A book to learn about the lady of art techniques: the letters of Mary Merrifield edited by John Mazzaferro

The book The Woman Who Loved Colors is out. Mary P. Merrifield: letters from Italy, edited by Giovanni Mazzaferro and published by Officina Libraria. The book aims to turn a glance at the figure of Mary P. Merrifield (Brompton, 1804 - Stapleford, 1889), a careful and scrupulous English scholar writer known as the “lady of artistic techniques” because, in the mid-19th century, she discovered, transcribed and translated numerous manuscripts on artistic techniques, studying pigments and colors, classifying them and examining their physical and chemical properties. Mary spent quite some time in Italy for her studies: after leaving England together with her 18-year-old eldest son (she had five children in all), she traveled to this side of the Alps to study archives and private collections in Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia. According to the mentality of the time, she was not considered a potential competitor by restorers and artists, and so it was easy for her to learn the secrets of artistic techniques: in her role as a researcher, however, she was supported by the men and family, who helped her in her projects (her son, for example, transcribed manuscripts, her husband took care of book introductions, and her 14-year-old third-born son developed indexes).

After returning to England, Mary Merrifield broadened the scope of her studies in her native country: she devoted herself to the natural sciences (especially seaweed: one was even named after her) while keeping alive her scientific approach to the description of reality, evident in her manuscripts on artistic techniques. Sustained by a rigorous approach and a high-level scientific method, Mary P. Merrifield (née Watkins) remained little known until not long ago, but the recent rediscovery, in Brighton, England, of thirty-nine of her letters sent to her husband and written between 1845 and 1846 (a time when the scholar was in Italy in search of manuscripts) has shed new light on her figure.

All the letters have been collected and translated, for the first time in Italy, in the volume edited by Giovanni Mazzaferro, a highly regarded independent scholar of art history sources and founder of the influential blog Letteratura artistica, which has quickly become an interesting point of reference for enthusiasts and insiders. “The precious epistolary material rediscovered,” reads the book’s introduction, “restores the portrait of an extraordinary woman with an attentive and curious gaze on reality.” Through her letters, “a mirror of Mary Merrifield’s inquiring and attentive eye,” those who read them will be able to discover two worlds: “that of English knowledge, but also that of Italian culture prior to the uprisings of 1848. Her restitution of reality, in such private material as epistolary, adds to the veracity of historical facts that genuine vividness of human events, encounters, works of art, traditions, surprises and accidents, and travel impressions, thus enriching the material history of nineteenth-century Italy.”

The woman who loved colors. Mary P. Merrifield: letters from Italy, of 192 pages, is sold at a cost of 19.90 euros. It can also be purchased on the Officina Libraria website.

A book to learn about the lady of art techniques: the letters of Mary Merrifield edited by John Mazzaferro

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