<Articles>Jacob Burckhardt's Cicerone as a Guidebook

In the 19th century, Jacob Burckhardt's best-known work in Germany was not die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy) (1860), but Der Cicerone. Eine Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italien (The Cicerone: or, Art-guide to painting in Italy, for the use of travellers) (1855). It was a popular guide to architecture, sculpture and painting in Italy for German travellers, and had a wide readership in Germany. In the 20th century this book have been studied by historians of art as a work of art history. They have argued that it was an early formof a systematic history of art that went beyond a mere history of artists. According to Werner Kaegi, the author of Jacob Burckhardt. Eine Biographie, this book on the whole was an art history not a guidebook. Certainly, the structure of this book is that of a history of art, whose chapters correspond to the styles of art fromAntiquity to the 18th century, including Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque. However, two supplementary items that the first edition of this book provided could help a traveller as a guidebook. They are the special index which Burckhardt himself made and a handbook that was recommended in the preface to the first edition. A German traveller could browse through Cicerone with the index and obtain with the handbook several pieces of practical information on touring, traveling expenses, model itineraries and so on. Burckhardt wrote this book for the use of German intellectuals as a guide to art in their lengthy travels around Italy, which could be termed the German Grand Tour. In this paper, I try to clarify the important role that Burckhardt would play with his Cicerone in German society and culture in this age, and thus I treat this book as a guidebook for travellers. In the first section, I consider the features of the first-edition of Cicerone to clarify that it was for the use of travellers in Italy, not for scholars in their studies. In the second section, I analyse the feature of the Cicerone's index and explain what information could be obtained by browsing Cicerone with it. In the third section, I make a summary of Ernst Förster's Handbuch für Reisende in Italien (Handbook for the travellers in Italy) (1st edition, 1840), which was recommended in the preface of Cicerone. In the fourth section, I clarify the close relation between Cicerone and Förster's handbook. In the fifth section, I compare the interpretation of fine arts in Cicerone with that in Förster's, focusing on paintings in Bologna and Parma, and make clear the complementary relationship between the two books. In the sixth section, I analyse what Cicerone provided to travellers with the complete version of the handbook, and consider the cultural and social roles that Burckhardt expected the German Grand Tour to play. What Burckhardt expected of the art travellers in Italy was maintenance of the continuity of the European spirit through their appreciation of Italian art. The German nationalist movement also developed at this time. People hoped for the establishment of a German national state and the centralization of power. After the revolution of 1848, German nationalism aimed for a "little-German" unification. Burckhardt found non-Europanizing and nonhistorizing phenomena in the rapid political and social changes taking place in Germany. He took non-historizing as barbarizing. Burckhardt considered the continuity of the European spirit a cultural deterrent against German nationalismand the barbarizing of German society. He thought that people could appreciate the European spirit through the fine arts of Italy, especially the harmonized beauty, which Raphael and Guido Reni had attained. However, the concept of the fine arts greatly changed in the 19th century. The artists and historians of art following the new trend of realismin art criticized classical beauty and praised realistic portrayals highly. In criticizing classic beauty, they preferred Caravaggio to R