Bologna: Accademia and Museo Civico

 Edward Hutton's art sympathies were with the pre-Raphaelites, as evidenced by his appraisal of Raphael's St. Cecilia. Below are highlights from his tour of Bologna's Accademia and Museo Civico.

Of the school of Bologna, the school painting that is native to the city…there can be nothing to say, for until very late times there was no tradition of art peculiar to Bologna, which for the most part leant almost entirely upon Ferrara…We therefore learn without surprise that in the second half of the fifteenth century the Ferrarese Francesco Costa established himself here in Bologna and was followed in 1483 by his countryman Lorenzo Costa. It was from them that the first Bolognese painter to show any sign of genius learnt his art. This man was Francesco di Maria Raibolini, whom all the world knows as Francia. ...

 

Francia

Bologna is rich in his work, the Accademia possessing no less than nine of his works… the too refined and eclectic art of Francia cannot recompense us for the fact that the unself-conscious art of the fourteenth century and early fifteenth century is not to be had in Bologna.

Raphael: St. Cecilia

Through Timoteo Viti, who was, after Giovanni Santi Raphael’s first master, we reach Raphael, by whom there is here the famous S. Cecilia, from the church of S. Giovanni in Monto, where it adorned the altar dedicated in honour of Beata Cecilia Duglioli. There, as we know, S. Cecilia stands in the midst, a small organ reversed in her hands, her eyes lifted to heaven, her own music quite put out by the songs she heard of the angels. About her stand S. John, S. Augustine, and S. Paul and S. Mary Magdalen. The picture has suffered greatly, and we are not sure how much of it was even due to Raphael himself, and this, I suppose, must excuse our disappointment in it. Indeed we turn from it with a real eagerness to that Madonna and Child in Glory with S. Michael, S. John, S. Catherine, and S. Apollonia by Perugino which hangs in this same room, and curiously enough was painted for the same church, but in 1498, whereas Raphael’s picture is, I think, of 1516….

Perugino

The excellent Museo Civico is not so disappointing as the Academia, for it does not promise so much. It contains too, what I should suppose is one of the finest collections of Etruscan antiquities in existence, but, for me it holds but two things of real delight, I mean the two reliefs of Jacopo della Quercia, the first a relief of the Birth of the Virgin in Sala xv, the other a relief of the Madonna and child in Sala xvi. For these in their beauty no words are good enough, nor may one ever really forget them. 

Jacopo della Quercia

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925. Pp. 86-88.

Edward Hutton: Bologna

 Edward Hutton published The Cities of Romagna and the Marches in 1925 shortly after the conclusion of World War I, then know as the Great War. The cities and towns he visited seemed hardly effected by the War. He started in Ravenna and ended in Urbino. This first post records his change of mind about Bologna.*

I had been in Bologna  many times and had never really liked this somber and learned city, with its gloomy arcaded streets and grotesque leaning towers, its sober brown churches, its gallery full of late pictures, its general air of disillusion, when circumstances compelled me spend a month there, and it was only then I discovered, not without astonishment, that I had never really understood  Bologna at all—how essentially charming she is, how cool and delightful those arcaded streets, how glowing those numberless churches, where the people worship with so simple an earnestness,  how beautiful her environment, that countryside neither of the plains nor of the mountains, among the foothills of the Apennines.

And certainly my experience is not unique. Very many travelers, I think, have felt much the same disappointment in Bologna, nor is it strange perhaps that this should be so. For the most part we come to this sober university town from all the dancing light and colour of Venice, from the sheer beauty of Florence, or from the inexhaustible interest and strength of Milan, and we feel that Bologna beside them is insipid and without a character of her own, a place to which one can only be indifferent.

But, indeed, if approached in the right way, Bologna may be loved at once, and without an afterthought. Only to come to her directly, with the best of all in your heart, is too hard a test. Let the traveler who would understand her great delight come to her not from Venice or Florence, but from the cities of the plain, from Ferrara, or best of all along the great Roman road, the Via Emilia, from Picenza, through Parma, Reggio and Modena; only then can he truly appreciate her dry superiority and that strange beauty of hers which is neither of the plain nor of the mountains, but of the marriage here made between them. (61-62) …

The Towers

…the strangest sight in Bologna, the Leaning Towers in the Piazza di Porta Ravagnana… why these towers were built, and more especially why they lean, whether this be accidental or of set purpose, we do not know. As of everything else in Italy that was notable and strange, Dante has spoken of these towers also. …

these strange towers, which stand within twenty feet of one another in the small Piazza where seven ways meet, leave a more lasting impression on the mind than anything else in the city. (81)

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The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925.

Bologna: Accademia and Museo Civico

Edward Hutton's art sympathies were with the pre-Raphaelites, as evidenced by his appraisal of Raphael's St. Cecilia. Below are highlights from his tour of Bologna's Accademia and Museo Civico.

Of the school of Bologna, the school painting that is native to the city…there can be nothing to say, for until very late times there was no tradition of art peculiar to Bologna, which for the most part leant almost entirely upon Ferrara…We therefore learn without surprise that in the second half of the fifteenth century the Ferrarese Francesco Costa established himself here in Bologna and was followed in 1483 by his countryman Lorenzo Costa. It was from them that the first Bolognese painter to show any sign of genius learnt his art. This man was Francesco di Maria Raibolini, whom all the world knows as Francia. ...

 

Francia

Bologna is rich in his work, the Accademia possessing no less than nine of his works… the too refined and eclectic art of Francia cannot recompense us for the fact that the unself-conscious art of the fourteenth century and early fifteenth century is not to be had in Bologna.

Raphael: St. Cecilia

Through Timoteo Viti, who was, after Giovanni Santi Raphael’s first master, we reach Raphael, by whom there is here the famous S. Cecilia, from the church of S. Giovanni in Monto, where it adorned the altar dedicated in honour of Beata Cecilia Duglioli. There, as we know, S. Cecilia stands in the midst, a small organ reversed in her hands, her eyes lifted to heaven, her own music quite put out by the songs she heard of the angels. About her stand S. John, S. Augustine, and S. Paul and S. Mary Magdalen. The picture has suffered greatly, and we are not sure how much of it was even due to Raphael himself, and this, I suppose, must excuse our disappointment in it. Indeed we turn from it with a real eagerness to that Madonna and Child in Glory with S. Michael, S. John, S. Catherine, and S. Apollonia by Perugino which hangs in this same room, and curiously enough was painted for the same church, but in 1498, whereas Raphael’s picture is, I think, of 1516….

Perugino

The excellent Museo Civico is not so disappointing as the Academia, for it does not promise so much. It contains too, what I should suppose is one of the finest collections of Etruscan antiquities in existence, but, for me it holds but two things of real delight, I mean the two reliefs of Jacopo della Quercia, the first a relief of the Birth of the Virgin in Sala xv, the other a relief of the Madonna and child in Sala xvi. For these in their beauty no words are good enough, nor may one ever really forget them. 

Jacopo della Quercia

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925. Pp. 86-88.