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Corporate Colors: Bonifacio and Tintoretto at the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi in Venice
Art Bulletin, The, Dec, 2000 by Philip Cottrell
(17.) These issues strike at the heart of the problems surrounding the dating and provenance of works initially installed in the three offices of the older section, the Ufficio della Messetaria, the Camerlenghi di Comun, and the Razon Vecchie. The only painting from the old section that can be connected with Bonifacio is a painting of Saints John the Baptist, Nicholas, and Daniel currently displayed in the cathedral in Ceneda, Vittorio Veneto (Alinari photo no. 4313); recorded by Boschini, 278.
(18.) Postwar scholarship has not been kind to Bonifacio. Previous criticism had consistently awarded him an eminent position among the leaders of the Venetian school, but this can hardly be said to be the case today, and his significant contribution has been all but obliterated from general accounts of Venetian painting. Writers of the 17th and 18th century recognized his importance as a sort of "anti-Titian," while the critics of the 19th century, Giovanni Morelli in particular, eulogized his superlative use of color and sought to explain the enormous output of his studio by splitting Bonifacio into three separate, but related, artists (all called Bonifacio). In 1901-2 Gustav Ludwig put the record straight in an exhaustive series of articles that still encapsulates almost the total sum of primary source material relating to the artist. See Ludwig 1901, 1902. A monograph from 1931 by Dorothea Westphal provided a literary and highly perceptive summary of the artist's stylistic development, but in failing to develop, or even to summarize Ludwig's discoveries, postwar scholarship was left without a standard reference work-- possibly the main reason for Bonifacio's neglect during the ensuing decades. See Westphal, Bonifazio Veronese (Munich: F. Bruckman, 1931). Apart from a useful revision of Ludwig's research with regard to Bonifacio's work at the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi in an article by Giorgio Faggin from 1963, the only other concerted attempt to come to grips with the artist's career was provided by Simonetta Simonetti in 1986. Simonetti's article took the form of an extended essay and accompanying catalogue raisonne that constituted a brave attempt at putting Bonifacio's work into some sort of order. Simonetti was successful to some degree, but her distinctions between the autograph work and that which she considered to be by Bonifacio's followers and assistants were highly arbitrary, and her chronology fails at certain key points. The exclusion of several important works from the main catalogue and her failur e to discuss the artist's workshop ensured that her picture of Bonifacio's career was ultimately distorted and misleading. See Simonetti, "Profilo di Bonifacio de' Pitati," Saggi e Memorie di Storia dell'Arte 15 (1986): 85-133. New archival discoveries that cast light on Bonifacio's life and a reappraisal of the artist's career are presented in Cottrell (as in n. 5).
