Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle

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

Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle attended the Academy at Venice, to learn the painting, but felt more inclination to art historical studies and visited the museum more often than the drawing school.

He now gave up painting and went to Padua to become an engineer, but still turned back to the former, learned in Milan in Serri, then visited the Tuscany and Rome and gradually learned to know by the masterpieces of Italian art.

In 1846 he brought to some time in Munich and studied in 1847 at the mail coach between Hamm and Minden know his later friend and collaborator Crowe, with whom he then met again in Berlin.

The friends parted, and Cavalcaselle returned after he had lingered for some time in Germany, to Italy, where he participated in the 1848 revolution. In Cremona captured by the Austrians arrested and sentenced to death, he escaped the firing only by a lucky chance.

In Rome, he shared the dangers of the siege Oudinot. Then banished from Italy, he went through France to England. In Paris he met by chance again with Crowe together, with whose family he became close friends in London. Both lived here a long time together and jointly wrote the early Flemish painters

While Crowe stayed in Turkey ( 1853-56 ), visited Cavalcaselle Spain. 1856 both lived together again in London. In 1858 he returned to Italy and met Crowe until 1861 in Leipzig again, where finally the collective work, the history of painting in Italy, was 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 a supervisor of art in the Ministry of public education.