess Maria
Antonia, a Bavarian princess by birth, from 1747 onwards became a
lynchpin of this transalpine exchange, which is exemplified by names
such as Johann Adolf Hasse, Nicola Porpora and Pietro Metastasio.
This is the subject of Christine Fischer’s
paper, which – based on a monographic review of the musical
production of the Electoral Princess – examines the musical
connections between Dresden and Venice in the domain of Opera seria.
One of the most important intermediaries between Venice and Germany
was Francesco Algarotti. His interlude in Dresden, sandwiched between
two stays at the court of Frederick II of Prussia, had a marked effect
on the musical life as well as the future patronage of the visual
arts at the Saxon court. Algarotti’s fellow lover of pastel
paintings, Augustus III, invited Felicitas Sartori, a pupil of and
assistant to Rosalba Carriera, to Dresden in 1741. Her œuvre,
of excellent quality but largely unpublished, is considered in Helga
Puhlmann’s post-conference paper, which is the result of
her research carried out in the Dresden collections and a significant
addition to this publication as it corresponds particularly well with
the symposium’s theme. |
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<5>
An essential but underrated aspect of eighteenth-century cultural
transfers concerns the relationship between Venice and Rome. Culturally
and politically, the capital of the Papal States was traditionally
regarded as the 'Serenissima's opposite, especially in its artistic
alignment. This notion, established since the time of Romanticism,
does not always do justice to eighteenth-century realities. My
own paper attempts to explore the preliminary stages and the consequences
of this antagonism between 'disegno' and 'colore', whose roots can
be traced back to Vasari, while assessing this 'concetto's practical
and art-theoretical implications for the eighteenth century. |
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<6>
In actual fact, the points of contact between eighteenth-century Rome
and Venice were more numerous than is generally appreciated today.
This becomes particularly evident when the Veneto territory, ruled
by the 'Serenissima', is taken into account. Comprising cities such
as Padua, Bassano and Vicenza, this was a region of considerable political
and cultural potential. The efforts originating here to revive classical
architectural norms are well recognised, and underscored by names
such as Carlo Lodoli, Francesco Algarotti and Tommaso Temanza. Filippo
Farsetti, who acquired an extensive and first-rate collection of sculpture
and casts in Rome between 1749 and 1753, was an important early protagonist
of the Venetian alignment with Roman standards. His collection was
accessible to the Venetian public from 1755, with the young Canova
amongst those drawing inspiration from it. From 1753, Farsetti had
the Roman architect Paolo Posi, a native of Siena, build him a villa
in the Roman style at S. Maria di Sala near Padua, with Rome’s
Villa Albani serving as its intellectual blueprint. The appearance
of this villa, which was never completed, is reconstructed by Loris
Vedovato on the basis of designs and descriptions. The villa’s
most important element was to have been a Roman 'Circus', which Farsetti
had asked Clerisseau to design. The essay published here anticipates
an extensive monograph on the villa in preparation by the author. |
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<7>
Another significant – and certainly the most consequential –
chapter in the history of the relations between Venice and the Veneto
on the one and Rome and the Papal States on the other hand was written
by the Rezzonico family. The artistic consequences of these new political
connections are reviewed in Giuseppe Pavanello’s paper, which
is not included here. It has been published instead, with a slightly
different emphasis (Rapporti tra Venezia e Roma in età neoclassica),
in a collection of essays devoted to a similar subject and objective,
but putting the accent on Rome’s contacts with Venice and Naples:
Enzo Borsellino / Vittorio Casale (eds.): Roma: „il tempio del
vero gusto“. La Pittura del Settecento romano e la sua diffusione
a Venezia e a Napoli, Florence 2001. |
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<8>
In 1762 Clement XIII Rezzonico, who had his portrait painted by Mengs,
inaugurated the Villa Albani, regarded as a symbol of the new classical
ideals and the epitome of Winckelmann’s and Mengs’ ideas.
Prior to being elected Pope in 1758, Rezzonico had served as bishop
of Padua for fifteen years. Once raised to the Chair of St. Peter,
he favoured his former diocese with opulent gifts, the quality of
which is illustrated by the sumptuous paraments from a Roman workshop.
Unfortunately, the paper on this subject given at the symposium by
Andrea Nante, the conservator of the 'Museo Diocesano' in Padua, was
not available for this publication. |
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<9>
One of the first to propagate and benefit from the Rezzonico’s
art patronage – in spite of having moved to Rome many years
before – was Giovanni Battista Piranesi, in his dual roles as
etcher and architect. He is the most prominent of the artists within
the domain of interaction between Venice and Rome, which was covered
by the conference. However, this aspect is surprisingly rarely addressed
by Piranesi studies, thorough and revealing as they are. In his contribution,
the result of the conference’s concluding evening presentation,
Jörg Garms offers a synthesis of Piranesi’s
varied references to the art of his home town, sustained throughout
his years in Rome, where he continued to call himself 'architetto
veneziano'. |
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<10>
A generation later, Piranesi’s example was followed by the engraver
Giovanni Volpato from Bassano. His career took him from a Bassano
printer’s via Venice and Parma to Rome in 1771. While Piranesi
created an image of Rome that monumentally and romantically glorified
antiquity, whetting travellers’ appetites and stimulating their
imagination, Volpato devoted his efforts to the dissemination of Rome’s
classical cultural assets in the fields of painting and sculpture.
His 'vedute' of the new pontifical museum, his biscuit porcelain modelled
after antiques and above all his engravings after Raphael’s
Vatican Loggie spawned a new decorating taste. Corinna
Höper retraces the steps of Volpato’s exceptional success
and, using the example of his engravings after Raphael’s Loggie,
uncovers the engraver’s independent contribution to the borders,
which were a major factor in the popularity of these prints in the
late eighteenth century. Volpato also became one of the key advocates
of the young Canova, in whose work the habitual antagonism between
Rome and Venice was to ultimately evaporate. One of Canova’s
most important patrons – himself a mediator between Venice and
Rome – was Don Abbondio Rezzonico, who as Senator of Rome resided
in the Senatorial Palace on the Capitoline Hill from 1765 until 1809
and transformed it into a magnificent residence admired by Goethe. |
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<11>
The origins of a newly elected pope always occasioned a reshuffling
of the framework for cultural politics and thus for art. The rise
of the Rezzonico to the highest social strata created new routes and
possibilities for artistic contacts between Venice and Rome. Venetian
artists now had a port of call in Rome, which fostered the formation
of a Venetian faction with close ties to Roman art production and
taste, as well as reverberations in Venice. The painter Pier Antonio
Novelli, for instance, drew on his Roman experience and lessons for
his work back in Venice. Michael Brunner’s
paper, a preview of his research still in progress, is devoted to
this subject. |
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<12>
Classical prototypes also shaped the work of Andrea Memmo, who conceived
the 'Pra della Valle' in Padua, a kind of open-air pantheon outside
the city gates and one of the first public promenades in the spirit
of the Enlightenment. Memmo also published the writings of Lodoli
and was in touch with José Nicolas de Azara and Francesco Milizia
in Rome, who had looked after the publication of Mengs’ works
in 1780. Susanna Pasquali’s paper
investigates Memmo’s little-known roles as a theoretician, reformer
and the publisher of the works of Padre Lodoli, while demonstrating
that Venice’s intellectual elite were early adopters of European
Enlightenment ideals. |
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<13>
The intended interdisciplinary and bicultural panorama of the contributions
to this colloquium, published in Italian and German with the respective
abstracts, would not have been possible without a broadening of horizons
to encompass intercultural and literary terrain. In order to achieve
this dimension, no one could be more widely acknowledged or qualified
than Lea Ritter Santini, whose scientific
and literary output covers the literary and cultural interactions
between Italy and Germany which evolved in the Enlightenment and extend
into the twentieth century. She fielded my questions with patience
and empathy; her answers were succinct and substantial in equal measure,
unfurling the wealth of her knowledge of a cultural network into which
eighteenth-century German relations with Venice are inscribed and
whose fascination has yet to fade. In gratitude and friendship, I
would like to extend my special thanks to her. |
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<14>
For initiating this publication, I am grateful to Gudrun Gersmann
and Hubertus Kohle, who have made it possible to present the results
of the conference, which would otherwise have remained unpublished,
in this progressive new forum of scientific exchange. The adaptation
of the texts to an unaccustomed medium has benefited from their generous
and unstinting support. Sincere thanks are also due to Sabine Büttner
at RWTH Aachen and Valentina Baldauf at LMU Munich, who looked after
the practical side of this 'translation'. Finally, I would like to
thank the authors, whose patience was severely tested before the results
of their research reached publication, and who have consented to give
up the accustomed form of a compact book. I trust that they will be
amply compensated by superior feedback from the scientific community,
facilitated by the new medium and its growing user base. |
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Munich, 09 December 2003
Steffi Roettgen |
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