Cennino Cennini

Cennino Cennini (* around 1370 in Colle di Val d'Elsa , Florence, † around 1440 in Florence ; also Cennino d'Andrea Cennini ) was an Italian painter.

Part of a winged altar

But he is famous and still significant today as the author of a handbook on painting , the Libro dell'arte o trattato della pittura . This handbook, written around 1400 and initially distributed in transcripts, was the most influential textbook on painting of the late Middle Ages. Today it is of immense cultural and art historical importance.

The specialist author

Even if there was the work Mappae Clavicula from around the 9th century and the work of the monk and goldsmith Theophilus Presbyter De Artibus Diversibus from the 12th century on painting, window stained glass and goldsmithing , Cennini's work is the first book in which a professional artist wrote in detail the skills of the craft of painting.

Cennini followed the tradition that goes back to Giotto di Bondone in the late 13th century. Giotto, who is considered by many art historians to be the founder of Renaissance painting in Italy, had learned from his master Cimabue all the technical skills that he had learned from Greek icon painters , but expanded them with radical ideas about the mixing of colors and storytelling with pictures. Gaddo Gaddi , who had worked closely with Giotto, taught his son Taddeo Gaddi the art, who in turn passed it on to his son Agnolo Gaddi , in whose workshop Cennini learned and worked for 12 years.

The biography of Agnolo Gaddis, the teacher of Cennini, by the painter, builder and art historiographer Giorgio Vasari is also the most important but scarce source about Cennini's life (besides his own book). Then he received his first painting lessons from his father, later he was a member of Gaddi's workshop, where he learned the technique of painting from grotteschi .

A manuscript of the work was discovered in the Vatican Library in the early 18th century , printed in Italy in 1821, translated into English by Marry Merrifield in 1844, into French in 1858 and into German in 1871 by Albert Ilg . The book was published in German in Vienna in 1871. The manuscript found in the Vatican was dated July 31, 1437 in Postscriptum and contained the comment “ex Stincarum, ecc”, a Latinized name for the Florence prison . Le Stinche prison in Florence was built between 1297 and 1304. But things didn't start with a “stinker”, as Victoria Finlay explains in The Secret of Colors . The name is derived from a castle in Tuscany between Florence and Siena, the "Castello delle Stinche", which was once owned by the Cavalcanti family. The Cavalcanti were supporters of the Ghibellines, the party that rose up against “the fatherland” - and lost. In August 1304, the Castello delle Stinche was besieged by Ruggeri di Dovadola, condottiere of the Florentines, after 20 days the inhabitants gave up and were transferred to Florence as prisoners. In the new dungeon on an island in the Arno, called "la Ghibellina", which was called Stinche soon after his first "guests". From the Castello delle Stinche, which was further or recently destroyed in 1452, it is no longer even known exactly where it was, whether in Stinche di Sopra or Stinche di Sotto. Houses were built from the building materials left over after the castle was destroyed. This detention by a prisoner who knew how to write initially led art historians to believe that Cennini himself had been in prison there and, like Marco Polo, used the time to write the work.

In addition to basic explanations about painting, the book contains a wealth of technical descriptions, recipes for the production of paints , information about raw materials. B. in Chapter 113 that the masters of the 13th and 14th centuries chose poplar, willow or linden wood for wooden panels to be painted and covered them with glue after priming and before applying plaster with a canvas . Furthermore, basic techniques, such as how to copy a master drawing with the help of goat parchment that has been made transparent, namely thinly scraped and soaked with linseed oil , how to gild tin to freshen up old paintings, make glue from cheese or lime and improve green color with the help of wine vinegar.

This treasure trove of knowledge and techniques only opened up the forgotten craft of painting of that time. In addition to a bible for art historians and restorers , the book has also become the bible for art forgers. The well-known art forger Eric Hebborn draws on many of Cennini's recipes in his book The Art Forger's Handbook .

The painter

Cennini first appeared in a document in 1388 as a painter of frescoes about the life of St. Stephen in the church of San Lucchese near Poggibonsi . He apparently spent a long time in Padua , where he was married to Donna Ricca from Cittadella. It is certain that he stayed there in 1398 in the district of San Pietro.

literature

• Marion Elias : Indisciplinabile. Sketches on the philosophy of art. A reflection. VDG, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-89739-634-0 .
• Victoria Finlay: The Secret of Colors. A cultural history (= List-Taschenbuch. 60496). 7th edition. List, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-548-60496-1 , pp. 20-23, 437, 438.
• Latifah Troncelliti: Cennino Cennini and Leon Battista Alberti. Two parallel realities in the Italian Quattrocento. 2001, (Eugene OR, University of Oregon, Dissertation, 2001).

Text editions of the Libro dell'arte o trattato della pittura

• Cennino Cennini da Colle di Valdelsa: The book of the art or treatise of painting (= sources for art history and art technology of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. 1, ZDB -ID 514181-3 ). Translated and explained by Albert Ilg . Wilhelm Braumüller, Vienna 1871, ( digitized version ).
• Cennino Cennini: Il libro dell'Arte. Commentato da Franco Brunello. Con una introduction di Licisco Magagnato. N. Pozza, Vicenza 1971.
• Cennino Cennini: The Book of Art or Il libro dell'Arte A workshop book for today's practice? Cenninas Verlag Freiburg im Breisgau 2015. ISBN 978-3-946089-00-1

Web links

Commons : Cennino Cennini  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Cennino Cennini in the catalog of the German National Library
• Full text of the Libro dell'Arte in English
• www.cenninas.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Victoria Finlay: The secret of colors. 2007, p. 20.
2. ↑ Victoria Finlay: The secret of colors. 2007, p. 438.
3. ↑ Marion Elias: Indisciplinabile. 2009, p. 10 f.
4. ^ Albert Ilg (transl.): The book of the art or treatise of painting by Cennino Cennini da Colle di Valdelsa. Wilhelm Braumüller, Vienna 1871, p. 71
5. ^ Knut Nicolaus: Investigations into Italian panel painting of the 14th and 15th centuries . In: Maltechnik / Restauro . tape 73 , no. 3 + 4 . Callwey, Munich 1973, p. 155 .
6. ↑ Victoria Finlay: The secret of colors. 2007, p. 23.