In the Museo Nazionale, I was fascinated most of all by the collection of paintings from Pompeii. When I entered I was profoundly moved. The ancient paintings were in part wonderfully well preserved. And this art is very close to me at present. I had anticipated the treatment of silhouette. The decorative colours. I take all this personally. It was painted for me and dug up for me. I feel invigorated.
Maundy Thursday (27.3) morning again at the Pompeian wall paintings. In the afternoon busy with entries in my journal, then at the German Consulate around four o’clock to ask whether I could get aboard a warship. But there’s none in the harbour. Afterwards I walked along the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele to the Posillipo without any special plan. On reaching the tunnel, I suddenly felt enterprising and went through to the other side, looked at the village called Fuorigrotta, whose entire population was in the street and stared back at me. Then I followed the perfectly straight road for three quarters of an hour, to Bagnoli. From there (pestered by a cabman who kept trailing me) along the superbly foaming sea, back toward the Posillipo (twenty minutes), and then home in two and a half hours by way of the long ridge of the Posillipo, whilst a wondrously clear night was falling. The perspectives of the nocturnal sea are a tonic for sense and soul. No other coast is so interesting. Bold islands (Nisida) and the large and lofty island of Ischia, the dangerously steep, mountainous Capo Miseno, Capo Coroglio, and Capo di Posillipo; in the distance, the picturesque town of Pozzuoli, the Phlegraean fields. Finally Naples again, now like a quiet harvest of lights at my feet. Oh, the overflowing jumble, the displacements, the bloody sun, the deep sea filled with tilted sailboats. Theme upon theme, until you could lose yourself in it. To be human, to be ancient, naive and nothing, and yet happy. It is good to be so for once, as an exception, a holiday.
The Tree of Houses, 1918. Watercolour, gouache and India ink on chalk-primed gauze on wove papers, on cardboard, 23.4/22.1 × 18.4/18.7 cm. The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.
Plan for a Garden Architecture, 1920. Watercolour, oil and chalk on canvas on cardboard, 35.6 × 42.9 cm. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.
Emacht, 1932. Oil on cotton canvas on frame, 50 × 64 cm. Private collection.
Flower Myth, 1918. Watercolour on canvas with mashed chalk on newspaper on cardboard, 29 × 15.8 cm. Sprengel Museum, Hanover.
Yesterday, to the museum for the third time, with my Burckhardt. The walk there along the broadly curving Corso, which gradually slopes downward, is very attractive. The ancient statuary, particularly the bronzes. The disclosures made to us by statuettes with their colouring partially preserved. The eyes, which one must imagine painted. Three of us (Haller, Schmoll and I) made an excursion to Tivoli. The waterfalls have been reproduced in pictures and described often enough. In the afternoon we visited the Villa d’Este and towards evening the Villa Hadriana, an absolutely heavenly corner of the earth. In the evening there were subdued and serious colour effects of a sombreness and subtlety that one would never believe possible in Italy, which is unjustly regarded as a garish land. There is a moral strength in such colour. I see it just as much as others do, I too shall be able to create it some day. When? Leaving Rome like this is not without its emotion. On the way to the Villa Hadriana we had an amusing experience. A cab caught up with us as we were walking along. The occupant, a lean, professorial German with a grey goatee, was so enamoured of his honeymoon partner next to him that he must have imagined himself alone in the world with her and the horse and the driver’s back. Right behind us he launched a barrage of faunlike kisses at the thin, rather faded lady. We made a stand, yelled like a bunch of Hurons, lined up on both sides of the road and had the frightened pair run the gauntlet. The incident kept us amused for quite some time, until the carriage was nearly out of sight. We rehashed, analysed, mimicked. “Oh, he was pleased with his morsel of flesh.” – Haller couldn’t get over it… I would hate to be caught this way between fifty and sixty.
Rome is as melancholy as I am; it shrouds itself in dark veils and weeps with me. Anyway, I have a great deal to do and to think about, especially how I am going to pack all my things. But I shall be able to leave only when I have the money. And when the money arrives I must be ready to leave. Old Rome, with its eyes full of rain. I have already rented a room in Florence and know where to eat. I expect to meet Jean de Castella there; for some weeks he has been visiting Florentine pawn shops. A great rascal and a big child. How he mimicked the frightful ape and mauled his pretty sister! How overfed I am and insatiable, and how hungry for the novelties of Florence. The after-dinner nap in Bern. Then perhaps the dreadful awakening, the reversal of direction: instead of penetrating into myself, a going out of myself! I have already dreamed about it, and clearly.
Yesterday (12.4.) I saw the Roman Salon, the annual exhibition in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna. The only good displays are the drawings, etchings, and lithographs by the French. Above all, Rodin’s caricatures of nudes! – caricatures! – a genre unknown before him. The greatest I have seen were among them, a stupendously gifted man. Contours are drawn with a few lines of the pencil, a brush filled with watercolour contributes the flesh tone, and another dipped in a greenish colour say, may indicate clothing. That is all, and its effect is simply monumental. Someone else exhibits caricatures of the theatre and the music hall, among them Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, and a stiffly motionless chanteuse. There is also Forain, who with a few hard lines characterises his subject to the last detail. The others differ from this little band by trying to outdo themselves. These people struggle, the Germans especially, and nobody can make any sense of them. By contrast, how honest the charming Parisians are, with their borrowed Latin inspiration, who keep their temper and their whores and their wit! Who could be repelled by this, it is so seductive! The lag-end of ancient culture. Paris, the image of imperial Rome and no less in decline. What is it that Zola wants: the Republican! France is clever, but no longer on the rise.
Fantastic Flora, 1922. Pen and ink, pencil, oil, and watercolour on paper, bordered with gouache on cardboard, 43.7 × 35 cm. Stiftung Moritzburg, Kunstmuseum des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle an de Saale.
Castle in the Sky, 1922. Oil and watercolour on gauze on cardboard, 62.6 × 40.7 cm. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.
18.4. In the Galleria Antica e Moderna, to see Botticelli’s “Primavera”. Of course it surprised me at first, because I had imagined it wrongly, from the point of view of quality as well. Colourlessness partially due to wear. This is what contributes the historic element to a picture and becomes part of it. It is quite a different matter to try to produce new pictures with worn-out colours, like Lenbach. If one loves the patina brought by the centuries, who knows whether one wouldn’t reject the pictures in their original state. I once saw the “Birth of Venus” suddenly appear in the distance like a fata morgana. I then tried to see it as it was in actuality, but without the slightest success. Her colours are rarely spiritual.
Then I wandered over to the Pitti Palace, a very large gallery. From its riches I first singled out Titian’s famous portrait of “La Bella” and a small portrait of a woman by Botticelli (the simplest and most consummate bit of painting). On the whole, I didn’t feel drawn to Titian’s colour; it is more sensual than spiritual. Botticelli is a better colourist, better also than Mantegna. Paolo Veronese is also very much superior to Titian in this respect, even though he isn’t a very appealing master otherwise. But to represent a beautiful Venetian woman, a spirituality obtained by the play of colours is less necessary than a voluptuous tonal twilight. And that Titian possesses as almost no one else does; he is the golden twilight