Antonio Fradeletto

Antonio Fradeletto

Antonio Fradeletto (born March 4, 1858 in Venice , † March 5, 1930 in Rome ) was a Venetian literary scholar, speaker and politician and the first general secretary of the Venice Biennale, founded in 1894 .

Life

Antonio Fradeletto spent his childhood in the house of his maternal grandmother. At the age of 11 he attended the Collegio nazionale "Marco Foscarini" , which was made possible by a gifted support.

Antonio Fradeletto studied literature and philosophy in Padua from 1876 and completed his studies on November 30, 1880 with a thesis on the tragedies of Sophocles . In Padua he was supported by the historian G. De Leva. During this time he began working at Il Giornale di Padova , where he initially took care of the reviews, but also the art criticism.

After completing his studies, he returned to Venice and taught, through De Leva's mediation, at the Scuola superiore di commercio in the Ca 'Foscari , the predecessor of the University of Venice , Italian literature , and later also economic , political and diplomatic history. Soon he belonged to a group of writers, to which the later mayor Riccardo Selvatico also belonged. Fradeletto was in demand as a speaker and he lectured on politics, religion, history and philosophy. He also worked with the moderate paper La Venezia . In 1885 he ran for the first time, but without success. In 1889, however, he was successful and sat for the group around the mayor Conte Lorenzo Tiepolo in the city parliament. But he also had good contacts to his successor Riccardo Selvatico, who was mayor from 1890 to 1895.

King Umberto I and his wife Margherita at the International Art Exhibition, 1895

In 1893 he founded the Federazione fra le Società d'Insegnanti nel Veneto , which one year later had 2,500 members. From April 10, 1894, he was the first general secretary of the Venice Biennale , the idea of ​​which was born in the Caffè Florian on St. Mark's Square. Selvatico had the proposal submitted to the Consiglio communale on April 19, 1893. On April 30, 1895, in the presence of King Umberto I and Margheritas of Savoy, the first biennale, which was only gradually given this name, opened. Although at that time the reformer group around Selvatico had been replaced by the city government Filippo Grimani , who was under strong clerical influence and who managed to remain mayor until 1919, Fradeletto also survived this change of course politically. In September 1904, as a result of the general strike, he separated from his political comrades-in-arms, but managed to enter the city parliament as an individual candidate. He stayed there until 1919, famous for his rhetoric.

Between 1900 and 1919 he sat as a member of the Roman Camera dei deputati and at the same time remained the driving force behind the Biennale. However, he kept away large parts of the European avant-garde, such as the Impressionists, and especially the Cubists. After all, Klimt and Renoir were invited in 1910 and the influence of the vice-secretary of the Biennale Vittorio Pica made itself felt at this opening.

In 1906 he rejected the appointment to the cabinet of Giovanni Giolitti (as Minister of Education) for political reasons. When in February 1908 he demanded that religious education be banned from primary schools, he met with severe criticism in Venice, the spokesman for which was the Catholic magazine La Difesa . When there was a dispute over insurance monopolies in 1911, Fradeletto was accused of accepting a 20,000 lire bribe. Although these allegations turned out to be baseless, they aggravated the political climate in the city. The last biennale he organized ended in 1914.

During the First World War he campaigned for Venice, and in January 1919 he became brief minister for the areas liberated from the enemy (until June). At the beginning of the war he campaigned for neutrality in Rome, but appeared as a patriot in Venice, where he supported the war. During the war he worked with the historian and privateer Pompeo Molmenti to protect the works of art in Venice. Although he was appointed senator in 1920, he reduced his political activities in Rome more and more and instead concentrated on working in the Società d'Insegnanti until his death .

Major publications

• La volontà come forza sociale , Venice 1905.
• La fine di un Parlamento e la dittatura di un ministro , Venice 1911.
• Dogmi ed illusioni della democrazia , Venice 1913.
• Dall'alleanza alla guerra , Fratelli Treves, Milan 1915. ( digital copy , PDF)
• La storia di Venezia e l'ora presente d'Italia , in: La Lettura 3, March 1916.
• Per l'avvenire economico d'Italia , Venice 1916.
• La gioventù italiana e la guerra , Milan 1917.
• Venezia antica e nuova , Turin 1921.
• La figura storica e ideal di Dante , Venice 1922.
• Ritorno a Cristo , Rome 1925.
• L'arte nella vita , Bari 1929.
• La vita e l'anima la fantasia e l'arte dal Cinquecento al Novecento , BAri 1929.
• Giacinto Gallina , Venice 1929.

literature

• Art. Fradeletto, Antonio , in: Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Rome 1997, pp. 576-578.
• Daniele Ceschin: La voce di Venezia. Antonio Fradeletto e l'organizzazione della cultura tra Otto e Novecento , Poligrafo, 2001.

Web links

• Entry in the Portale storico of the Camera dei deputati
• Entry in the Senatori dell'Italia liberale database of the Historical Archives of the Italian Senate

Remarks

1. ↑ Daniele Ceschin: La "voce" di Venezia. Antonio Fradeletto e l'organizzazione della cultura tra Otto e Novecento , Poligrafo, 2001, p. 30.
2. ^ Jan Andreas May: La Biennale di Venezia: Continuity and Change in Venetian Exhibition Policy 1895-1948 , Berlin 2009, p. 4.