Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: clues and scientific method.

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Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes:
Clues and Scientific Method*
by Carlo Ginzburg
INTRODUCTION by Anna Davin
This article by an Italian comrade and historian is very different from anything we
have included in History Workshop Journal before. It unselfconsciously draws on
philosophy, quotes Latin, and ranges across societies and periods in a way which is ex-
traordinary - even shocking - to the English reader. (How can anyone feel confident
to discuss not only the disparate areas suggested by the title, but also neolithic hunters,
Babylonian diviners, renaissance scientific thought, the origins offingerprints and so
on?) In Italy, though still impressive, the range might seem less startling. There,
familiarity with the literature and history of ancient Greece and Rome - 'the classical
tradition '- along with philosophy remains more largely part of basic academic groun-
ding, taught (as in France) even to schoolchildren. It is not, as here, associated chiefly
with the educational institutions and political power ofa privileged elite, the irrelevant
preserve of the English gentleman, the specialism of the few in their ivory tower.
Philosophly there is still centrally part of political theory (as it was for Marx and other
nineteenth-century thinkers), and the Italian historian can make political interven-
tions within philosophy and the classical tradition. The larger, longer perspective this
brings also perhaps gives greater confidence for generalising, for theorising, and for
speculation. This aspect of the continental marxist tradition is something which still
seems quite strange to many English marxists, in spite of attempts (for instance by New
Left Review) to introduce and integrate it here.
In this article as in his other work (mostly not translated), Ginzburg is centrally
concerned with how people see the world, how knowledge is acquired and organised,
the frameworks into which they fit information, beliefs, or observations, and the
social structure which contains, influences and is influenced by these aspects of
knowledge. He examines the relationship between 'formal' and 'informal' knowledge,
'high 'and 'low', lore and science. His concern, in short, is historical epistemology -
the history and theory of the construction of knowledge. In spite of the wide range of
time covered here, the key point is the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the period
during which the word 'science' lost its general sense, of knowledge, and acquired the
narrower meaning we give it now. In an earlier article ('High and Low: the theme of
forbidden knowledge in the late 16th and 17th centuries', Past and Present 73, Nov.
1976) Ginzburg suggested that for many centuries the opposition between 'high 'and
'low' - one of the basic polarities around which human beings organise their percep-
tions of the world, like 'light and dark', or 'hot and cold'- was used to classify
knowledge, and in particular to define forbidden knowledge, cosmic, religious and
*This translation is by Anna Davin; the first sections, however, owe a great deal to Susanna
Graham-Jones's translation of an earlier, shorter version of the article, which she kindly made
available.

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political mysteries which ordinary people must not aspire to understand, let alone
challenge. This of course 'tended to maintain the existing social and political hier-
archy... and... to reinforce the power of the Church'. The discussion in the present
article partly relates to that: here he is looking at 'low'knowledge, the kind 'which ex-
ists everywhere in the world, without geographic, historical, ethnic, gender or class ex-
ception', but which nevertheless is peculiarly the-property of those who within a given
society are not in a position of power. It is informal knowledge, orally transmitted,
based on everyday experience (often including the accumulated experience of
forebears and elders) and careful observation, which allows the observer to under-
stand much more than can be directly seen. He characterises it as 'conjectural' or
'divinatory' knowledge.
Sometimes such knowledge is devalued - dismissed as trivial or unscientiJic - by
the definitions of the elite, who at the same time may use its association with the
powerless to devalue both them and their knowledge ('womanly intuition' is an ob-
vious example). Sometimes on the other hand the knowledge is expropriated, as he
suggests happened in a number offields in the 18th century, with the writing down and
codification offolk traditions and practice in, for instance, the use of herbs, or the care
of animals. By following (and presenting) clues, he shows us how in the late 19th cen-
tury the conjectural approach itself acquired a new academic respectability (and
usefulness to the ruling classes and the capitalist state), after long subordination to the
methods of experimental science as developed by Galileo and others in the late 16th
and early 17th centuries, which demanded that every piece of evidence be directly
observable and repeatable.
But he also casts much further back, and looks at knowledge in relation to power -
the emergence of groups controlling particular kinds of knowledge: Mesopotamian
diviners holding the secret of written communication, lawyers with their command of
case-law and precedent, and doctors able through theirfamiliarity with symptoms and
the behaviour of disease to make diagnosis and prognosis. These were later joined by
academics and experts of many kinds, and by those exercising state power, like the
British official in India who expropriated the idea of using fingerprints for identifica-
tion and turned it to the advantage of the colonialstate. Herein lies some of the interest
of his discussion of the rise of 'disciplines'-specialisations of knowledge like
medicine or law or philology (the stud)' of language), or palaeology (the study of an-
cient writing) and connoisseurship (expertise in the attribution of paintings).
These disciplines are also discussed in terms of the different paradigms of know-
ledge which he sets up, the different approaches, conjectural on the one hand, and
rigorously scientific on the other. This is of particular interest to historians, for often,
as he suggests, 'the historian 's knowledge ... is indirect, based on signs and scraps of
evidence, conjectural '; yet there is always the urge to achieve recognition as scientific.
The contradiction between the qualitative and the quantitative nags: the demandfor
more statistics, more proof, and less speculation or conjecture or indeed imagination,
is one familiar to us all.
So Ginzburg's forays into the theory and history of knowledge -in any case
fascinating - are also political, and they relate to issues of special significance for the
historian. In oursociety the status of science is higher than that of conjecture. Without
abandoning or denigrating the scientific approach, Ginzburg shows that there is an
alternative, with its own history and validity, deeply rooted in popular experience even
if sometimes misappropriated, complementing and extending the knowledge obtained
through science.

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Clues and ScientificMethod
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Ears and hands by Botticelli, from Morelli's Italian painters (1892).
The borderline between natural sciences and human sciences (or as it is sometimes
seen, between science and everything else - social sciences, arts, humanities) has long
been a difficult area, and is likely to remain so. The following pages attempt a fresh
approach to the problem. In particular we shall discuss a theoretical model, or para-
digm, for the construction of knowledge, which quietly emerged towards the end of
the 19th century in the sphere of social sciences, and which has still not received the
attention it deserves. Examining this paradigm, which came into use without ever
being spelled out as a theory, can perhaps help us go beyond the sterile contrasting of
'rational' and 'irrational'.
CLUES
Clues: the art historian
Between 1874 and 1876 a series of articles on Italian painting was published in the
German art history journal Zeitschriftfiir bildende Kunst. They bore the signature of
an unknown Russian scholar, Ivan Lermolieff, and the German translator was also
unknown, one Johannes Schwarze. The articles proposed a new method for the
correct attribution of old masters, which provoked much discussion and controversy
among art historians. Several years later the author revealed himself as Giovanni
Morelli, an Italian (both pseudonyms were adapted from his own name). The
'Morelli method' is still referred to by art historians. '
Let us take a look at the method itself. Museums, Morelli said, are full of wrongly-
attributed paintings -indeed
assigning them correctly is often very difficult, since
often they are unsigned, or painted over, or in poor repair. So distinguishing copies
from originals (though essential) is very hard. To do it, said Morelli, one should
abandon the convention of concentrating on the most obvious characteristics of the
paintings, for these could most easily be imitated - Perugino's central figures with
eyes characteristically raised to heaven, or the smile of Leonardo's women, to take a
couple of examples. Instead one should concentrate on minor details, especially those
least significant in the style typical of the painter's own school: earlobes, fingernails,
shapes of fingers and toes. So Morelli identified the ear (or whatever) peculiar to such
masters as Botticelli and Cosme Tura, such as would be found in originals but not in
copies. Then, using this method, he made dozens of new attributions in some of the
principal galleries of Europe. Some of them were sensational: the gallery in Dresden
held a painting of a recumbent Venus believed to be a copy by Sassoferrato of a lost
work by Titian, but Morelli identified it as one of the very few works definitely
attributable to Giorgione.

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History Workshop Journal
Despite these achievements - and perhaps because of his almost arrogant assurance
when presenting them -Morelli's method was very much criticised. It was called
mechanical, or crudely positivistic, and fell into disfavour. (Though it seems likely
that many who spoke disparagingly of it went on quietly using it in their own attri-
butions.) We owe the recent revival of interest in his work to the art historian Edgar
Wind, who suggests it is an example of a more modern approach to works of art,
tending towards an appreciation of detail as well as of the whole. If we are to believe
Wind, Morelli had become exasperated with the unthinking cult of genius so current in
romantic circles in the Berlin of his youth.3 But this is unconvincing. Morelli was not
tackling problems at the level of aesthetics (indeed this was held against him), but at a
more basic level, closer to philology. The implications of his method lay elsewhere,
and were much richer, though Wind did, as we shall see, come close to perceiving
them.
Clues: the detective
Morelli's books [writes Wind] look different from those of any other writer on art.
They are sprinkled with illustrations of fingers and ears, careful records of the
characteristic trifles by which an artist gives himself away, as a criminal might be
spotted by a fingerprint ... any art gallery studied by Morelli begins to resemble a
rogue's gallery ...4
This comparison was brilliantly developed by an Italian art historian, Enrico
Castelnuovo, who drew a parallel between Morelli's methods of classification and
those attributed by Arthur Conan Doyle only a few years later to his fictional creation,
Sherlock Holmes.5
The art connoisseur and the detective may well be compared, each discovering, from
clues unnoticed by others, the author in one case of a crime, in the other of a painting.
Examples of Sherlock Holmes's skill at interpreting footprints, cigarette ash and so on
are countless and well-known. But let us look at 'The Cardboard Box' (1892) for an
illustration of Castelnuovo's point: here Holmes is as it were 'morellising'. The case
starts with the arrival of two severed ears in a parcel sent to an innocent old lady. Here
is the expert at work:
[Holmes] was staring with singular intentness at the lady's profile. Surprise and
satisfaction were both for an instant to be read upon his eager face, though when
she glanced round to find out the cause of his silence he had become as demure as
ever. I [Watson] stared hard myself at her flat grizzled hair, her trim cap, her little
gilt ear-rings, her placid features, but I could see nothing which would account for
my companion's evident excitement.
Later on Holmes explains to Watson (and to the reader) the lightning course of his
thoughts:
As a medical man, you are aware, Watson, that there is no part of the human body
which varies so much as the human ear. Each ear is as a rule quite distinctive, and
differs from all other ones. In last year's Anthropological Journal you will find two
short monographs from my pen upon the subject. I had, therefore, examined the
ears in the box with the eyes of an expert, and had carefully noted their anatomical
peculiarities. Imagine my surprise then, when, on looking at Miss Cushing, I per-
ceived that her ear corresponded exactly with the female ear which I had just
inspected. The matter was entirely beyond coincidence. There was the same

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Clues and ScientificMet hod
9
shortening of the pinna, the same broad curve of the upper lobe, the same
convolution of the inner cartilage. In all essentials it was the same ear.
Of course, I at once saw the enormous importance of the observation. It was
evident that the victim was a blood relation, and probably a very close one . . . 6
FRA FILIPPO
FILIPPINO
SIGNORELLI
BRAMANTINO
IMANTEGNA GIOVANNI BELLINI BONIFAZIO BOTTICELLI
Typical ears, from Italian painters.
Clues: the psychoanalyst
We shall shortly see the implications of this parallel.7 Meanwhile we may profit from
another of Wind's helpful observations.
To some of Morelli's critics it has seemed odd 'that personality should be found
where personal effort is weakest'. But on this point modern psychology would
certainly support Morelli: our inadvertent little gestures reveal our character far
more authentically than any formal posture that we may carefully prepare.8
'Our inadvertent little gestures' - we can here without hesitation replace the general
term 'modern psychology' with the name of Sigmund Freud. Wind's comments on
Morelli have indeed drawn the attention of scholars9 to a neglected passage in Freud's
famous essay, 'The Moses of Michelangelo' (1914). At the beginning of the second
section Freudwrites:
Long before I had any opportunity of hearing about psychoanalysis, I learnt that a
Russian art-connoisseur, Ivan Lermolieff had caused a revolution in the art galler-
ies of Europe by questioning the authorship of many pictures, showing how to
distinguish copies from originals with certainty, and constructing hypothetical
artists for those works of art whose former authorship had been discredited. He