Roberto Longhi

Roberto Longhi ( born December 28, 1890 in Alba, † June 3, 1970 in Florence ) was an Italian art historian, whose works on Piero della Francesca and Caravaggio found worldwide recognition.

Life and work

Longhi studied at the University of Turin and finished his art history studies in December 1911 with a Tesi di Laurea about Caravaggio from, for which he had taken on a journey in Italy, the works in inspection and in which he himself with thoughts of Benedetto Croce and Bernard Berenson dealt. Already in the first academic year 1907-1908 he had heard at Pietro Toesca whose lecture on the painting of the early 15th century has been published on the basis of the transcript Longhi. Roommate during the study period was Ferruccio Parri. Together, they denounced in 1909 in the journal La Voce the conditions at the Humanistic Faculty after the appointment of Arturo Farinelli Germanists to. After studying Longhi moved in 1912 to Rome, where he headed by Adolfo Venturi Scuola di specializzazione in art history and visited high schools issued to art classes. For high school students, he put together a compendium of the curriculum, which he completed in the summer of 1914 and in mimeographed form was far beyond spread beyond the original recipients. Under the title Breve storia della ma veridica pittura italiana ( Short but true story of Italian painting ) was first published it in 1980, posthumously edited by Anna Banti.

In 1918 he met the collector and antiquarian Alessandro Contini know, he should advise later on the purchase of works of art. In the wake of the couple Contini he toured 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. Since 1922 he has taught at the University of Rome as a libero docente ( Privatdozent ). In 1924, he married Lucia Lopresti who had been his student at the Liceo Visconti in Rome and should be recognized as a writer under the pseudonym Anna Banti a name.

It was founded in 1934 as the successor to Iginio Benvenuto Supino Professor of Art History at the University of Bologna; to his students belonged to Pier Paolo Pasolini. In 1937 Longhi by Education Minister Giuseppe Bottai, also a former student of Liceo Visconti, a secondment to the Direzione generale delle antichità e belle arti di Roma, on whose behalf he was to organize an exhibition of Italian art, which then could not take place because of the war.

Immediately after the liberation organized Longhi in Florence an exhibition of Giorgio Morandi, when there were no confirmed news about the whereabouts of the artist.

1949 moved Longhi as a professor of art history at the University of Florence, where he became professor emeritus in 1966.

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

Fondazione Roberto Longhi

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

Publications

Original Works

• Opere Complete. Florence in 1963.
• Breve storia della ma veridica pittura italiana. (1914 ) Florence 1980.
• Piero de ' Franceschi. Rome 1923.
• Caravaggio. Milan 1952.

Translations

• The Italian Painting: Caravaggio. Publisher of Art, Dresden 1968.
• Venetian painting. Wagenbach, Berlin 1995.
• Short but true story of Italian painting. DuMont, Cologne 1996.
• Masolino and Masaccio. Wagenbach, Berlin 1992, 2011.