Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle

Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (born January 22, 1819 in Legnago , † October 31, 1897 in Rome ) was an Italian draftsman and painter, as well as art historian and art expert.

Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle attended the Academy in Venice to learn painting, but felt more inclined to study art history and visited the museum more often than the drawing school. He now gave up painting and went to Padua to become an engineer, but nevertheless turned back to the former, learned from Serri in Milan , then visited Tuscany and Rome and gradually got to know the masterpieces of Italian art.

In 1846 he spent a long time in Munich and in 1847 met his future friend and colleague Joseph Archer Crowe in the post van between Hamm and Minden , with whom he then met again in Berlin. The friends separated and, after spending some time in Germany, Cavalcaselle returned to Italy, where he took part in the revolution in 1848. Captured by the Austrians in Cremona and sentenced to death, he only escaped being shot by a happy accident.

In Rome he shared the dangers of the siege of Oudinot . Then exiled from Italy, he went to England through France. In Paris he happened to meet again with Crowe, with whose family he became close friends in London. Both lived here for a long time and wrote the Early Flemish painters together . While Crowe stayed in Turkey (1853–56), Cavalcaselle visited Spain. In 1856 they lived together again in London. In 1858 he returned to Italy and did not meet Crowe again until 1861 in Leipzig, where the joint work, the History of painting in Italy , was finally tackled.

Cavalcaselle wrote alone: Sul più autentico ritratto di Dante (Florence 1865) and "Sulla conservazione dei monumenti ed oggetti di belle arti e sulle riforme dell 'insegnamento academico (Rome 1875).

He lived in Rome as an inspector of arts affairs in the Ministry of Public Education.

Web links

History of Italian Painting , German edition by Max Jordan . Leipzig 1871.

literature

General Artists Lexicon, Vol. 17, 1999, p. 358.

personal data
SURNAME	Cavalcaselle, Giovanni Battista
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Italian draftsman and painter as well as art historian and art expert
DATE OF BIRTH	January 22, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH	Legnago
DATE OF DEATH	October 31, 1897
Place of death	Rome