How a Belgian painter managed to put Rosicrucianism and Theosophy at the center of the artistic stage in Belle Époque Tuscany
by Massimo Introvigne
In December 2021, I visited an admirable exhibition organized by Francesca Cagianelli in Collesalvetti, in the Italian province of Livorno, dedicated to the Italian years of Belgian painter Charles Doudelet (1861–1938). I was interviewed in a video on the exhibition prepared by La Società dello Zolfo, which had more than 6,000 YouTube views.
Last week, I visited the not less admirable atelier of Belgian art collector Daniel Guéguen, an important repository for documents and works by Doudelet, and we are currently cooperating on further projects about the Belgian artist. Doudelet’s Italian adventures may be of interest to readers of Bitter Winter too, as he put on the map in Tuscany’s artistic milieus esoteric current that in the conservative Italy of the first decades of the 20th century often met with opposition, such as Theosophy and Rosicrucianism.
Doudelet’s relation with Italy, rooted in his admiration for Italian Primitives, started in 1900, when he was charged by the Belgian government to study ancient Flemish manuscripts. Since several of these manuscripts were in Italy, he had to travel around the country and settled in Florence in 1902, as he intended to focus his work on several local libraries. He liked Tuscany, and found in Italy a Dutch-Italian wife. While working on Flemish incunabula in Florence, he exhibited his engravings in the “Bianco e Nero” (Black and White) exhibition organized in Rome in 1902.
He also befriended the circle that established in 1903 in Florence the philosophical and literary magazine “Leonardo,” which had an enormous influence on the Italian literature of the decade before World War I. The circle included novelists and literary critics Giovanni Papini (1881–1951) and Giuseppe Prezzolini (1882–1982), and painter and engraver Adolfo De Carolis (1874–1928), who was interested in Péladan’s Rose-Croix and was in touch with Rome’s Theosophical circles. Those in the “Leonardo” circle admired the mysticism of Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) and the works of the French Theosophist Édouard Schuré (1841–1929), both friends and key references of Doudelet before he came to Italy.
“Leonardo” was about promoting spiritualism and symbolism against the positivism that had dominated Italian culture in the previous decades. As Papini wrote, the presence of a well-known Belgian symbolist in Florence contributed to the end of the “positivist drunkenness,” and to the advent of a literature and an art more open to spiritual suggestions. The symbol of this change was the “Secessione di Palazzo Corsini” (in Florence) of 1904, which had De Carolis among its promoters and Doudelet among those who participated in the exhibition. One who was mightily impressed by the Secessione exhibition was Galileo Chini (1873–1956), who will go on to become Italy’s most important Art Nouveau artist, and was also interested in Theosophy and Eastern religions.
According to Francesca Cagianelli, who organized not only one but two exhibitions of Doudelet in Tuscany, at the Pinacoteca Comunale Carlo Servolini of Collesalvetti, in 2020–21 and 2021–22, 1904 marks the beginning of an “affaire Doudelet” in Italy. The Belgian artist became nationally known as the champion of artistic spiritualism and alternative spirituality, and was constantly solicited for cultural initiatives promoting mysticism and esotericism, from illustrating books to participating in exhibitions.
In 1908, Doudelet and his wife moved to Livorno and settled in the beautiful Villa Medusa, in the seaside quartier of Antignano. His national fame was confirmed by the fact that he was called to illustrate esoteric books published by the Naples publishing house Perrella, including anthologies of writings by Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788), the “Mage du Nord,” and Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743–1803). Significantly, the Hamann book was edited by the famous Italian psychoanalyst Roberto Assagioli (1888–1974), an active member of the Theosophical Society.
Livorno, who was losing its importance as a key Mediterranean port it had in the 19th century, was a cosmopolitan city. It had a vibrant Jewish community whose rabbi had been Elijah Benamozegh (1823–1900), Italy’s most important 19th-century Kabbalist. Livorno was also one of the oldest and most important Italian Masonic centers. Doudelet was himself a freemason, and in Italy he joined the Rito Filosofico Italiano (Italian Philosophic Rite), which was founded in Florence in 1909 and continued an autonomous existence until 1919. Among its founders were Arturo Reghini (1878–1946) and Eduardo Frosini (1879–?), both members of the Florence Masonic lodge “Lucifer” and Martinists.
In Livorno, Doudelet found a robust circle of spiritualist artists who met at the famous Bardi coffee shop. They were inspired by the Rosicrucian movement of Joséphin Péladan (1858–1918). Among those artists were the painters Benvenuto Benvenuti (1881–1959), who became such a close friend of Doudelet that in 1916 he moved to a villa close to one of the Belgian painter in Antignano, and Vittore Grubicy de Dragon (1851–1920), whose brother Alberto (1852–1922) owned an art gallery and corresponded with Péladan. A frequent visitor of Livorno and Caffé Bardi was painter Romolo Romani (1884–1916), from Milan, who also had Theosophical and Rosicrucian interests and had an important influence on Futurism and the birth of an Italian abstract art.
Very close to Doudelet was another painter from Livorno, Gino Romiti (1881–1967), part of a generation of younger local esoterically oriented painters that included Renato Natali (1883–1979), Mario Pieri-Nerli (1886–1917), Filippo Argenti, who signed as “Aleardo Kutufà, Duke of Athens” (1888–1950), Gastone Razzaguta (1890–1950), Gabriele Gabrielli (1895–1919), and Irma Pavone Grotta (1900–1972). As Cagianelli has demonstrated, all were deeply influenced by Doudelet.
Crucial for the formation of an esoteric artistic milieu in Livorno were also the frequent visits to the city, and exhibitions, of Florence artist Raoul Dal Molin Ferenzona (1879–1946), whose multiple esoteric interests have been studied by the young Italian scholar Michele Olzi. Reportedly, he was one of the early followers of Italian esoteric master Giuliano Kremmerz (1861–1930) and a member of Rome’s Theosophical League, a splinter Italian group led by Decio Calvari (1863-1937) that had separated from the Theosophical Society. Certainly, he lectured at the Theosophical League, and also befriended the Italian right-wing esoteric master Julius Evola (1898–1974), to whom he donated in 1921 a copy of his book “Zodiacale” with the inscription “Yours in the ROSY+CROSS, R.d.M. Ferenzona.”
When they were not busy performing bizarre rituals at Caffé Bardi, which were humorous and provocative but also included esoteric allusions, all these artists visited Doudelet, whom they recognized as a master, in Villa Medusa. Many reported that they participated there in Spiritualist seances.
One matter that is difficult to clarify is to which esoteric organizations Doudelet, and his friends from Livorno, were actually affiliated. We know that the Belgian painter was a Freemason, but unfortunately the archives of the Italian Theosophical Society, of its main splinter groups, and of the largest Martinist organizations have all disappeared during World War II. For instance, we don’t know whether Doudelet actually joined any Italian Martinist or Rosicrucian order, although some of his friends did.
The same is true for the Theosophical League. We don’t know whether Doudelet became a card-carrying member of this splinter Theosophical group, but we know that his most important exhibition in Italy, featuring fifty paintings and engravings, was organized by and at the premises of the Theosophical League in Rome in 1917. It was presented in 1916 by the leading Theosophical journal “Ultra” as “an exhibition of symbolist-occultist paintings.” At the vernissage, Doudelet was presented by Paolo Orano (1875–1945), a Socialist and perhaps member of the Theosophical League who later followed Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) in his journey from Socialism to Fascism and became internationally known as one of the founders of the modern science of opinion polls. Doudelet’s exhibition and its esoteric meaning were noted at length by critic Arturo Lancellotti (1877–1968) in “Emporium,” one of the most important Italian art journals of the time. Another important literary and artistic journal published in Rome, “Nuovo Convito,” appointed Doudelet as its artistic director in 1917.
From World War I, Doudelet inherited a changed artistic scene in Livorno. Some of his young friends had died in the war, and the city was hit by the post-war economic crisis and by bloody political fights between Communists and Fascists. Doudelet moved shortly to Rome in 1923 and then back to Belgium in 1924. He kept in touch with the Italian esoteric milieus, however, as confirmed by the fact that in 1925 he drafted the cover of the Italian edition of “An Adventure Among the Rosicrucians” by German Theosophist Franz Hartmann (1838–1912), translated and edited by Vincenzo Soro (1895–1949), a Martinist and the first bishop of the Italian Gnostic Church.
Doudelet, as he deserves, is increasingly remembered in Italy through exhibitions and books as a crucial influence, together with Ferenzona, in the birth and development of a community of anti-naturalist and anti-positivist artists interested in Rosicrucianism and Theosophy. He is also an important character in the history of Italian esotericism, particularly in Tuscany, and in the struggle to overcome the prejudices about alternative spirituality and its organizations.