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The Method of Morelli and Its Relation To Freudian Psychoanalysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Jack J. Spector
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Giovanni Morelli (1816-91), the Italian connoisseur, in the 1870’s and 1880’s, writing under the pseudonym Lermolieff worked out a method for distinguishing original works of art from copies. His method was a curious one, involving the study of small and unimportant details of the painting in order to discover the authentic touch of the master. An illustration from his book, Italian Masters in German Galleries shows ears from paintings by the Florentines Leonardo da Vinci and Lorenzo di Credi, and through the differences in form between these two details, Morelli believed he could distinguish two artists of the same school. A second illustration from Morelli's book shows that conversely, two different parts of the body bear a family resemblance to one another—here the hand and ear are both long, thin and tapering forms. In his study of paintings in the Borghese Gallery, Morelli explained how such details could help the connoisseur identify a master: “Copyists can never have any character or style, for ‘form’ in their works is not due to their own idea … As most men, both speakers and writers, make use of habitual modes of expression, favourite words and sayings, which they often employ involuntarily and sometimes even most inappropriately, so almost every painter has his own peculiarities, which escape him without his being aware of it … Anyone intending to study a painter more closely and to become better acquainted with him, must take into consideration even these material trifles (a student of calligraphy would call them flourishes), and know how to discover them …”

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 17 , Issue 66 , June 1969 , pp. 63 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 This essay is an expanded version of a lecture delivered to the Graduate Art history Association of Columbia University on March 1, 1968.

2 For biographical details of Morelli's life, see Sir A.H. Layard's introduction to vol. I of Giovanni Morelli, Italian Painters. Critical Studies of their Works. The Borghese and Doria-Pamfili Galleries in Rome. 2 vols. Translated by C.J. Foulkes, London 1892; Ivan Lermolieff, Die Galerien Roms. Ein kritischer Versuch. I. Die Galerie Borghese. Aus dem Russischen übersetzt von Dr. Johannes Schwarze; Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, Wien, 1874, Lieferungen I, III, VI, VIII; 1875, Lieferungen IV, VII, IX, XI; 1876, Lieferungen V, VI.

3 See Morelli, Italian Masters in German Galleries, London, 1883. Translated from the German by Louise M. Richter. (Morelli's preface dates from 1877). Illustration, page 219, 1st ed., Ivan Lermolieff, Die Werke italienischer Meister in den Galerien von München, Dresden und Berlin. Ein kritischer Versuch. Aus dem Russischen übersetzt von Dr. Johannes Schwarze. E.A. Seemann, Leipzig, 1880.

4 Op. cit., p. 111.

5 Morelli, Italian Painters, I., pp. 74-5.

6 Sigmund Freud's essay "The Moses of Michelangelo," was originally published anonymously in Imago, III, 1914, pp. 15-36. I have used the reprint in Freud on Creativity and the Unconscious (introduction by Benjamin Nelson, N.Y., 1958) of A. Strachey's translation, which appeared originally in vol. IV of the Collected Papers, London, 1925. The quotation is on p. 11.

7 Op. cit., pp. 24-5. Apparently Freud's information is based on Layard's introduction to the Italian Painters.

8 Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. Transl. by Joan Riviere. N.Y., 1962, pp. 70-1. (This ed. was first published in 1924).

9 Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, N.Y., 1957, vol. III, p. 413.

10 Freud, " Moses," p. 33.

11 Earl E. Rosenthal, " Michelangelo's Moses, dal di sotto in su," Art Bulletin, XLVI, No. 4, Dec. 1964, pp. 544-550.

12 Charles de Tolnay, Michelangelo: The Tomb of Julius II, Princeton 1954, pp. 40-1, p. 103.

13 Hans Sachs, "'The Man Moses' and the Man Freud," pp. 132-144, in The Creative Unconscious, Cambridge, 1942.

14 Jones, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 368. Jones had read The Creative Unconscious, and he adopted a similar point of view about Freud's essay, but — surprisingly — he fails to note Sachs' work in this contest. Jones, op. cit., noted that Freud become interested in the statue even before 1901; but, Freud's actual preparation of the essay evidently was precipitated by his personal situation in 1914.

15 See Sachs, op. cit., for other aspects of Freud's identification with Moses.

16 See Jones, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 408.

17 Jones, ibid.

18 See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, N.Y., 1957 (1st German ed. 1929) p. 63. In his subsequent discussion, Mannheim links this feeling of being deceived to the desire to "unmask" and "debunk."

19 Morelli, Italian Painters, vol. I, Layard's introduction, pp. 31-2, 45; and Morelli's text, pp. 74-6.

20 Morelli, ibid.

21 Arnold Hauser, The Philosophy of Art History, Cleveland, 1963 (1st ed. 1958), pp. 109/10.

22 See Edgar Wind, Art and Anarchy, N.Y., 1964, p. 43 (1st ed. London, 1963).

23 Wind, op cit., p. 42.

24 For Goethe's organic conceptions, see below, note 37.

25 As early as 1719 the Abbé Dubos compared the ability of the connoisseur with that of the handwriting analyst in distinguishing originals from copies, in Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture. 7th ed., Paris, 1770, p. 241 (Book II, Sect. XXVII, p. 405). First ed., Paris, 1719, 2 vols. While he doubted whether either expert was very reliable, he felt the handwriting expert had more chance of success. Another example of 18th century attitudes can be found in the Count of Caylus' Lecture on Drawings of 1732. On Winckelmann, see Carl Justi, Winckelmann und seine Zeitgenossen, Leipzig, 1943, (First ed. 1923), II, 385. On his attitude toward Raphael, see Justi, op. cit. I, 466.

26 See Morelli, Italian Masters…, p. 2.

27 Johann J. Winckelmann, "Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums. 1763-8. Fünftes Buch. Von der Kunst unter den Griechen," chapt. 5, n. 29. For Lessing's remark, in Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet, Berlin 1769, see J. Bialostocka, Lessing. Laocoon, suivi de… Comment les Anciens représentaient la Mort, in the series "Miroirs de l' Art," Paris, 1964, p. 164.

28 John Caspar Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy, London, 1797, 4 vols., I. p. 15.

29 Lavater often cites Winckelmann's History of Ancien Art; e.g., Lavater, op. cit., vol. III, pp. 169-70, 238-40, 286. It is probable that Lavater's extensive discussion of eara (e.g.; vol. 3, pp. 319-22), owe something to Winckelmann.

30 Lavater, op. cit., vol. I, lecture 24, p. 213 has the illustrations.

31 On Leonardo, see André Chastel, Léonard de Vinci. La Peinture, in the series "Miroirs de l'Art," Paris 1964, pp. 148-9. On the physiognomic ideas of Le Brun and their source in Descartes and others, see Jurgis Baltrussitis, Aberrations. Quatre essais sur la légende des formes, Paris, 1957. On Gall, see Brett's History of Psychology, ed. by R.S. Peters, London, 1953, pp. 592-3.

32 For Schlegel's remarks, see his Berlin lectures, Vorlesungen über schöne Literatur und Kunst (1801-4), I, 78 ff. For the Sterne, see his Tristram Shandy, Book III, chapt. 38, p. 168, London 1912. 1st ed. 1761. For nose-analysis, see Lavater, op. cit., vol. 3, pp. 290-7, and pp. 300-1.

33 See Layard, introd. to Morelli, The Italian Painters…, vol. I, pp. 31-2.

34 The standard book on the criminology of handwriting forgery is A.E. Osborne, Questioned Documents, Albany, N.Y., 1929. For a discussion of the detective story, see Boileau-Narcejac, Le Roman Policier, Paris, 1964.

35 Aside from such celebrated stories as The Gold Bug, Poe wrote "A Chapter on Autography" (ca. 1835).

36 For a more sophisticated approach to graphology, see the writings of Ludwig Klages, especially his Handschrift und Charakter, Leipzig, 1932, 1940.

37 Baldo's Trattato… and the quotation from it are cited in J. Crépieux-Jamin, Handschrift und Charakter, Leipzig, 1901. First ed.: Traité pratique de graphologie… Paris, n.d. (ca. 1885). For Goethe's views on plant morphology, see, e.g., Goethes Werke, Band XIII, Hamburg, 1958, "Morphologie, 1817," p. 57. Goethe agreed with Lavater that the different parts of an organism resemble one another, but his initial fascination with the physiognomist gave way to scepticism and rejection of him. See Eckermann's Gespräche mit Goethe conversation of Feb. 17, 1829. Goethe used the expression "Man… den Löwen an den Klauen erkennt" in "Briefe," Weimar Ausgabe of Goethes Werke, Weimar, 1887-1919, 50 vols., 4. Abth. XX, 159, 7 ff.

38 Lavater's remark is in op. cit., III, 111. Lavater analyzed handwriting in op. cit., III, pp. 196-204. He was also aware of the use of graphology in cases of forgery "as a guide… towards the truth." See op. cit., III, p. 199-200.

39 See especially, Layard's introduction to the Italian Painters, I, 23 ff, and 27-8.

40 W. von Bode, "The Berlin Renaissance Museum," pp. 506-15, The Fort nightly Review, Vol. L, London, July 1 to Dec. 1, 1891, p. 509. For qualified praise of Morelli, see von Bode, Mein Leben, II, 62.

41 Von Bode's opinions on Morelli's "one-sided" method are strongly put in Mein Leben, II, pp. 24, 61-2. Also, see Friedländer, Der Kunstkenner, pp. 24 ff.

42 See Morelli, Italian Painters, 1, 19.

43 Von Bode's name appears repeatedly in the correspondence, published in Italienische Malerei der Renaissance im Briefwechsel von Giovanni Morelli und Jean Paul Richter, 1960.

44 Friedländer's remark is from On Art and Connoisseurship, p. 196.

45 Renan's L'Avenir de la Science (1848, pub. 1890), and Fustel de Coulanges' La Cité Antique (1864) are landmarks of French positivism. For Taine's reliance on Cuvier, see his preface to the Histoire de la Littérature anglaise (1863), and to the 2nd ed. of the Essais de Critique et d'Histoire (1866).

46 See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, N.Y., 1957 (1st ed. Bonn, 1929), p. 43.

47 Zola, The Experimental Novel and Other Essays, translated by Belle M. Sherman, N.Y., 1964 (1st ed. 1893), p. 20.

48 See Karl Vogt, Physiologische Briefe, 1847, 206. This dictum derived from the originator of physiological psychology, Cabanis (1757-1808). A curious adaptation of those materialist parallels between brain and mind occurs in the Romantic Novalis' comparison of the brain to the testes, as a metaphor describing the procreative aspect of thinking. See Novalis, Schriften, III, 171.

49 For Morelli's educational background, see Layard's introduction to Italian Painters, I, 3 ff. Ignatz Döllinger (1770-1841), not to be confused with the great theologian of that name, followed Schelling in philosophy.

50 See Morelli, Italian Masters, I., p. vii, and cf. Italian Painters, I, 11.

51 See Morelli, Italian Masters…, 166: "Titian's Danaë is so realistic, nay, to be candid, so vulgarly imagined, that the old woman at her side makes us involuntarily think of a common procuress."

52 For good, brief accounts of Darwin, Spencer and Fechner, see K. Gilbert and H. Kuhn, A History of Esthetics, N.Y., 1953.

53 On Fechner's experiments with rectangles, etc., see Bernard Bosanquet, A History of Aesthetics, London, 1892.

54 Cf. F. Hartt, "Bernard Berenson, 1865-1959," Art Quarterly, 24, No. 1, 89-91, Spring 1961, p. 90: "Berenson's enduring contribution… represents" above all "the triumph of sharpened perception as an instrument of humanistic research."

55 See Wind, op. cit., pp. 25, 35, 50, for a discussion of "visual dissociation" as a common heritage of Berenson and other connoisseurs following Morelli. Also, cf. below, note 78 and text.

56 M. J. Friedländer, Der Kunstkenner, p. 194: " Wir arbeiten unter allen Umständen mit der Schönsucht nach Biographie."

57 Freud's first writings were in the field of biology, and this science undoubtedly colored his earliest thoughts on psychology; yet one of his greatest contributions was to realize that insight into human psychology must be based on a study primarily of mental and only secondarily of biological phenomena.

58 See Freud, A General Introduction…, pp. 70-1.

59 Cf. Freud, op. cit., p. 32.

60 For von Weizsäcker, see B. Nelson, Freud and the 20th Century, N.Y., 1957.

61 Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, Chapt. VI has his most detailed discussion of sexual symbolism. On the sexual theory of noses, see Jones, op. cit., I, p. 289. Fliess claimed that "there is a relationship between the mucous membrane of the noses and genital activities."

62 Jones, ibid., p. 309. Both men suffered from nasal infection, "and an inordinate amount of interest was taken on both sides in the state of each other's nose…"

63 Schneider's best-known work is The Psychoanalyst and the Artist, N.Y., 1950.

64 See Georg Groddeck, Exploring the Unconscious, London, 1950 (addresses delivered originally from 1925 to 1933), p. 3 ff.

65 See Paul Frankl, The Gothic… Princeton, 1960, pp. 748-51, for Sterba's and other ridiculous theories of the origin of the Gothic style of architecture.

66 See Murphy's "The Current Impact of Freud upon Psychology," in B. Nelson, op. cit.

67 See Marshall Bush, "The Problem of Form in the Psychoanalytic Theory of Art," The Psychoanalytic Review, Spring, 1967, p. 28.

68 See Brett's History of Psychology, pp. 676 ff.

69 For a critique of the Associationist method from a Gestalt viewpoint, see Wolfgang Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, N.Y., 1959, 1 st ed. 1947.

70 See W. C. Constable, Art History and Connoisseurship, Cambridge, 1938, p. 15.

71 See Wolfgang Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, p. 131.

72 Rudolf Arnheim, Picasso's Guernica; The Genesis of a Painting, Berkeley, 1962.

73 See Albert Einstein, "Letter to Jacques Hadamard," in J. Hadamard, The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field, Princeton, 1945.

74 See Max Wertheimer, Productive Thinking, N.Y., 1945. See also Hadamard, op. cit.

75 The neglect of developmental processes and of sensori-motor activity in perception by the Gestalt school has been sharply criticized by Jean Piaget, The Child's Conception of Space, London, 1956 (1 st French ed., 1948), p. 10-245. An attempt to add dynamic concepts to the perceptual emphazis of the Gestalt psychologists was made by Lauretta Bender in A Visual - Motor Gestalt Test, Research Monograph, 3, N.Y., 1938.

76 Ernst Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art, N.Y., 1964, 1 st ed. 1952.

77 For a criticism of Kris, see J. P. Hodin, in The Dilemma of Being Modern, London, 1956, pp. 79-80, "E. Josephson… A Study in Schizophrenic Art. Its Formative Tendency and Social Background." For a searching criticism of Kris' views on the creative experience (and of post-Freudian ego-psychology in general), see E. G. Schachtel, Metamorphosis. On the Development of Affect, etc. N.Y., 1959, esp. p. 244.

78 Wind, op. cit., p. 35. The general thesis of Wind's book is supported by William Barrett, "Art and Boing," in Art and Philosophy, ed by S. Hock, N.Y., 1966, pp. 170-1.

79 See Schachtel, op. cit., pp. 39 ff, also pp. 242-4.

80 Katherine E. Gilbert and Helmut Kuhn, A History of Esthetics, Bloomington, Indiana, 1954 (1st ed. 1939), p. 547. The authors ask their broad question after deploring the split in art studies between the aesthete or amateur and the scientist, both of whom had "lost contact with the esthetic knowledge of the past."