THE MYTH OF ROME
Artists’ and craftsmen’s migrations are surely not an invention of Renaissance. Already during the High Middle Ages, they used to err from town to town and from country to country in order to improve their art. Some social categories, like building workers for instance, migrate periodically to the south, where a milder climate assures them subsistence and work. As for the medieval masters, the famous artists left their home mainly to realize prestigious commissions. This is what happens to William of Sens, architect of the Canterbury cathedral, or Heinrich Parler, called in Italy to finish the Duomo in Milan.
Between the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, politics and war alter this «spontaneous nomadism». Central Europe is a humongous battlefield. Blood and misery push large crowds of emigrants towards Italy. Thousands of Flemishes, inhabitants of Brabant, Germans, and Austrians «invade» Italy and at the end of the fifteenth-century, furriers, tanners, shoemakers, saddlers, paperhangers, embroiderers and foreigners exceed the number of their Italian counterparts.
Then came the time of the «humanist revolution», a special kind of revolution, searching for roots, meaning and reasons not in the novelty but in the ancient. In the wind of the past, the echo of an old Latin saying still resounds: all roads lead to Rome! Rome, the eternal city, the cradle of civilization; Rome, the city of the popes and of the church; Rome, new Parnassus of poetry and temple of ancient wisdom; Rome, crossroad of history and destiny.
The myth of Rome is born with humanism. For more than two centuries, the city will exert an irresistible magnetism on artists from all over Europe. This new form of migration is generated only by the magnetic power of a myth. During the Middle Ages already, Dante, Cola di Rienzo and Petrarch did not come out intact from Rome’s spell. If the first one in his De Monarchia hopes to find in Rome the wetnurse of the revival of the unique Universal Empire, the second one believes he can restore the ancient Roman glories with an act of assimilative magic: the collection and interpretation of Latin inscriptions. The revival of Rome, caput mundi is however a political requirement in their cases. For Petrarch it’s different. His love of Rome is irrational, it’s an emotional tension.
...I can barely write, overwhelmed by the miracle of such greatness and of so many surprises... I remember you were opposed to my visit in Rome, warning me that the sight of the city in ruins would contrast too much with what I had heard and read about it... But this time, o marvel, reality exceeds everything. Rome is greater than what I had thought, and greater are its ruins; and I don’t wonder anymore that this city conquered the world.
Five years later he addresses an appeal to Clement VII. Petrarch implores the pope to return from Avignon. Rome itself speaks:
… My big temples wobble under the weight of centuries, castles shake under the falling walls; and soon they will crumble, if no one come and restore them... And yet my Majesty lives, triumphant, between the scattered remains of all these ruins.
Two generations later, painters, musicians and sculptors will start to see Rome through the eyes of Petrarch; but then it will be like an unstoppable avalanche. The «Roman pilgrimage» will become an indispensable attribute of their artistic education.
Neither the painters nor the sculptors nor the architects would be able to produce valuable works if they don’t go to Rome (Francisco de Holanda).
Two famous names in Italian art of the fourteenth-century inaugurate the tradition of the Roman Tour: Brunelleschi and Donatello. Vasari tells that Brunelleschi,
... when he came to Rome, and saw the grandeur of the buildings and the perfection of the form of the temples, he remained lost in thought and like one out of his mind.
Overwhelmed by the artistic patrimony of the city, Brunelleschi
... wouldn’t care about eating or sleeping: his sole intent was architecture, which was already extinguished.
Followed by Donatello, he spent his time in measuring, drawing, excavating. This frantic activity intrigue and surprise the Romans who
... called them, the ones of the treasure. The people believed they were trying to find treasures by means of geomancy.
A similar ecstasy animates Leon Battista Alberti.
Here still remain examples of ancient things in temples and theatres, from which one can learn many things. But I saw them getting destructed from day to day, not without shedding tears... So I investigated, contemplated, and painted everything... until I perfectly know and master all forms of talent and art used in these buildings.
Fear is proportional to the fascination exerted by Rome on the artists. The necessity, the obsessive longing that seems to take possession of any talented artist at the time, makes the city inaccessible. The travel to Rome is psychologically complex and impracticable. It is an initiation journey, full of traps and obstacles.
Nicolas Poussin went beyond the Alps full of hope, but arriving in Toscana he inexplicably turned back to Paris. Affected again by the ancient sickness, he moved to Lyon which
... hinders his freedom like a chain.
He’s determined to leave again, but gives up another time and goes back to Paris from Lyon. There he meets with Giovan Battista Marino, who like a Dantesque Virgil, opens the way to the eternal city for him. Maybe he hesitated so long because he felt that the journey to Rome would be an irrevocable step for him. After that, Poussin in fact leaves Rome only once, when he’s invited to Paris to decorate the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. Arrived in France, nostalgia does not wait to sing its melancholic lament:
... I swear that if I stay too long in this country, I’d become a loser as everyone else. Studies and good observations, be it on the Antiquity of anything else, are not known in any way.
Poussin became a lifetime exile because of his fascination of Rome.
His contemporary Jacques Callot, a famous engraver and son of a wealthy family from Nancy, ran away from home, when he was 12 years old. He arrived in Florence following a group of gypsy beggars. He goes on alone towards Rome, where he was found and brought back home.
He escaped another time and is caught again by his family in Turin. Eventually he arrived in Rome in 1607, three years after his first attempt.
The artist gains the esteem of the audience through the ordeal and misfortunes on the way to Rome. The more daring is the adventure to reach Rome, the more the goal is deserved. The artist’s wandering is at the same time an initiation journey and a tribute to the greatness, the glory and the majesty of the eternal city.
Roberto Festa
traslation : Christine Jeanneret