Roberto Longhi

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Roberto Longhi, around 1960
Tomb of Roberto Longhi, Florence, Cimitero Evangelico agli Allori

Roberto Longhi (born December 28, 1890 in Alba , † June 3, 1970 in Florence ) was an Italian art historian whose studies of the history of Italian painting found worldwide recognition.

life and work

Longhi studied at the University of Turin and completed his art history studies in December 1911 with a Tesi di Laurea about Caravaggio , for which he had inspected the works existing in Italy on a trip and in which he thought about Benedetto Croce and Bernard Berenson argued. In his first academic year 1907-1908 he had already heard from Pietro Toesca , whose lecture on painting of the early 15th century was published on the basis of Longhi's transcript. Ferruccio Parri was roommate during his studies . Together they denounced the conditions at the humanistic faculty in the magazine La Voce in 1909 after the appointment of the Germanist Arturo Farinelli . After completing his studies, Longhi moved to Rome in 1912, where he attended the Scuola di specializzazione in art history led by Adolfo Venturi and attended high schools a. a. at the Liceo classico "Ennio Quirino Visconti" , gave art lessons. He put together a compendium of the subject matter for high school students , which he completed in the summer of 1914 and which, in duplicated form, was widely distributed beyond the original audience. It was first published in 1980 under the title Breve ma veridica storia della pittura italiana ( Short but True History of Italian Painting ), edited posthumously by Anna Banti.

In 1918 he met the collector and antiquarian Alessandro Contini , whom he would later advise on the purchase of works of art. In the wake of the Contini couple, he traveled to Europe from 1920 to 1922, especially the West with France and Spain, but also Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The records of this journey in twenty notebooks are preserved in the archives of the Fondazione Longhi. From 1922 he taught at the University of Rome as a libero docente ( private lecturer ). In 1924 he married Lucia Lopresti, who had been his student at the Liceo Visconti in Rome and who was to make a name for herself as a writer under the pseudonym Anna Banti .

In 1934 he succeeded Igino Benvenuto Supino (1858–1940) professor of art history at the University of Bologna ; Pier Paolo Pasolini was among his students . In 1937, Longhi received from Education Minister Giuseppe Bottai , also a former student of Liceo Visconti, a delegation to the Direzione generale delle antichità e belle arti di Roma , on whose behalf he was to organize an exhibition on Italian art, which could not take place because of the war . Immediately after the liberation, Longhi organized an exhibition on Giorgio Morandi in Florence , when there was no reliable information about the artist's whereabouts.

In 1949 Longhi moved to the University of Florence as a professor of art history , where he retired in 1966.

Longhi founded the art magazines Proporzioni (1943) and Paragone (1950).

Afterlife

Villa Il Tasso in Florence

In 1971, one year after Longhi's death, the Fondazione Roberto Longhi was founded, which manages its library and art collection in his former Villa Il Tasso in Florence and awards annual scholarships to art students.

In 2015, the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris dedicated a special exhibition to his art collection and his writings: “De Giotto à Caravage. Les passions de Roberto Longhi ”.

Publications (selection)

  • Piero de 'Franceschi. Rome 1923.
  • Fatti di Masolini e di Masaccio . In: La critica d'arte 25-26, July / December 1940, pp. 145-191.
  • Viatico per cinque secoli di pittura Veneziana Sansoni, Florence 1946.
    • German: Venetian painting. Wagenbach, Berlin 1995.
  • Caravaggio. Milan 1952.
    • German: The Italian painting: Caravaggio. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1968.
  • Edizione delle opere complete. Sansoni, Florence.
    • 1. Scritti giovanili, 1912-1922. 1961
    • 2. Saggi e ricerche 1925-1928. 1967
    • 3. Piero della Francesca. 1963
    • 4. "Me pinxit" e quesiti Caravaggeschi, 1928-1934. 1968
    • 5. Officina Ferrarese. 1956
    • 6. Lavori in Valpadana - dal Trecento al primo Cinquecento, 1934-1964. 1973
    • 7. "Giudizio sul Duecento" e ricerche sul Trecento nell'Italia centrale, 1939-1970. 1974
    • 8. 1975-1976
    • 8.1. "Fatti di Masolino e di Masaccio" e altri studi sul Quattrocento. 1975
    • 8.2. Cinquecento classico e Cinquecento manieristico. 1976
    • 9. "Arte italiana e arte tedesca" con altre congiunture fra Italia ed Europa, 1939-1969. 1979
    • 10. Ricerche sulla pittura veneta. 1978
    • 11.1. Studi caravaggeschi; T. 1. 1943-1968. 1999
    • 11.2. Studi caravaggeschi; T. 2, 1935-1969. 2000
    • 12. Studi e ricerche sul sei e settecento. 1991
    • 13. Critica d'arte e Buongoverno, 1938-1969. 1985
    • 14. Scritti sull'Otto e Novecento, 1925-1966. 1984
  • Breve ma veridica storia della pittura italiana , ed. by Anna Banti. Florence 1980 (written 1914).
    • deutsch Short but true history of Italian painting. DuMont, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-7701-3814-7 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mina Gregori, Maria Cristina Bandera (ed.): De Giotto à Caravage. Les passions de Roberto Longhi. Ouvrage publiè à l'occasion de l'exposition au Musée Jacquemart-André, from 27 mars to 20 juillet 2015 . Mercator Fund, Brussels 2014, ISBN 978-94-6230-073-6 ; Niklas Maak: “This tremendous moment.” In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. April 20, 2015, p. 13.
  2. ↑ The Italian original edition first appeared in La critica d'arte 1940. The translation was made from Vol. 8, 1 of Opere complete , published in 1975.

Web links

Commons : Roberto Longhi  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Longhi, Roberto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian art historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Alba (Piedmont)
DATE OF DEATH 3rd June 1970
Place of death Florence