Catherine Victoria Phillips
Count Carl (Charles) Cobenzl and his Collection of Drawings
The first three weeks of my fellowship were spent mainly in Gorizia, working in the Fondazione Coronini Cronberg Onlus, both with the museum staff and in the Coronini archive, which is lodged in the Archivio di Stato in Gorizia.
The fourth week was spent mainly in Florence.
The results of this period were fourfold.
Cobenzl Himself
The archives produced copious material that enable fuller comprehension of the personality of Count Cobenzl. The family died out in 1810 but the family papers passed to the last Cobenzl’s nephew, Count Coronini, and thus by descent to the Fondazione. The background of Count Cobenzl has been almost unknown to any of those studying him, most of whom have been based in Brussels, where he was Plenipotentiary Minister 1753-70, but where he had no family connections. Documents such as posthumous inventories (ventilazione), statements of nobility and patents make clear the extent of the family property and that the family estates ran through the counties of Gorizia and Carniola. They also provide a full genealogy for Cobenzl, proving his relationships with the leading political families of the Austrian Empire (including Kaunitz and Colloredo). Private correspondence both from and about Charles Cobenzl add to this picture.
In addition, the county of Gorizia has over the last thirty years held a number of important exhibitions presenting the history of the area and of its arts. Only in Gorizia are most of these publications available, as well as key publications by local historians who either knew Cobenzl or, of the 19th century, who knew of him.
As a result of this research, it has become clear that Cobenzl cannot be described in any way as an ‘Austrian’ or ‘German’ collector. Despite his family’s commitment to the Habsburg family, his background is international. Within his close family, siblings corresponded in three languages, French, Italian and German, none of which was truly a ‘native’ tongue. Gorizia, at the cusp of the Venetian and Habsburg Empires, with Turkey ever present during the early 18th century, was an international melting-pot that helped define Cobenzl’s attitude to the world. It also gave him an extensive range of correspondents in Italy.
Importantly, it became clear that – despite the proximity of Venice – there was no collecting of art, as such, in Gorizia. It was thus possible to eliminate Gorizia and the Carniola as an influence on Cobenzl’s collecting activities
This research underlies all studies of Cobenzl and his collecting, for without this basic understanding of his origins and early years, no assessment can be made of the man himself
Venice - Albrizzi -Piazzetta
I had previously discovered documents in Brussels relating to the origins of 47 drawings by Piazzetta acquired by Charles Cobenzl. Thanks to my research in the Coronini Archive the identity of the intermediary, a member of the Coronini family, was established. The drawings were all acquired via that intermediary directly from Albrizzi, Piazzetta’s publisher. The origins of this important group of drawings had previously been disputed, but are now clear.
The Collections of the Fondazione Coronini Croberg Onlus
The work with the Fondazione Coronini was mutually beneficial. They allowed me privileged access to their collections, presented me with copies of their publications and photocopies of rare sources, and outlined some of the areas in which their knowledge is lacking. Because their emphasis is on the Coronini family, the Cobenzl material has been comparatively little studied, and much remains to be discovered.
From them, therefore, I gained considerable iconographical material (portraits of members of the family, including an excellent portrait of Charles Cobenzl, currently undergoing restoration, and portraits of his children) that complements the genealogical material in the archive.
In return, I have been able to provide them with genealogical material that helped us jointly to correctly identify the sitters in a number of the portraits in their possession (previously published with incorrect identities). Moreover, I uncovered private letters in the archive, unknown to them, dealing with the commissioning of and receipt of a number of paintings now in their collection. I continue today to supply them with articles relating to their works (related paintings, information on sitters etc), as they are compiling a catalogue of the paintings.
The Fondazione also has a significant collection of works of Russian applied art, which arrived via a family marriage, and thanks to the relationships established with them, we have been able to provide them with a number of publications from the Hermitage which are helping them with their catalogues of that material.
Francesco Petrucci
A group of 22 drawings in the Hermitage bear an indication that they are the work of ‘Petrucci’, an apparently unknown artist. Their relatively inferior quality had led them to languish in the reserve collection. Libraries in Gorizia and Ferrara helped me establish that all the drawings (except two, which are in a different style and which are probably given to Petrucci in error) are copies of works in the Uffizi or Galleria Palatina in the Palazzo Pitti. During my last week I worked mainly in Florence, in the Kunsthistoriches Institut, where the superb collection of 18th-century publications, as well as recent literature, made it possible not only to establish the identity and career of the artist, Francesco Petrucci, but to establish that the drawings themselves were formerly in the collection of Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663-1713), and formed part of a grandiose plan to produce an album of prints after his most important paintings. That album was produced in its entirety only in 1778, although sets of the prints were produced from time to time before that.
Petrucci’s drawings had been previously known only from descriptions by Gabburri and Marini, but their appearance was not known. Moreover, it has been possible to compare the drawings with the prints, revealing that even the drawings for three-plate prints were produced the size of the final image.
Thanks to this identification, it proved possible to discover that there were eight more drawings by Petrucci in the collection of the Prince de Ligne, also based in Brussels, and these were acquired from the sale of the Prince de Ligne’s collection in 1794 and are now in the Albertina. That gives rise to questions as to how the drawings arrived in Brussels and whether they came as a single group.
This material is currently being finalised for a publication (perhaps for Paragone, where the Medici inventory that mentions the drawings was first published).
This discovery has also given rise to the possibility that other drawings in the Cobenzl collection also have a Florentine collection. This is a much larger question and is still being investigated.