Delacroix contre Girodet: réflexions autour d’un poème méconnu

This article focuses on a somewhat neglected satirical poetic work by Eugène Delacroix, devoted to the painting Pygmalion and Galatea by Anne-Louis Girodet (first exhibited at the 1819 Salon). The text dates back to 1824, the year of both Géricault’s and Girodet’s deaths. After analysing the text and its context, the author explores a new interpretative hypothesis: the work could well be seen as a reaction Delacroix developed against anti-romantic neoclassical positions that, on the occasion of Girodet’s funeral, were fiercely expressed by Gros and Gérard.

Antonio Morassi, Giulio Carlo Argan, Roberto Longhi e la riscoperta del Caravaggio di casa Balbi a Genova (1939-1952)

Antonio Morassi’s archive and photographic library kept in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University in Venice preserves a series of documents relating to the rediscovery of the Caravaggio of Casa Balbi, which took place during the World War II. Antonio Morassi had a look to the Conversion of Saint Paul in the Genoese palace of Balbi and studied it to publish it. The picture that Morassi sent to the publishers was however showed to Giulio Carlo Argan, who was also writing a monograph about Caravaggio. Argan pledged to acknowledge the discovery to Morassi. But, Argan published report about the painting in an article in 1943. However, Roberto Longhi intervened, denying that it was a Caravaggio pain- ting. Morassi, who discovered this painting, published it on the Emporium magazine only in 1947, after World War II, is therefore not often recognized as the discoverer of this masterpiece.

Il teatro è arte visiva. Le premesse critiche di Toti Scialoja per una moderna concezione della scena

Il teatro è arte visiva is an undated and unpublished text by Toti Scialoja. It has been found in the archive of the artist among other documents related to his activity of teacher at the Academy of Fine Art in Rome. The text could be seen as a proof of Scialoja’s lasting interest in the reflection on the role of the arts in the mise en scène. In particular, he started to propose his own opinion inside of Italian culture debate since the Forties. Some texts on this matter have been published between 1944 and 1946 on “Mercurio”, and in 1949 on “L’Immagine”. Considering those precedents, Il teatro è arte visiva could be considered a summa of the principles that Scialoja already expressed in those previous texts, but actualized according to new experiences, like Grotowski’s Poor Theatre. This mention suggests to propose a dating of the document subsequent the second half of the Sixties and to refer it to his experience as Professor of Scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts. It consents to highlight how he educated his students in light of the most important and innovative experimentation scenic of Avant-gardes, instilling in them the importance of considering theatre like a visual art, formally independent from the single contribution of paint, sculpture, and architecture.

L’artista satirico nell’epos: Giandomenico Tiepolo e il cavallo di Troia

This study reconsiders a remarkable but overlooked work by Giandomenico Tiepolo, the so-called Building of the Trojan Horse in the collections of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art at Hartford. Starting from a fresh look to the content, the author identifies a slightly different iconography, as well as the presence of an enigmatic self-portrait of the painter seen from the back. The possible precedents in the tradition of the artists’ self-portraits in Venice are investigated, and an interpretation is offered in connection with the peculiar satirical themes of Giandomenico’s art

Un’amicizia (poco) disinteressata: il rapporto tra Vittorio Cini e Bernard Berenson

Vittorio Cini (1885-1977) was one of the most voracious collectors of the Italian twentieth century. When he died, his collection, divided mainly between the rooms of the Monselice castle and the Venetian house in Campo San Vio, had passed through thousands of different objects from different periods. Weapons and ivories, miniatures, books, sculptures, but above all old paintings, only partially still preserved under the label of the Cini collection. Paintings almost always of the highest level, chosen with the guidance of the expert eye of connoisseurs – from Nino Barbantini to Federico Zeri – with whom the Count of Ferrara has maintained constant relations. Among these, to Bernard Berenson is always recognized a primary role, given the long years of acquaintance and friendship. But they never investigated properly the start dates and the dynamics of a relationship, first of all staff, which had the necessary and predictable effects on the orientation of the tastes of the collector and its buying and selling opportunities. This study offers an opening in this regard. The comparison between the materials preserved in the archive of Cini heirs, the Giorgio Cini Foundation and the Library of I Tatti, allowed to carry out an initial picture of the true extent and duration of a friendship never too disinterested and suspicious traits, but sincere, which linked Berenson to the entire Vittorio Cini family, and to illustrate with some concrete examples when and how the scholar could intervene with his always sought-after judgment on the purchases made for the collection.

Recensione a Carlo Celano, Notizie del bello, dell’antico e del curioso della città di Napoli

The author presents the review of the recent critical edition conducted by Gianpasquale Greco on the Notizie of Carlo Celano. They are considered the philological and critical choices of Greco and reconstruction of the events of the descriptive odeporico genre since the sixteenth century Neapolitan area.

«Unhistoried and unconsidered». Percorsi di riscoperta e tutela tra Lario e Valtellina sulle orme di Edith Wharton e Bernard Berenson 1897-1912

The article examines the relationships between the description of some Lombard localities contained in Edith Wharton’s Italian Backgrounds (1905). In particular, attention is focused on the parallel events of rediscovery and conservation of the artistic heritage on Lake Como and in the pre-Alpine valleys between the publication of The Decoration of Houses (1897), the exhibition of sacred art at the Volta exhibition in Como (1899) and the preservation activity of Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri and Corrado Ricci. In addition, the essay examines the discovery of Renaissance painting in Valtellina (from Gaudenzio Ferrari to Cipriano Valorsa) by Bernard Berenson, hypothesizing that the American connoisseur may have been pushed on this research paths also thanks to Edith Warthon’s books and frequentation.

Pittura analitica e analiticità della pittura. Per un diverso approccio interpretativo

The present essay aims at tracing the critical debate developing in the 1970s in Italy around so-called Pittura analitica (Analytic Painting), while identifying Filiberto Menna and Giorgio Cortenova as two of the most relevant critical voices of the time. It also aims at clarifying such a label, inviting readers to rethink traditional categories and chronologies while reassessing the general status and role of the painting medium.

Le Grand Musée. Altri sguardi sul Louvre

Beyond the much discussed but certainly meaningful experience of the opening in 2017 of the Abu Dhabi satellite museum, a controversial example of a global museum, the Louvre has not lost in the passage between the two centuries the ability to present itself as an updated museological research space. Proof of this is the series of exhibitions Parti pris (1990-1998) where, thanks to the direction of the “dissident” art historian Régis Michel, intellectuals of various backgrounds – Jacques Derrida, Peter Greenaway, Jean Starobinski, Hubert Damisch, Julia Kristeva – have reinterpreted the collections of the museum through exhibitions of an overtly subjective and undisciplined nature. So, the Parti pris project was, in Michel’s words, a “zone of freedom and break” in the heart of the institution, questioning not the prestige but rather its too rigid and monumental identity. This proposal was partly taken up by Jean-Marc Terrasse, director of the auditorium and cultural events of the Louvre from 2005 to 2014, with his “special invitations” for protagonists of international culture, to build alternative and eccentric narratives through history, works and spaces of the Louvre. This essay, which analyzes in particular the contribution of the nobel for literature J.M.G. Le Clézio, curator of the project Les musées sont des mondes (2011), highlights the critical value and the urgency of these exhibition proposals thanks to which the museum becomes the driving force of a reflection which, overcoming conventional disciplinary distinctions, is able to urge the public to new views and different aesthetic and ethical perspectives.

Review of Leo Steinberg, Michelangelo’s painting: selected essays

Leo Steinberg, Michelangelo’s painting: selected essays, is an anthology of the author’s published and unpublished essays on the artist. The book is a volume in the collected essays of Steinberg, edited by his long-time assistant, Sheila Schwartz.