Transgressions Installment LXXI

August 1(?), 1936

I think that’s the date. One loses track here. Cassel doesn’t observe weekends and as a consequence the only variation between one day and the next are in the admission hours to the Uffizi and so forth.

?

I evaded my studies for a bit this morning by reading Cassel’s English newspapers. There’s a notice of a new Graham Greene, A Gun for Sale.

?

Comments about Spain:?“The civil war will be continued in the terror which is likely to follow it, whatever its issue . . . the struggle in Spain [can be seen as] an issue between democracy and Fascism.”?

?

A column by Haxton about Cezannes at Agnew’s. He says that the drawings show the influence of Mannerism. I don’t understand Cezanne’s drawing. It usually seems to me that he simply can’t.

?

N.b.:?The Annual bibliography of British Art, Volume I, 1934, Courtauld Institute, University of London is advertised as “ready next week” from CUP.

?

Here in Florence, it is getting very hot:?a dry, baking heat, quite unlike Venice. Next week the Villa Cassel will close and Cassel and his entourage are going to Switzerland. This is taking place earlier than usual this year. Nadine says that Cassel is growing apprehensive about epidemics “of the physical or possibly the spiritual type.”?Berenson, without such considerations, has already gone to his summer retreat in the mountains at Vallombrosa. I plan to accompany the Cassel party to Zurich, then continue on through Germany to Austria and back to London. Cassel has given me letters of introduction to curators in Munich and Vienna.

?

Cassel says that he is concerned about the situation in Germany. He says that the occupation of the Rhineland is a sign that the Prussian spirit has revived. Another sign is the attitude of young Germans here, who believe that while Germany might lose the next war, which they all expect to break out in three or four years, it would not matter, for there would be another, and another until they win and they, rather than the British, are the rulers of the world. “This aristocratic imperialism must be distinguished,” he said characteristically, “from the noxious miasma around the Nazi gang.”?They began as tools of certain reactionary elements, but now seem to be achieving some kind of independence. “Time will tell,” he says, “But I fear that time is not on the side of civilization.”

?

August 3, 1936

We look at a work of art & in the last century Pater, say, would ask, “What feelings does it arouse?”?But to-day our first question is:?“What is it?”?Not a very simple question after all. We begin with chronology:?“When was it made?”?Then there is the Berenson question, that of attribution:?“Who made it?”?And finally we reach the Cassel question:?“What does it mean?”?

?

Cassel is fascinated with the moral/intellectual formation of his friend. “Because,” he said, when I listed my study questions this afternoon, “There is also the Duveen question:?‘How much is it worth?’ or, rather, ‘How much will it bring?’?What Duveen and Berenson between them discovered was that the price that could be asked for a painting can be connected to the attribution. Berenson inadvertently set the stage for this by his scouring of the Augean Stables of the English country house collections, inducing thereby an intellectual situation of scarcity, where before there was plenty (of “Titians,” “Van Dykes,” “Dürers,” etc.). Scarcity then acted in this case as it usually does, driving up the cost of the (Berenson-) certified real Titians and so forth. “And then,” says Cassel, “Like Moses striking the rock with his staff, out gushed upon the astonished B. B. riches beyond the dreams of Lithuanian avarice.”?And, what was even better, it delighted his “high-born wife.”?For many years, Cassel says, Berenson thought of himself as like one of his rabbinical ancestors, a pure scholar, untroubled by the source of his money. But gradually, the sheer amount of money steadily increasing, it became more and more difficult for him to think of himself as a momentarily comfortable student. “He would awake in the morning in that luxurious bedroom and the weight of his sins would bear on him more heavily than any pile of silk-covered duvets.”?Which didn’t keep him from cultivating royalties, or allowing them to cultivate him, and spending weeks in Venice chez Cole Porter at the Palazzo Barbera. Finally, Duveen went too far. Berenson revolted & now he is free. “Of course he still has all that money and everyone except a few old friends kow-tows to him. He sins no more, but the consequences of sin—I speak not of the after life but only of a certain deformation of character—remain.”

?

August 10, 1936

Dinner with Carlotta last night, my last night in Florence. Afterwards I asked her if she wished to come to my room. She said that she couldn’t. “Why did you wait to the last minute like this?”?Her kiss at parting, prolonged, seemed sincere.

?

Early this morning to the railroad station to join the Cassel party, which had already settled into the wagon-lit. Leaving Florence, Cassel began talking about counterfeiting, as if it had been a topic of discussion among the group before I had joined them. It is, he said, a typical motif of our time (Gide, etc.). We long for the genuine and value it above all else, and yet are always unsure. Hence “the lust for authenticity,” especially in Germany, where all becomes less and less authentic. In the art world the issue is bound up with that of attribution, “the authentic and the counterfeit are, as it were, the two sides of the same painting.”?So Berenson, who had made himself an expert on the techniques of restoration, and could therefore, no matter how clever the imitation, always detect the work of another hand in the purported autograph masterpiece, had for that very reason come under suspicion. “It is about money, of course,” Cassel said. “If it were not for that taint in our work, we would find the counterfeit simply interesting, another expression of the human spirit.”?He then settled back to read. Nadine also picked up a book; while doing so, “casually” asked whether I thought I would see Carlotta again when I returned to Florence. I did my best to be non-committal.

?

As we went north through Genoa and Milan and onwards toward Switzerland the atmosphere became increasingly Central European, the carriages filling with travellers for Berlin. We reached the entrance to the St. Gotthard Tunnel at sunset, passed into Switzerland as night came on and disembarked a few hours later in Lucerne, riding in the hotel’s limousine through the calm Swiss streets to the Bristol.

?

August 11, 1936

Munich. Cassel said that I was to “look into” the Glyptothek and the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, then settle down to three or four days in the Alte Pinakothek. “You can spend the intervening evenings at the opera.”?This morning, then, obedient, to the Glyptothek to pay my respects to the Aeginetan Marbles. The same kind of display as the Elgin Marbles—fragments arranged around a neo-classical hall. In London there are women and religious processions; in Munich, warriors, of course. Lunch, the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum and too much German art, dinner at the hotel and then to the Prinz-Regenten-Theater for German opera, where the music was nice and the acting not.

?

August 14, 1936

The last four days have been quiet enough:?hotel breakfast with many varieties of ham on offer; then coffee, newspapers and a walk; Alte Pinakothek gallery of the day; lunch with many varieties of ham on offer and a beer; Alte Pinakothek gallery of the day; another walk; dinner in a French restaurant; opera. I now have a thorough knowledge of the English gardens and the shops of Munich, uniforms (every man here seems to be in uniform), all the varieties of ham known to man and the range of the opera orchestra. Also a less thorough, but sufficient knowledge of the collections in the Alte Pinakothek. Many fine things, and, of course, there is that Leonardo:?the improbably fat, pot-bellied, naked baby reaching for a carnation; the virtuoso study of the clothes of the Virgin (gold cloak, silver dress, red embroidered sleeved undergarment); her downcast eyes and braided hair, and then in the background, four tall, narrow, arches framing a Tuscan landscape. Forward, I suppose, to Mannerism,. To be contrasted with Haxton’s totem, the Dürer Self-Portrait at 28. Where Leonardo displays the art of describing fabric, Dürer presents a lesson in the description of hair and fur. (There’s probably a moral in that:?civilization vs. nature, etc.)?From the top:?hair falling to below the shoulders from a slightly off-center parting, oiled brown curls; arched eyebrows under the high forehead; the Scythian bow of the moustaches merging at the ends into the short beard; the fur collar of the coat. The overwhelming egoism of the Ecco Homo pose and the signature, not in a bottom corner, but at eye-level on the right; the sensuality of the long nose, long fingers, full lips. Forward to Rembrandt, if anywhere; back to Byzantium. Leonardo’s Christianity is a cultural tradition; Dürer’s iconology is a challenge to the very idea of supernatural religion:?demonology.

?

I’ve decided to go to Vienna tomorrow. There are too many Nazi police here (and too many varieties of them) and I have gotten tired of being scowled at & tired of the demands for identification papers. In any case, it would be stupid to miss the Kunsthistorisches. It will probably be as empty as the Alte Pinakothek, as everyone is at the Olympics.

?

August 17, 1936

Vienna is a place of gray stone, built to overwhelm. It would still, except that it is not quite alive, a stage set left over from an epic play that finished twenty years ago. The Sacher is cheaper than the Vienna Bristol and equally near the opera house, where I can continue my survey of German performance styles. The Sacher is severe on the outside, cushioned on the inside, as if it were a Hussar wearing lace underwear. My room is upholstered & swaged & overstuffed & has a bathroom equipped as if for high colonics and similar pastimes. The noise of the trams and horses’ hooves on the stone pavements is muted as if there were quilts covering the windows.

?

The Kunsthistorisches is much too big:?as if the British Museum were welded to the National Gallery. I decided to stick to the paintings. The Giorgione “Laura” first, not at all like anything else by him that I’ve seen:?a three-quarter profile of a young woman, inadequately robed to reveal a single, very full breast. If the painting weren’t actually signed & dated, I would doubt the attribution. Perhaps he was hard up for cash and it was a commission. Mild pornography seems to be a theme of the Archduke’s collection, as there is also a naughty postcard of a Bellini, Young Woman at her Toilet, a pudgy nude sitting in a window seat, fixing her hair. The landscape seen through the window is the best part of it. So . . . All day at the Museum or the Albertina (terrorized by Fr?ulein Spitzmüller), memorizing paintings and drawings, then dinner at the hotel, then the Opera. Repeat.

?

Missing Fiona, now that I will soon see her again.

?

August 20, 1936

On the train to Paris after three days in the Kunsthistorisches and the Albertina and three operas. Such wonderful art & music in such a dreadful place. The Austrians are unable to speak except at the top of their voices, a background noise varied with the sound of Hitler speaking at the top of his voice on the radio, the noise of nailed boots on stone pavements, random fistfights in the middle of the immensely wide streets. By the time I got onto the train it felt like an escape from some vague but imminent catastrophe. Not that anyone is interested in American art students, but there are always the uniforms at the neighboring table in the hotel dining room, suspicious glances, demands for identification by anyone with half a claim to be an official. Very unpleasant & threatening. It will be wonderful to be back in civilian London, where only the Bobbies wear uniforms.

?

August 22, 1936

A letter came from Jack about their Olympic expedition. He loved Berlin and is brimming over with stories about the Olympics—parties at the Ribbentrop’s and the Goering’s—the new Napoleon. The highpoint was a party last week given by Goering for 700 or 800 guests:?floodlit processions of white horses, bands, dancing and feasting. Jack is quite exhilarated by that display of power and organization and says that Germany and Britain will divide the world between them.

?

I’ll take London, quiet civilian London (where I am cosseted, to be sure, chez Jack, with the house to myself). I’ll be here for a week, enjoying newspapers in English and the fine late summer weather.

#historicalfiction #arthistory #1930s