Settimia Maffei Marini, the mosaic artist in the presence of the Pope

There is an art that had its exploits and almost its uniqueness in Rome, between the mid-eighteenth century and the following century. However, an art that is still little known, although investigated by some studies and brought to the fore with an exhibition in 2016 in the Capitoline Napoleonic Museum. It is the discipline of minute mosaic, or “small mosaic”. Art applied to furniture, fireplaces, goldsmith’s objects; but art tout court, enclosed in precious frames. He often reproduces very famous paintings on a small scale. With painstaking work because the subject is replicated thanks to the application of tiny tiles in spun enamel, which make the vibration of the color possible, precisely in their millimetric dimensions, like a brush. To the point that “small mosaics” are considered “painting for eternity” because “they do not lose their color”.

In this exceptional art, initially developed in the laboratories of the Vatican, a woman excelled. An exceptional fact in turn, since it clawed at the total supremacy of male hands. Instead, Settimia Maffei Marini, who lived between 1778 and 1822, even managed to be named honorary member of the Academy of San Luca. Now her inimitable and forgotten existence is told in a delightful book, “Settimia Maffei Marini, Roman mosaic artist” signed by Maria Grazia Branchetti, art historian, teacher and expert on Roman mosaic, which she has been analyzing for decades, with exhibitions (she has been among the curators of the one at the Napoleonic Museum), monographs, essays.

On the antique pink cover of the volume, right above the Publisher’s logo – which is Gangemi – the nature of the work is specified: historical novel. And Settimia’s story is truly investigated with the fluidity of the story, the progress of the narrative. The author recreates the atmosphere and milieu of the city of the Pope King, the center of the world due to the presence of artists, intellectuals, jurists, aristocrats, historians, scientists, archaeologists, that caput mundi which has become the destination of the Grand Tour. The incipit already gives consistency to the character, revealing it like the ray of sunshine that illuminates the easel where the artist is working, in the well-equipped home studio, in Palazzo Pio, in Piazza del Biscione, close to of Campo de’Fiori. Here she takes the tiny enamel tiles with the “peg” and inserts them, delicately and safely, onto the bed of stucco prepared among other things with linseed oil. The gaze often runs on the cardboard containing the design to be reproduced. An attendant arrives, gives her a fatal letter: it comes from the Academy of San Luca, presided over by Antonio Canova, and announces the honor which, among other things, places her on the same level as her husband, the knight Luigi Marini, high exponent of the pontifical bureaucracy as well as scholar of architecture and military technique, recipient of the same appointment five years earlier.

It is 1817, three years ago Napoleon’s French left Rome, where they have dominated since 1809 (another invasion from beyond the Alps took place in 1798-99, the period of the Roman Republic). The Marines knew how to float between the two opposing historical eras, faithful first to the Pope, then to the French prefect de Tournon – Louis had been a prefectural councilor and to Napoleon he had dedicated his Treatise on Military Architecture – then once again returned to the good graces of Pius VII : Cavalier Marini who had protected with commitment and rigor the integrity of the Casanatense and Settimia Library, appreciated even in Paris and praised for the reproduction of the temples of Paestum in micromosaic on a fireplace decoration costing her two years of work, they are characters capable of adapting to circumstances, she is capable of making courageous artistic choices, of anticipating trends. A sonnet was also dedicated to her, in a climate of great consideration for the arts, favored by French domination but also by the mission of Antonio Canova, who went to Paris to recover the masterpieces taken away by Bonaparte, thanks to the Treaty of Tolentino.

Branchetti rigorously and lightly reconstructs episodes in the wake of hitherto unpublished documents.

For example, he can trace many of the mosaic artist’s productions but also describe the linen that Donna Settimia brings as a dowry when she gets married (wedding celebrated in her parish, San Luigi dei Francesi) and the list is not dry but a glimpse of customs, rich in details such as in the description of the watch given to the groom, a “fashionable” object created by the famous Geneva watchmaker Isacco Soret. It recalls the tricolor rosettes that young women pinned to their chests during the republican period, a sign of adherence to revolutionary ideas, appreciated above all for the equality they created between men and women. It evokes, as in a theatrical backdrop, the life that teems around the protagonist: the mosaicists’ shops between the Piazza di Spagna and Piazza del Popolo where the artist buys the enamels without sparing (829 shades of color for the table depicting Zeus), those of the ‘grinder, of the maccaronaro under the house of Palazzo Pio, which also overlooks Campo de’ Fiori and hears the bustle of the grain and horse market, the prayers whispered in front to the image of the Madonna del Latte set in the Passetto del Biscione…

Meanwhile, the city is intoxicated with events of the opposite sign, over the course of eight memorable years: the 101 cannon shots from Fort Sant’Angelo to greet the birth of the “King of Rome”, Napoleon’s son; the Pinwheel of Castel Sant’Angelo, the parade from Ponte Milvio and the pontoon bridge over the Tiber to celebrate the return of Pius VII, in a riot of ephemeral devices designed by Canova.

Then there is the caring and tender mother Septimia. And here the essay-novel takes on dark hues, tracing dramatic events that justify his face veiled in melancholy, in his recurring thought, the transience of life. The eldest daughter, Marina, died shortly after giving birth. She will give birth to another girl, to whom she gives the name Marina. A boy, Francesco, dies at one year of age. Close to her mourning, Maffei gives birth to Pietro. But while he was working on his most demanding work, the micromosaic reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, this son also took away, in twenty days, an inflammatory disease, as the vague diagnosis says.

It is September 1822, the studio where Settimia worked hard with two assistants remains empty and silent, the most ambitious work remains incomplete, even if in its final stage. Not long after, in October Settimia becomes prey to a nervous illness, the doctors hypothesize. In twenty days his existence ends. As for Pietruccio, funeral at the Ara Coeli, also illuminated by the candles lit in front. Wooden child covered in bands and gems, object of devotion which since 1994 the Romans have no longer been able to venerate due to a more than sacrilegious theft. Luigi Marini obtained the sale of the seventh chapel to the left of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli and here he had the sculptor Laboreur erect the funerary monument of Settimia and Pietro.

It is crowned by the bust of the woman, transmitting her image to us, also replicated in a portrait engraved by Bystrom (one of the two copies is in the Chalcography) with the dedication “To Settimia Marini, cultress of Fine Arts”. She is depicted in profile, with a thin nose, a small and graceful mouth, her hair gathered and held in a braid, a few curls falling on her neck. Lying, Giacomo Leopardi, in a letter to his sister Paolina, defines Marini’s wife as “lame and ugly”. A rudeness that can be explained by the poet’s hope that the rich widower – whom he met and dated during his stay in Rome between 1822 and 1823 – could marry Paolina. Marini, however, in July 1823 married a noble widow, Barbara Clarelli, already the mother of two girls. He will give him the title of marquis and a male heir, again called Pietro.

Thus ends the parable of the Roman mosaic artist who overcame prejudices and mistrust in life and who now shakes off oblivion. His works and those of contemporary artists are reproduced on coated paper and in color in Branchetti’s book. And she will be talked about in March at the Museum of Rome, in a conference included in the “Roma pittrice” exhibition, another opportunity to reveal many female artists who from the seventeenth century to the modern age have produced masterpiece paintings and engravings, yet put aside part in a world dominated by male figures.