Časopis ARS 42 (2009) 2

Viera BARTKOVÁ

Maliari zo Slovenska a umelecké prostredie Apeninského polostrova v 19. storočí
[Painters from Slovakia and the Artistic Environment of Italy in the 19th Century]

(Resumé)

Italian artistic journeys belong to the most important themes in European art-historical writings, since the artistic production of Italian centres performed in a long term the "codified" model and basis for the rest of Europe. During the 18th and 19th centuries it was almost a duty for a young artist to travel in order to study works of Ancient art and works by Renaissance masters. The study visit to Italy had various significations. Along with completing or intensifying the education, they could give the opportunity to gain first artistic orders, support of patrons, and also an attractive introduction to young artists' careers. Despite this, in Slovak art history the phenomenon of the travelling to Italy has not been systematically worked-out. Among the reasons the most significant one was probably the applying of the ethnically based criterion of the nationality when defining the artists as "Slovak". The application of the above-mentioned criterion, accompanying the endeavour for emancipation of the cultural history of Slovak ethnic, excluded numerous artists who were coming from the regions of today's Slovakia, then a part of Hungary, but possessed minimum or none connections to culture of the Slovaks (dominant centres were Vienna, Budapest, and partially also Bratislava). Different to Austrian and Hungarian art history, the small number of artists corresponding to the requests of ethnic criteria did not suffice to arouse more interest in the topic among Slovak art historians. Today, it may be said that the problem of ethnicity is considered less important. The interest has moved to an individual artist and his work in a socio-cultural context, which in case of artists in the Habsburg Monarchy had a multi-cultural character already before their journey to Italy.

In the 19th century, the group of travelling artists quite rarely encountered artists coming from Slovakia. The way of financing the travel, often determining also the duration of their stay, was of varied character. A young adept of art could obtain a scholarship given by a local artistic and educational institution. The Roman prize provided the young artist with finances as well as accommodation. Another way was financing from own sources or due to support from a patron.

The itineraries differed in accordance to a country of the artists' origin. According to available information, most of them chose travelling on the land, with shorter or longer breaks in Italian cities such as Venice or Florence. With dominant point being performed by Rome, some of them also travelled to Naples or to Sicily. A sought-for region for landscape motifs was the island of Capri. According to Katalin Sinkó, Hungarian artists used to take the same route like the scholarship holders from the Vienna Academy, although many of them travelled to Italy on their own costs. They travelled from Trieste through Venice and Florence to Rome, the main destination of their journey, from where they made excursions to the surrounding country and to the south. Despite the fact that the preferences of artists were quite clear and most of them chose Rome for their long-term stay, there were also some who favoured some other Italian city.

Thus, the Roman artistic community belonged to the biggest, as recorded in the voluminous List of Painters, Sculptors, Architects... by Enrico Keller from 1824 as well as by the statistic survey published in 1845 in the Allgemeine Zeitung and later in the Kunst-Blatt. The list is important for Slovak or Upper-Hungarian art for including a few names mentioned in this study. According to the list including information concerning the artist's nationality, specialization and their Roman address, painter Eduard Spiro and sculptor Štefan Ferenczy stayed at the Palazzo Venezia, although they were not scholarship holders of the Vienna Academy. The most important information relates to the name and address of deaf-mute painter František von Balassa (1794 - 1860) from Bratislava, whose stay in Rome (and in Italy) has not been documented until now. In 1824, he stayed in No. 7 Via Pinciana located near the Spanish Square, which was considered the centre of community of artists and foreigners and belonged to frequently specified addresses of artists. According to available sources, the first from the two painters who visited Italy was Eduard Spiro (1805 - 1856), a painter of Jewish origin from Bratislava. The sources agree in informing that he was supported by Count Anton Apponyi, an Austrian ambassador in Rome, who sent him to study in Italy in 1821 - firstly in Milan, later in Rome. Spiro's stay in Milan is affirmed by the letter of reference by Count Giulio Perticari from 1821 addressed to Giusseppe Tambroni. The letter was published in the Roman Giornale arcadico, where an article emphasizing the quality of two Spiro's works made for his patron Count Apponyi appeared in 1824.

For the first half of the 1820s there is another painter's stay mentioned in the literature - that of Jozef Miklošík Zmij (also known as Miklóssy) (1792 - 1841), but the exact information confirming the time and place of his stay in Italy are still missing. Other painters mentioned in different sources to have been travelling to Rome were Imrich Emanuel Roth, Štefan Noel and Kornel Bohúň. Imrich Emanuel Roth (1811 - 1885), native of Košice, who studied at Vienna, Munich and Düsseldorf Academy, spent some time travelling and - according to literature - one of his destinations was also Rome, although without any time specification. Observing one of a few preserved works by Roth, a copy after Caravaggio's The Entombment, dated 1836, we may assume that the stay took place in the same year. In case of Štefan Noel (1824 - 1864), Janko Alexy refers to an announcement in the Orol tatranský (a literary supplement to the newspaper Slovenské národné noviny), according to which a Vienna Academy student from Slovakia travelled to Rome in 1846. According to Ladislav Saučin, Noel got insane in Rome and had to be taken into an asylum. Similar was the destiny of the son of Peter Michal Bohúň, Kornel (1858 - 1902), who was deported by the Italian government back to Hungary after his breakdown. The last one of the group of artists staying in Rome, Karol Ľudovít Libay (1816 - 1888), travelled to the Eternal City thanks to the order by Archduke Johann. He commissioned Libay to document places where he had spent his childhood, and following his individual works, it is possible to reconstruct the journey, which the artist took on his travel to Rome and back. The journey took place from May 1851 to April 1852, and it led across the whole Apennine Peninsula.

In 1832, Karol Marko Sr. (1791 - 1860), a Levoča born graduate of the Vienna Academy, arrived in Rome, where he successfully joined the international artists' community as well as the Italian society. Marko took his journey due to the support from banker Geymüller. He left Rome in 1838 to take therapeutics in the San Giuliano spas near Pisa. In 1843, he moved to Florence, which he left five years later to settle at the Medici villa in Lappeggi. Rome and Florence meant for the landscape painter not only some kind of an "anchoring" within the social network, which brought him economic benefits and official privileges, but also many inspirations for his work. Presumably, in Rome he kept contacts with landscape painters of the older generation. Literary sources often mention his friendship with Johan Anton Koch, Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, who owned some of Marko's landscapes from the Roman period (today in the Thorvaldsens Museum in Copenhagen), and with Italian politician, writer and landscape painter Massimo d'Azeglio. Most probably, Marko also attended events organized by the society of German artists in Rome, known as the Societa Ponte Molle. In 1837, he took part at an exhibition under the patronage of Austrian ambassador and benefactor of art Count Lützow, where Italian and German artists presented their works. In the artistic milieu of Florence and thanks to the activities of Italian "purists" Marko found the atmosphere favourable to his artistic expression and style. He was elected an honorary member of the Florence Academy and from 1841 he regularly presented his works at exhibitions. An important part of his Florentine activities was his educational work and in his studio - along with his own children and some Hungarian artists - also local artists were educated. One of them, Serafino de Tivoli, became in the second half of the 1850s the leading personality of the group of artists known as Scuola di Staggia, Marko's sons, Carlo and Andrea, collaborated with, and later he joined the Tuscan Macchiaioli.

The motivation of the painters to leave Rome, at least for a certain time, was the search for different landscape motifs, and during summer months also the unbearable Roman "mal'aria". Next to the Roman Campagna, it was Naples and its surroundings, which were the destination of artists, mainly landscape painters. At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, in a city three times bigger and more dangerous than Rome, many artists settled and founded a community similar to the Roman one. According to Dieter Richter, after the Bourbons returned to the city they established a supervision of strangers, who were from 1831 obliged on their entering the city to deposit their passport at the police prefecture. In 1831-1840, when the records were thoroughly put down, it seems that there was no artist from Slovakia staying in Naples, as the journey of František von Balassa is dated to 1830. Considering the motif, it can be said that the only work in Slovak collections, Scene from Naples/Siesta near Naples (Galéria umenia, Nové Zámky), was created during or after the stay of the artist in Naples.

Although in Venice only a small community of foreign artists was staying, there appear three names of artists coming from Slovakia - Ľudovít Benický, Dominik Skutecký and Eduard Hriňák. According to Bíró, Ľudovít Benický (1804 - around 1880) worked at the Venice Academy as a conservator and later as its director. In documents of the academy Atti della Imp. Reggia Academia di Belle Arti in Venezia from 1840 - 1844, "Nob. Lodovico Beniczky" is attested as a member of the body of professors in the function of a conservator. No other information regarding his function has been yet confirmed. Dominik Skutecký (1849 - 1921) belongs - along with Karol Marko Sr. - to painters of whose Italian stay and relevant works are thoroughly documented. In 1867-1869, he studied painting at the Venice Academy under Professor Pompeo Molmenti. At the same academy studied also Eduard Hriňák (1856 - 1917), whose study stay is documented to be taking place until 1888. More facts as well as works are missing.

The present study is one of the first attempts of Slovak art history to map the travels of artists coming from former Upper Hungary (today Slovakia) in the 19th century. It presents partial results of the current research executed mainly in Italian and local archives.

English translation by M. Herbst