I quadri a casa loro
from: Corriere della Sera, 25 May 1919
Il Consiglio comunale di Venezia la sera del 12 maggio ha mandato, su proposta del consigliere Saccardo, un solenne invito al Governo perché l’Assunta di Tiziano torni sull’altar maggiore dei Frari dove Tiziano l’aveva collocata […].
Dopo di che, almeno per l’Assunta, la battaglia si può dire vinta. E ne sia ringraziato il Comune di Venezia.
Ogni volta che nella seconda sala dell’Accademia, davanti all’Assunta rapita in volo, le braccia e gli occhi tesi al cielo, rivedevo l’impeto di passione con cui tutto, gli apostoli, gli angeli, e perfino la luce più e più chiara, la spingeva verso l’empireo, e sopra lei ritrovavo, invece della vertiginosa altezza dell’abside dei Frari, un lucernario basso come una beffa a quell’estasi, tutta la miseria del nostro secolo piatto mi appariva documentata.
E se no, ci impiegheremo dieci anni di più; ma si arriverà lo stesso al nostro proposito di restituire, quando sia possibile ed opportuno (saranno sì e no dieci su cento «numeri» d’una galleria o d’un museo) i dipinti e le sculture alle chiese e ai palazzi pubblici e ai pubblici luoghi pei quali gli artisti l’hanno pensati e creati, adattando fin dal primo segno a questi luoghi le proporzioni, le luci, i colori, le stesse figure di quei dipinti e sculture. Questo è infatti il vero rispetto dell’opera d’arte; solo così il pubblico intende che l’arte non è un diletto di pochi raffinati né un gioco di pochi eruditi, ma un piacere e un conforto per tutti, una ricchezza di tutti, una ricchezza di tutti come un bel cielo o l’amena veduta d’un paesaggio; solo così si riconduce l’arte tra il popolo con qualcosa di meglio delle conferenze e delle projezioni; solo così si prova che l’arte deve essere mescolata alla nostra vita, non nel povero vieto e vuoto senso che l’artista deve solo ritrarre la vita reale, ma nel senso che una cosa bella è una cosa viva da non chiudere in un carcere o in un ospizio, è un corpo vivo irraggiante energia serenità fede amore colore. […]
Le Gallerie pel pubblico sono di data recente: le più vecchie hanno poco più di cent’anni. […] lo scopo di queste pubbliche gallerie nella stessa mente dei loro fanatici è mutato più volte in questi cento e centoquarant’anni. Uno ve n’è sacrosanto e immutabile pel quale, ripeto, la più gran parte del patrimonio delle pubbliche gallerie resterà sempre intangibile: raccogliere, ordinare, esporre e custodire i quadri, le sculture, i disegni, le stampe […]. Ma un cómpito siffatto, per quanto ampio, ha netti confini. Sono gli stessi confini che regolano o dovrebbero regolare gli acquisti dei Musei d’antichità ai quali spetterebbero solo gli oggetti dissepolti dagli scavi, ma ai quali purtroppo si conducono anche frammenti di scultura e d’architettura strappati con violenza da monumenti. Esempio tipico, le sculture che lord Elgin rapì al Partenone e che adesso onorano la ricchezza e disonorano la civiltà del Museo Britannico.
Invece le pubbliche Gallerie, quando prima furono istituite, vennero a significare la distruzione d’un privilegio: con esse, cioè, il popolo veniva a godere i tesori dei re. Poi, si disse che i giovani artisti vi avrebbero potuto studiare e copiare le opere dei veri maestri che per lo più non erano i loro professori viventi. Più avanti invece le gallerie furono esaltate come a pratica traduzione del principio dell’arte per l’arte il quale toglieva all’arte ogni altro scopo eroico, religioso, decorativo, pratico. Da ultimo, s’era venuti a considerarle un luogo di puro studio come le Università: fatte prima per gli studiosi e poi pel volgo.
Da quest’ultimo vizioso concetto, le opere d’arte sono state ivi trattate più come libri negli scaffali d’una biblioteca che come bellezze da far valere in buona luce, su fondi adatti, tra spazii di riposo, alla sovrana. E più che poche opere davvero insigni e bellissime, si è cercato negli ultimi anni di comprare opere […] degli autori e delle scuole che mancavano in una raccolta, anche se bisognava strapparli alla loro regione nativa. Fatica vana verso uno scopo universale e irraggiungibile. […] Intanto si sventravano Roma, Firenze, Bologna: ma in compenso si ingrandivano i musei. S’ammazzava, ma s’aveva cura dei cimiteri. Civiltà, anzi cultura.
Adesso, basta. Almeno noi siamo di quei molti i quali pensano che basterebbe. Certo appena l’Assunta sarà tornata ai Frari l’incanto sarà rotto, e comincerà un’èra nuova nella quale gallerie e musei dovranno tornare al loro còmpito che, per essere utile e vasto, non ha bisogno d’esser dispotico e infinito. Specie, in Italia. È naturale infatti che in America si discuta se una galleria debba avere uno scopo scolastico e scientifico prima che artistico. A Boston o a Chicago raccolgono opere d’arte già divelte dalle loro radici; e se possedessero l’Assunta del Vecellio o l’Adorazione dei pastori del Ghirlandaio, non avrebbero da scegliere per collocarli, con onore e in buona luce, tra una galleria e una chiesa dei Frari o la chiesa di Santa Trinita.
Anche gli artisti d’oggi si avvantaggeranno di questi ritorni, non perché opere d’arte al loro posto natio manchino per chi voglia studiarvele, ma perché questa venerazione superstiziosa e governativa della galleria e del museo li ha indotti da troppi anni a credere che l’arte sia fatta davvero per andare a mettersi in riga un due, un due, in quelle caserme. […]
C’è però in favore delle gallerie pubbliche un argomento principe, ripetutissimo: a sicurezza delle opere d’arte. Nelle gallerie e nei musei quadri e sculture sono custoditi lontani dai guasti, dal fuoco, dall’acqua, dai ladri. Guasti? Ma si confrontino i rischi delle controdanze cui nelle gallerie i quadri sono destinati nei varii e spesso necessarii riordinamenti con la salutevole immobilità in cui essi riposano nelle loro case e sedi naturali. Guasti? I quattro cavalli romani di bronzo sulla fronte della basilica di San Marco a Venezia scesero dal loro trono nel maggio 1915 per evitare le bombe nemiche, delle quali una cadde infatti l’anno dopo a tre metri da quel trono. Sono rimasti a Roma poco più d’un anno, come chi dicesse in un museo, a Palazzo Venezia. Sono tornati, il primo da destra e il secondo, con due »scodelle« sulle groppe, larghe un palmo, per due colpi ricevuti proprio mentre erano sotto la custodia governativa. […]
No. La questione va risolta su questo unico principio: che a parità di condizioni favorevoli alla sicurezza dell’opera d’arte, questa deve tornare al posto per cui l’artista l’ha creata. Le gallerie poco perderanno e anzi guadagneranno spazio per esporre meglio i tanti e gloriosi quadri che loro resteranno.
Parlo al futuro. Le opposizioni saranno ancóra molte e, si sa, autorevoli. Ma la civilissima battaglia s’apre con una vittoria.
Let the paintings go home
translated by Matilde Cartolari
On the evening of May 12, following a proposal from councilor Saccardo, the Venice City Council sent a formal request to the Government to return Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin to the high altar of the Frari church where Titian had placed it […].
After that, at least for the Assumption, we may argue that the battle has been won, thanks to the City of Venice.
Every time I entered the second room of the Academy, in front of the Assumption of the Virgin taken to Heaven, her eyes and arms stretching out to the sky, I observed the impetus of passion with which everything – the apostles, the angels and even the light getting brighter – pushed her towards the Empyrean. But above her, instead of the vertiginous height of the apse of the Frari church, I found a skylight so low that it looked like a mockery of that ecstasy. All the misery of our dull century then revealed itself to me clearly.
And if not, it may take another decade, but we will nevertheless arrive at realizing our proposition to restore, wherever possible and appropriate (it will be roughly between ten and a hundred »numbers«” in a museum or a gallery), the paintings and sculptures to the churches and public buildings for which the artists created them, adapting their proportions, lights, colors, and even their figures from the outset to those places. This is true respect for the artwork. Only in this way will the public understand that art is not a delight for a few refined people or a game for a group of scholars, but a pleasure and a comfort for all, a wealth for all, as a nice sky or a beautiful landscape. Only in this way can we really take art to the people, rather than with conferences and projections. Only in this way is it clear that art must merge with our life, not in the sense that an artist must just imitate reality, not in the poor, antiquated and empty sense that an artist should only imitate life, but rather that a beautiful thing is a living thing, not meant to be closed in a prison or a hospice. It is a living body emanating energy, serenity, faith, love, color. […]
Public galleries are a recent invention: the oldest are just over a hundred years old. […] in the mind of their fanatic supporters, the purpose of these public galleries changed several times in those one hundred to one hundred and forty years. Only one of these purposes is immutable and for this, I repeat, the patrimony of those public galleries will remain untouchable: to collect, order, exhibit and preserve paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints […]. But such an approach, however wide it may be, has clear boundaries. These same boundaries regulate or should regulate the purchases of the Museums of Antiquity, which should only take care of excavated objects, whereas unfortunately they also collect fragments of sculpture and architecture ripped violently from their monuments. A typical example are the sculptures that Lord Elgin stole from the Parthenon and which now honor the wealth and dishonor the civilization of the British Museum.
Yet the public galleries, when they were first established, signified the destruction of a privilege: thanks to them, the population could enjoy the treasures of kings. Then, they said that the young artists could study and copy the works of the true masters, who mostly were not their current professors. Later on, instead, the galleries were elevated as a practical translation of the principle of art for art’s sake, which took away from art any other purpose: heroic, religious, decorative, practical. Recently, they have been considered as a place of pure study like Universities: created first and foremost for scholars and then for the general public.
From this last vicious concept, the artworks have been treated there more as books in the shelves of a library than as beauties to be enjoyed in proper light, […] with proper backgrounds and spaces to rest, in a manner suitable for a king. Rather than select a group of distinguished and beautiful artworks, it has recently been tried to buy works […] of authors and schools that were missing in the collections, even if it was necessary to steal them from their native region. Futile effort towards a universal and unreachable goal. In the meantime Rome, Florence, Bologna were gutted: but museums were enlarged. We killed, but at least we took care of our cemeteries. Civilization or rather: culture.
Now that will do. At least there are many, including us, who think that it should be enough. Certainly, as soon as the Assumption is returned to the Frari the spell will be broken, and a new era will begin in which galleries and museums will have to return to a mission that, to be useful and wide, does not have to be despotic and unlimited. Especially in Italy. It is natural, in fact, that in America they discuss whether a gallery should have an educational and scientific purpose rather than an artistic one. In Boston or Chicago, they collect artworks that have already been torn from their roots. If they possessed the Assumption by Vecellio or the Adoration of the Shepherds by Ghirlandaio, they would not have to choose where to place them, with honor and in good light, whether in a gallery or in the Frari church or in the Holy Trinity’s.
Even today’s artists will take advantage of these restitutions, not because there are few artworks still in their natural setting available for those who wish to study them, but because this superstitious and governmental veneration for the gallery and the museum has led them for too long to believe that art is really made to get in line, left, right, left, right, in those barracks. […]
However, there is a main argument supporting the existence of public galleries: the safety of artworks. In galleries and museums, paintings and sculptures are preserved from damage, fire, water and theft. Damage? Let us consider the risks of the »dances« to which the paintings of the galleries are led according to the various and often necessary rearrangements, in comparison to the healthy immobility in which they rest in their natural setting. Damage? The four Roman bronze horses crowning St Mark’s Basilica in Venice came down from their throne in May 1915 to avoid enemy bombs. A bomb indeed fell, one year later, only three meters away from that throne. They stayed in Rome for more than a year in a museum, you may say, at Palazzo Venezia. When they returned, the first from the right and the second had two »bowls« scooped from their backs, wide as a man’s hand, due to the blows they suffered precisely when they were in governmental custody. […]
No. The question must be resolved on the sole principle that, the safety of artworks being equal, they must return to the place for which the artists created them. The galleries will not lose much and will even gain space to better exhibit the many glorious paintings that remain.
I am talking about the future. There will still be many opposing, and, as we know, authoritative voices. But this battle for civilization starts with a victory.
Brief biography
Ugo Ojetti (1871–1946) was an Italian journalist, writer and art critic. His activity focused on the promotion of Italian art in the service of the nation. According to Ojetti, the role of art criticism was to mediate the political function of art by conveying it to a larger audience. He believed that art could play a pivotal role in creating a new national identity following the Italian political unification (1861). This ideological purpose constantly fuelled his interest in modern and antique art, which he always translated into action. He was a steady contributor of one of the most important Italian newspapers, the Corriere della Sera, and collaborated to the protection of national heritage during the First World War. A nationalist and a conservative, Ojetti spontaneously converted to Fascism and became one of the most influential interpreters of the Fascist cultural program during the Fascist Ventennio (Nezzo 2001, 2003 and 2017; De Lorenzi 2004).
Commentary – An invective against the museum
Ojetti’s text refers to the return of the Assumption of the Virgin by Titian to the Frari church in Venice. The large altarpiece had been painted by Titian in 1518 for the main altar of the Frari church and had been taken to the Galleries of the Academy in 1816, following the suppression of the Franciscan community of the convent. From that moment onwards, the painting had been the absolute pinnacle of the collection (Cecchini 2017). During the First World War, however, the painting left Venice and was stored on the mainland to protect it from the bombardments. Its return in 1919 sparked a discussion about its possible re-arrangement. A century after its musealization, the Frari church appeared, in fact, as the most suitable venue to re-exhibit the masterpiece.
The debate concerned the Venetians deeply, for whom the Assumption was a sort of civic icon, and took place mostly in public journals and newspapers. The claim for restitution found many supporters among civic authorities and soon appeared to prevail. The City Council officially asked the Government, which was in charge of the artwork’s preservation, to return it to the Frari. Ugo Ojetti devoted two articles to this topic in the Corriere della Sera, explicitly supporting the City Council’s decision. The intervention of the most influential art journalist in the leading national newspaper of that time testifies to the resonance of the issue, even on a national scale. This public campaign eventually led the government to return the Assumption to the Frari in December 1919 (Franchi 2017).
The reasons supporting the return of the altarpiece to its original venue were manifold. Firstly, the introduction of art history courses to seminary education from 1907 had raised the clergy’s cultural awareness about the preservation of national heritage. This process contradicted one of the leading arguments in favor of musealization, namely negligence by the clergy, which in the past had often led to damage, trade or even destruction of many precious altarpieces. Ojetti’s article extends this argument by challenging the safety standards allegedly granted by museums and their staff.
Secondly, many people expressed the need to see artworks in the architectural settings for which they had been created in the first place. Ojetti supports this thesis by transforming the artistic argument (concerning lights, colour and proportion) into an ethical one (the need to honor the artist’s will). Characteristic of his rhetorical strategy, he then takes the ethical dimension to a political and social level. By claiming that art belongs to the people, he juxtaposes the original setting – the church as a place for genuine faith and popular devotion –, with the museum – a cemetery attended only by an educated élite.
His condemnation does not regard museums tout court, but rather their evolution as a place for scholarly research. In his brief historical excursus, Ojetti identifies it in the model of the universal museum divided into pictorial schools according to the need of art historical knowledge (to foster stylistic comparisons and attributions). In Ojetti’s perspective, not only is such universality unreachable, but it has also led to impoverish those same urban settings and monuments that represented a living connection between art and population. Such a division is also the main reason for the decay of contemporary artistic production, which the restitutions would therefore counteract. Ojetti refers particularly to Italy, for which the contextual value of artworks represented a well-known argument and almost a literary topos at that point. However, he also addresses the problem of legitimacy on a larger international basis by mentioning the case of the Elgin marbles.
As Ojetti’s text indirectly testifies, what was at stake was not only the conservation of artworks, but also the legitimacy of museums themselves. The return of the artworks after the war and the necessary re-arrangements of the collections had put into question the role of museums in society. Covering the walls of the rooms with artworks was no longer an acceptable solution, whereas a modernization of the arrangements appeared as a good opportunity for museums to reach out to a wider audience. From Ojetti’s perspective, an increase of visitors would have allowed museums to accomplish their social function, which ultimately results in a political function, i.e. the creation of a sense of national belonging.
Matilde Cartolari is a PhD student at Technische Universität Berlin in co-tutelle with the University of Udine. She is currently working on the Italian Old Master exhibitions organized for propaganda purposes by the Fascist régime in the 1930s.
Sources and literature
Isabella Cecchini, »I Frari senza l’Assunta. Le vicende del trasferimento della pala di Tiziano alle Gallerie dell’Accademia nel 1816–1817«, in: Elena Catra, Isabella Collavizza, Vittorio Pajusco (eds.), Canova, Tiziano e la Basilica dei Frari a Venezia nell’Ottocento, Treviso 2017, pp. 90–97.
Giovanna De Lorenzi, Ojetti critico d’arte: dal “Marzocco” a “Dedalo”, Firenze 2004.
Elena Franchi, »I quadri alle chiese«: il ritorno dell’Assunta nella Basilica dei Frari e il dibattito sulla collocazione delle opere d’arte«, in: Elena Catra, Isabella Collavizza, Vittorio Pajusco (eds.), Canova, Tiziano e la Basilica dei Frari a Venezia nell’Ottocento, Treviso 2017, pp. 98–119.
Marta Nezzo, »Profilo bibliografico di Ugo Ojetti«, in: Bollettino d’informazioni. Centro di Ricerche Informatiche per i Beni Culturali, XI, 1, 2001.
Marta Nezzo, Critica d’arte in guerra: Ojetti 1914–1920, Vicenza 2003.
Marta Nezzo, Ugo Ojetti. Critica, azione, ideologia. Dalle Biennali d’arte antica al Premio Cremona, Padova 2017. |
Cite this article as:
Ojetti: I quadri a casa loro (1919), commented by Matilde Cartolari, in: Translocations. Anthologie: Eine Sammlung kommentierter Quellentexte zu Kulturgutverlagerungen seit der Antike, https://translanth.hypotheses.org/ueber/ojetti, published 17.12.2018.
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