CRITICA D'ARTE. — Art criticism is practiced whenever a work is defined, characterized, or evaluated as a work of art. Once the intrinsic identity of the phenomenon of art in all its manifestations has been admitted (v. ARTE), it is clear that, essentially, the criticism whose object is, for example, painting will be the same as that whose object is poetry. Nevertheless, the expression art criticism generally refers to criticism of the visual arts, that is, painting, sculpture, architecture, and the minor arts analogous to them; and this distinction, when its empirical validity is recognized, is justified by certain extrinsic factors, such as, for example, the particular technical preparation required of the art critic. Consequently, art criticism also presents, historically, its own homogeneous line of development, distinct from that of other forms of criticism, which warrants separate treatment.
SUMMARY:
I. Origin
II. Art criticism and aesthetics
III. The means and end of art criticism
IV. Aesthetic judgment as synthesis
V. The history of art and the history of taste
VI. The history of art criticism.I. ORIGIN
C. d'a. is an essentially modern discipline; certainly, interest in art and artists was never lacking, but in the past it was expressed chiefly in descriptions, practical instruction in artistic technique, theoretical dissertations, and artists’ biographies. Acute and highly valid critical propositions are often found in this copious artistic literature, but c. d'a. as an explicit and systematic science arose, one may say, in the eighteenth century, in connection with the emergence of aesthetics as an autonomous science—that is, when the need was felt to adapt the practice of concrete judgment to abstract speculation. Thus, as with the other historical disciplines, the methodology of c. d'a. arose.II. C. D'A. AND AESTHETICS. — Judgment on art, like any judgment that claims to rise above the arbitrary and the circumstantial, presents itself as an assertion of truth and therefore tends toward universality. This implies a theoretical foundation, that is, an aesthetic concept, itself of universal value, and consequently at least an embryonic philosophical system. But the critic’s interest naturally does not coincide with that of the philosopher; for while the latter investigates what art is, the former must apprehend and judge works of art;
thus, necessarily, the history of c. and the history of aesthetics do not coincide, although they share a common foundation and sometimes have reciprocal and fruitful relations.
III. MEANS AND END OF ART CRITICISM
The critic must first of all possess knowledge of the work; to acquire it, all information concerning the work of art will be useful to him: dates, biographical details, concomitant facts; as will the analytical study of the work. Equally useful to the critic will be knowledge of the taste that the artist finds given, both in the environment surrounding him and within himself, in his own preferences, and from which he cannot free himself, even if, at the moment of creation, he will shape it into a new synthesis.But this important preparatory study must not be confused, as has sometimes been done, with art criticism; for true knowledge of the work of art consists precisely in learning the manner in which the artist has expressed himself, his style, into which his entire logical and affective world, his human content, has been cast. The aim of art criticism is to study not the artist as a man, his feelings and passions (historical personality), but only the form that he has impressed upon them (artistic personality); nor should the critic judge art according to technical perfection, or resemblance to nature; and neither should he judge it according to a predefined canon of beauty or a particular style declared perfect (v. ARTE).
Knowledge of art is historical knowledge, but any history that studies art as a pure symbol or manifestation of something else, or as determinedly dependent upon political and social, or economic and technical, conditions, denies the autonomy of art. And, on the other hand, any treatment that claims to dispense with the artist and to study forms in themselves, as pure visual elements or as classifiable elements (“styles”), will produce a history of abstract schemes, severed from spiritual reality and therefore false and incomprehensible; works of art can never be fitted into them, because they are infinitely varied and not comparable with one another.
Certainly, in arriving at full historical knowledge of the work of art, the critic may also make use of schemes, whether they involve the qualification of content or formal characterization; provided that he bears in mind that they must serve as a means of approaching the work of art, but must subsequently be transcended, as far as possible (that is, as far as language permits, since it necessarily proceeds by generalizations and approximations), in order to arrive at the clearly differentiated determination of each individual work.
IV. AESTHETIC JUDGMENT AS SYNTHESIS
Historical knowledge provides us with all the elements for aesthetic judgment, but is not yet this judgment; as has been said, the concept of art is necessary for II. Without this concept, one may indeed say, for example, what a painter’s manner of painting is and what its characteristics are, without, however, being able to say whether his works are works of art or not. In practice, the two procedures are not rigidly distinct, and it is difficult to establish how far the critic is historically qualifying the work of art and where, instead, he is qualifying it as such.In reality, critical synthesis is not reached through a rigorous process of cause and effect. The critic may say, for example, that the painting is beautiful because its colors are vibrant and its lines harmonious, but a painting that he judges ugly may possess the same characteristics. Each qualification will enable him to draw ever closer to the work of art and investigate it more deeply; nevertheless, critical synthesis will always represent a discontinuity in this process, that is, a new act possessing something original and alogical, insofar as it expresses the critic’s personality. For this reason it is rightly said that it is not enough for the critic
to know history and philosophy; what is needed, precisely, is a special sensitivity and aesthetic taste. Excessive confidence in, or use of, this particular sensitivity may cause the critic to superimpose his own interpretation on the artist’s work, thereby creating, in a certain sense, another work of art. Yet this reliving, in other forms, of the artist’s emotion does not always harm the correct interpretation of the work; it may, on the contrary, be a didactic means, a fruitful aid for awakening the sensitivity of others and bringing it into contact with the work of art. Because of this difference between art and criticism, the objection sometimes raised against the critic’s work—that only the artist can judge art because he realizes it and therefore “understands it”—also falls away; for the artist too, at the moment when he judges his own or another’s work, ceases to be an artist and becomes a critic.
Indeed, it is unlikely that an artist, when judging, can entirely divest himself of his own creative attitude and taste.
V. STORIA DELL'ARTE E STORIA DEL GUSTO
A pure history of art as such—that is, solely of what criticism recognizes as achieved art—is not possible; in this way one would arrive at a history of art that touched only the peaks, that is, very few works by very few artists, and at times only some fragment of them, while discarding or ignoring the rest. One cannot, however, ignore everything that strives toward art, even if it does not succeed in attaining it fully, since it nevertheless constitutes an expression of formal taste and may legitimately be taken as the connection between the various moments of pure creation, thereby making it possible precisely to understand them historically. Indeed, it should be noted that current scholarship has made legitimate, alongside the history of art, the history of taste, which ultimately belongs within the history of culture or civilization.VI. HISTORY OF ART CRITICISM
In judgments concerning individual works of art, the prevailing taste of the period in which the judgment was pronounced is reflected together with the critic’s personality. Consequently, tracing the history of those judgments, seeking to resolve their contradictions or to identify what remains constant in the evolution of thought, is of unquestionable historical and theoretical interest, with a view to a more precise determination of the factors and methods of art criticism.One cannot speak of a genuine art criticism in the ancient world. Judgment concerning art is never expressed in isolation; rather, documents of criticism are intermingled with moral judgments and judgments of other kinds. Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that judgment concerning art consisted in a didactic exposition tending to establish canons of beauty founded either on numerical and therefore abstract laws (the Canon of Polykleitos) or on works by artists taken as models (Xenocrates of Sicyon, of the fourth–third century B.C.).
In the Roman milieu, interest in art was lively among the “connoisseurs,” who drew upon the principles of traditional aesthetics but often judged with great refinement of taste; Cicero and Quintilian are especially well known. For them, the highest perfection was represented by Phidias, no longer by the artists of the fourth century. An encyclopedia of the artistic knowledge of the age is provided by Books XXXIV–VI of Pliny’s Naturalis historia (first century B.C.). Treatises were also widespread among the Romans, concerned above all with the art in which they excelled, architecture; the most famous was the treatise of Vitruvius (first century B.C.), which undoubtedly drew on older models. In it, technical precepts are intermingled with general ideas concerning the essence and origin of architecture, as well as laws governing the form and proportions of the orders and buildings. Critical propositions concerning art are also found scattered both in periegetic literature (most notably the “guide” of Pausanias, second century A.D.), and in literary descriptions of
works of art by poets and writers in general (for example, Statius and Lucian), as well as in the observations of thinkers (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Seneca, Dio Chrysostom, Philostratus, Pseudo-Longinus).
In the early Middle Ages, intellectual interest in art was very slight; aesthetic and historical constructions were no longer attempted (philosophers spoke of beauty, not of art). Artistic literature consisted of encyclopedias (v. ISIDONO DA SIVIGLIA) and technical treatises, inventories (among which the Libri Pontificales must be included), and itineraries; alongside these, the Mirabilia Urbis Romae should be recalled.
The principal theoretical books are the treatise De coloribus et artibus Romanorum by the so-called Heraclius (dating at least in part from the tenth century), the Schedula of Theophilus (twelfth century), the treatise on optics by Witelo (thirteenth century), the notebook (Livre de portraiture) of Willard de Hamecourt (thirteenth century), and finally the book of the painters of Mount Athos, known through a much later recension but containing elements of medieval tradition.
In the fourteenth century, especially in Italy, art acquired a more autonomous value and aroused more complex forms of interest. Already in Dante one finds evidence of the importance of the artist and an embryonic assessment of Giotto and his relations with Cimabue. Petrarch instituted a comparison between the ancients and the moderns in favor of the former, while his taste led him to appreciate Simone Martini above all; Boccaccio perceived Giotto’s greatness and exalted him as the best painter, not inferior to the ancients. His was good painting, understood only by the “learned” and not by the “ignorant”; this implies that, already at this time, the work of art was being assessed intellectualistically.
In the same cultural climate, F. Villani, in his Vite di uomini illustri, devoted a chapter to painters. And an epigone of the recipe books, but already informed by a new spirit and therefore of the greatest importance, is Cennino Cennini’s Libro dell’arte (late fourteenth century).
In humanism, interest in art manifested itself deliberately in clearly defined forms. The historical need to know the artist became more pronounced, since exceptional human qualities were recognized in him. Biographies therefore underwent considerable development; the earliest and most notable are those in the II Commentario of Lorenzo Ghiberti (1578–1455). He presents artists as such, that is, through genuine judgments on style; nevertheless, the historical connection among the various artists is provided by the idea of progress, from Giotto’s innovative work to his own. Among the other biographies of the period, noteworthy is that of Filippo Brunelleschi, believed to have been written by Antonio Manetti: apologetic in character, but rich in acute stylistic and historiographical observations.
Humanist mentality, however, found its most genuine expression in theoretical treatises on art. Among the theorists, the richest and deepest was undoubtedly L. B. Alberti (ca. 1404–1472), author of a treatise on painting, one on architecture, and one on sculpture. Alongside admiration for antiquity and the repetition of themes from classical aesthetics, these works make clear an awareness of the originality of the new art and the new ideas. Whereas in his third and final commentary Ghiberti had sought to give art a physical (optical) foundation, F. di Giorgio Martini, author of a treatise on architecture, Piero della Francesca, and Luca Pacioli established their theories on a strictly mathematical basis: the former authored a treatise on architecture, while the latter two authored De prospectiva pingendi and De corporibus, and De divina proportione, respectively. Leonardo, in his fragmentary treatise Sulla pittura, posed the problems of art in an original manner, rich in suggestions destined for further development: the scientific value of sensory experience, and consequently the supreme importance of painting, which is mistress of the sensible realm, and its superiority over the other arts. Equally important are his precepts, no longer technical but formal, concerning shadows, color, movement, anatomy, and expression.
In the treatises of the sixteenth century (Varchi, Borghini, P. Gaurico, P. Pino, F. Doni, L. Dolce, G. Lomazzo), once the scientific-mathematical foundation had been abandoned, general considerations prevailed concerning the character of the arts, their properties (drawing, invention, coloring, etc.), their usefulness, the precedence of one over the others, the value of color or drawing, the appropriateness (decorum) of the subjects represented, and the pictorial “genres” (history painting, poetry, landscape, portraiture, etc.) and their differing dignity. In short, these were chiefly assertions of taste, claiming to be founded on theoretical bases and drawing upon the canons and prejudices of the ancients, who were now declared, with ever greater explicitness, to be infallible and unsurpassable. The character of the artistic Academies (v. ACCADEMIE), which arose and flourished in that century, contributed to such assertions.
Characteristic of the Catholic Reformation (v.) are certain writings that sought to combat lascivious and improper works, such as, for example, the Lettera di contrizione of the aged Ammannati, and the Dialoghi of Father Gilio, who interpreted decorum as that which is regulated by the Church, both with regard to iconography (the representation of the three-faced Trinity, for example, was considered improper) and with regard to expression (notable is the observation, made in the full sixteenth century, that the art of the early centuries, although crude, was more devout). Connected with these are the Saggio of Cardinal G. Paleotti on sacred and profane images, and, later, in the seventeenth century, Cardinal F. Borromeo’s book De pictura sacra (which, conversely, opposed paintings improper because of their nudity); the treatise on painting and sculpture by Father Ottonelli, written in collaboration with the painter P. da Cortona (which proposed a subtle casuistry for partially vindicating profane art); and, finally, even more rigid treatises in Spain and Germany.
A separate place in sixteenth-century theory is occupied by writings on architecture; the principal ones are the treatises of Serlio, Vignola, Palladio, and Scamozzi, in which, following the Vitruvian scheme, the proportions of the orders, the forms of standard buildings, and the laws of symmetry, propriety, decorum, etc., are taught above all, with numerous examples of Roman and modern architecture.
Outside Italy, in the north, the only theoretical work that remained without followers is that of Dürer (1471–1528), which is connected with the Italian tradition, especially the Venetian-Lombard tradition; in Portugal, there is the work of Francesco d’Hollanda, an admirer of Michelangelo and a slavish follower of classical theories.
From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, however, historical interest in the artist becomes increasingly pronounced. It should be noted that all earlier art, including that of the fifteenth century, now appears surpassed and inferior to the art of the present; Michelangelo is generally regarded as perfection (Doni), but in Dolce the comparison between him and Raphael already begins; the Carracci academy then teaches that the best should be taken from Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Correggio. It is precisely in historiography that the principal Renaissance work on art is found: Vasari’s Lives (following those of Billi, Gelli, Giovio, etc.), which deal with painters, sculptors, and architects from 1300 to his own time (1st ed. 1550; 2nd, much more extensive but less organic, 1568). Vasari’s theoretical principles are those of his time, but are accepted uncritically and often contradicted in the face of individual works of art: imitation of nature and antiquity, expression, invention (especially of «histories»), and drawing. Vasari assigns great importance to this last element; finally, he rigidly codifies the classical prejudice concerning progress in art, which reaches its invariable limit in the «divine» Michelangelo. This scheme, and the aim of praising Michelangelo above all, lead Vasari to include anecdotal biographical data. Thus, proper c. d'a. is joined by a taste for biography, which will flourish especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, alongside the growth of philological and scholarly interest and of the taste for antiquarian collections.
In the collections of artists by Baglione (the artists active in Rome from Gregory XIII to Urban VIII), Passeri, and Pascoli, interest in the historical personality of the artist predominates. In Florence, toward the end of the seventeenth century, Baldinucci’s News of the Professors of Drawing appears: a universal history, no longer a local or Italian history, of art, with a more learned and elevated character, and with the explicit intention of correcting Vasari’s defects (note the replacement of the term «News» for «Lives» and the title «professors» given to artists). Mancini’s biographies were likewise scholarly works; he devoted close attention to medieval art. Among analogous works, the Carta del savigar pittoresco by Boschini offers critical interest; although presented as a simple guide to Venice, it exalts Venetian coloristic painting and that of Velasquez and Rubens.
The principal historian and theorist of the seventeenth century is G. Pietro Bellori, an archaeologist and scholar who lived at the center of the artistic milieu of his entire age (1613–96). In his principal work (Lives of Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects), he maintains that art must conform no longer to nature, which is always imperfect, but to ideal types assumed as models for each individual art. Thus, unlike Vasari, the ideal is no longer embodied in an artist but proceeds from a theoretical abstraction; nature must therefore be corrected, while the ugly and deformed must be rejected. Among the genres of painting, the highest is «history», which shows us man as he ought to be: consequently, the ideal is no longer Michelangelo but Raphael, and not only the primitives but the entire Baroque taste are condemned. It was precisely in the seventeenth century that the breach between c. d'a. and contemporary art began, together with their mutual incomprehension.
These theories and this taste inform the French artistic milieu, staunchly academic (which precisely unified the arts under the category of beauty: bœux-nits), from Poussin through Dufresne, Le Brun, Félibien, and De Piles.
The eighteenth century intensifies the tendencies mentioned above, sanctioning the triumph of rationalism and neoclassicism. Antiquity is now the unquestionable and unsurpassable model, and antiquity itself is no longer Rome but Greece. Particularly noteworthy is the rationalist theory of architecture codified by F. Blondel in polemic with C. Perrault and by De Cordemoy.
In Italy too, the tradition of architectural treatises continues. In 1693 a treatise consonant with the times appears: the Perspective of Painters and Architects by the Jesuit A. Pozzo. In the eighteenth century, rationalist ideas find a brilliant advocate in the Franciscan Father Lodoli, the «philosopher architect», who maintains that the «function» of a building must be clearly expressed by its «representation»; Algarotti follows him in this.
The chief codifiers of neoclassicism are Lessing, Sulzer, Mengs, and Winckelmann. Of even greater importance than the concepts informing it is Winckelmann’s work (1717–68) on Greek art, the first history of art as a history of forms and no longer as a biography of artists; he wishes to look at works in and of themselves, seeking ideal beauty within them, and on this basis establishes a history according to the usual scheme of progress, apogee, and decline. Despite this schematism, however, his observations and stylistic characterizations are often critically valid. Winckelmann’s history of art had great influence and found successors, among them Seroux d’Agincourt, Cicognara, and Lanzi, whose Pictorial History is of the utmost importance, even though it adheres to a different historical scheme: namely, the history of the various artistic schools (Florentine, Venetian, etc.), a scheme already indicated by Bellori and Domenico and one that enjoyed immense and long-lasting success.
In England, academicism had more limited importance: its principal representatives were Webb and Reynolds. Against rationalism, however, an aesthetics of feeling and imagination, and a taste for the fanciful and the picturesque, asserted themselves instead (Gerard, Hogarth, Burke, Price, and above all Shaftesbury). The revaluation of Gothic architecture (Batty Langley) and of works of art outside the sphere of classicism (Richardson) therefore also began, as did a taste for exotic things (chinoiseries). The same, moreover, was happening in France, especially among the critics of the Salons (art exhibitions): foremost among them was Diderot, who likewise affirmed the importance of feeling and caprice in art.
Romanticism (v.), in polemic with rationalist classicism, asserts the preeminence of fantasy, feeling, expressive immediacy, and thus of individualism, beyond abstract canons and ideals. The first exponent in the field of figurative c. d'a. may be considered Wackenröder (1773–98); in his Hercens-erlassungen he affirms, ingenuously but with an entirely new sensibility, the spontaneity and irrationality of artistic creation, and therefore admires Dürer and the primitives. His friend J. L. Tieck and F. Schlegel may be associated with him.
Medieval art became, in opposition to classical art, judged pagan, the model for certain Romantic artists, who saw in it the purity of feeling and divine inspiration; thus there arose «artistic schools that claimed to revive the art of the primitives. This shows how criticism was by then tending toward content-based criteria. The schools of the «Nazarenes» and the «Purists» in Italy, of the «Primitives» in France, and of the «Pre-Raphaelites» in England (the most important artistically) provoked innumerable controversies; the Nazarenes were defended above all by Schlegel, the Pre-Raphaelites by Ruskin, a notable critic endowed with great sensitivity also for medieval art. Besides Ruskin, medieval art was studied with devotion by Rio in his work L'art chrétien.
Without considering here the philosophical systems concerning art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Vico, Herder, Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Herbart: V. ISTETICA), one must note the great importance in France of Romantic criticism of contemporary art. Often the artists themselves engaged in polemics, for example, Delacroix against Ingres; but especially important were the critics of the Salons: Thiers, Planche, Thoré, Champfleury, etc., and, more penetrating than all the others, Baudelaire, who affirmed the absolute freedom of the creative act and the value of form. Impressionism, too, found defenders against the condemnation of the academy: Zola, Duret, Duranty, etc.; and from the pictorial achievements of the new art, Fromentin drew the premises for an acute study of seventeenth-century Flemish painting, which was thereby reassessed in opposition to the condemnation of classicism.
The end of the nineteenth century witnessed an extraordinary flourishing of historical and philological studies, also in the field of art history. Among the archaeologists, Lanciani and Fürtwängler may be mentioned; among the Christian archaeologists, De Rossi and Wilpert; among the researchers of documents, Milanesi; among the authors of broader historical syntheses, first comes Cavalcaselle (who may be called the father of modern art history, on account of the richness and depth of his investigations and his rare acuteness in attributions), followed by A. Venturi (also deserving of recognition in the history of Italian art for his vast work, rich in sensitivity and intuition), Van Marle, Toesca, etc.
What philology and scientism were unable to provide—namely, an explanation of the phenomenon of art—was often sought either in psychological-literary description (Walter Pater), or in the history of custom and society (Taine, Müntz, Thode, Burckhardt), or in the history of technique and economic conditions (Semper and the historians of architecture Choisy, Viollet-le-Duc).
Against content-based criticism, whether philological, literary, or sociological, there reacted formalistic criticism, whose most characteristic theoretical formulation is found in the doctrine of «pure visibility» (Fiedler, Hildebrand, van Marees): according to it, the principle of art is neither beauty nor concept nor feeling, but visibility. Consequently, the history of art would become the history of purely visual elements, such as form, colour, space, etc., disregarding the subject represented and the artist’s feeling; and forms would be considered alive with a life of their own, developing according to their own laws and grouping themselves into styles or formal families (Focillon). Connected with pure visibility are other tendencies that might be called formalistic psychology, which interpret forms as symbols of psychological situations and as stimuli for their reproduction in the observer (Berenson speaks of the tactile sense aroused in us by Giotto’s art, and of the alteration in breathing caused by Perugino’s spatiality; according to Geoffrey Scott, for a proper critical appreciation of architecture it is necessary to recognize in forms «the image of our functions»); consequently, the development of styles corresponds to philosophical cycles (Dvořák) or, more generally, to historical cycles (Wickhoff, Riegl, Wölfflin, belonging to the so-called Viennese school). All the critics just named have made substantial contributions to individual problems in art history, arriving at them either independently of their theoretical schemes or through those schemes but also surpassing them (Wölfflin’s five famous schemes, for example, served to characterize the Baroque more precisely).
The most modern criticism of art owes its theoretical foundations to the aesthetics of B. Croce and to its consequent methodology (v. ESTETICA; FILOSOFIA DELLO SPIRITO). By affirming the autonomy of art, it excludes a history of art as an abstract physical fact, or in relation to the pleasure it produces, or to the moral precepts by which it is informed, or to the conceptual knowledge it provides, or even to natural beauty and truth; by affirming the identity of content and form, it excludes both a conceptualist history of art (psychological, biographical, literary, sociological) and a history of art as pure form; by asserting the identity of intuition and expression, it denies any value to a history that makes art depend upon technical knowledge and establishes upon such knowledge a process of progress or decline; by affirming the unity of art, it reduces to simple empirical divisions the distinctions among the various arts, as well as the divisions of literary or artistic genres; finally, by recognizing the spontaneity and originality of artistic creation, it denies that art can be taught and that criticism has a didactic and corrective function. Criticism of art coincides with art history and consists in affirming that «at a given moment, an a. arose, entering into the series of events», and that it is a work of art, or that it is not one and therefore belongs to another moment in the life of the spirit: conceptual knowledge, a practical or moral act; and then in characterizing the work with the aid of empirical and content-based concepts.
Even when it does not accept all its principles and consequences, modern criticism cannot disregard the work of clarification and systematization carried out by Crocean aesthetics; indeed, it owes to that work the fact that studies of art history (like those of literary criticism) are conducted in Italy with considerably greater methodological rigour and coherence than elsewhere. Among the contemporary critics of this tendency are (without forgetting that each of them underwent other and varied influences besides the Crocean one, and above all that of pure visibility) R. Longhi, L. Venturi, M. Marangoni (for medieval and modern art), and R. Bianchi Bandinelli (for ancient art).