Giovanni Morelli
Giovanni Morelli ( born February 25, 1816 in Verona, † February 28, 1891 in Milan ) was an Italian politician, physician and art historian.
Life and work
Giovanni Morelli studied in Switzerland and in Germany first medicine and worked as a specialist in comparative anatomy for a while at the University of Munich. However, as a doctor he had never worked. Rather, he indulged two passions: politics and art. From a young age he frequented in learned German circles, which he began to master the German language perfectly. Although Italians, Morelli published mainly in German under the Russian pseudonym " Ivan Lermolieff " - an ironic anagram of his Italian name. He pretended that his books German translations from Russian were, for a German named John Black (the free German translation by Giovanni Morelli [ morello Italian stallion !] ) Draw responsible. He was an excellent connoisseur of contemporary German museum landscape and has authored numerous art historical essays in the journal for visual arts. He became famous by the eponymous Morel Metallic method that tried with comparative- empirical means, paintings attributed to factory critical individual artists. His main focus, he taught on the subjective characteristics of the handwriting of a painter, the best was pinned down on the representation incidental details such as the design of a pinna, the shape of fingernails, fingers, hands or feet. With his method, he examined the photo collections of famous Roman and German galleries, where he was able to uncover a number of false attributions and write many works completely different artists. In the Dresden gallery alone had because of its investigations 46 paintings will be renamed. Morelli it was also the one with accuracy attributed to the famous Sleeping Venus Giorgione. Previously, this masterpiece was fought in the catalog of the Dresden Gallery as a copy of Sassoferrato for a lost work by Titian.
From 1873 Giovanni Morelli was a member of the Italian Senate.
Effect
Many images that were attributed to date great masters, Morelli exposed as copies or fakes. So he came to the part with little enthusiasm in some known museum people, such as Wilhelm von Bode. Psychoanalysts like Sigmund Freud, however, had much use for his methods.
Morelli's writings are written in a for that time very " loose" style of speech. Also, the author did not shy in front of humorous, sarcastic swipes at the misjudgments of other art historians back. Critics accused Morelli, therefore, that his writings were not written taught enough and bad and sometimes merely contained hints. Morelli replied that he " found nothing funnier than those hollow, inflated seriousness and smug certainty of occurrence, which we believe may give the Socrates, one day even the gods should have made her smile. " He also had " no way for a rhetorician or stylists " spent but can be " always be be put to think more clearly and correctly than to write nice and shiny .... And if really like some of my friends, my rare good fortune was destined to have discovered a number of serious errors in Italian art history and also repaid, so I owe this little merit solely to the fact that I am not bound by any public employment, which I was able, my free and independent to live out studies and also appeal to my views inconsiderate. "
Morelli was friends with, among others, Bettina von Arnim, Friedrich Rückert, Peter von Cornelius, Bonaventura Genelli, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and the Prussian Crown Prince and Princess Victoria and Frederick William. His extensive art collection he bequeathed to the Pinacoteca Accademia Carrara di Bergamo.
Writings (selection )
- Ivan Lermolieff: The works of Italian masters in the galleries of Munich, Dresden and Berlin. Leipzig 1880.
- Ivan Lermolieff: Art Critical Studies on Italian painting. 3 volumes. 1890-93.