La fortune des primitifs, de Vasari aux néo-classiques (book)

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La fortune des primitifs, de Vasari aux néo-classiques / The fortune of the primitives, from Vasari to the neo-classics (book) by Giovanni Previtali. 1994. Editions Gérard Monfort. Good condition. 230 pages. Book in French.

G. Previtali participates in the reflection on the relationships between criticism and the history of art, and provides new explanations for the rediscovery of primitives: finding “pre-Raphaelite” paintings in Italian collections from the first half of the 18th century , it shows that, far from satisfying the criteria of taste, these works served to illustrate the progression of art.

“What happened, between the 16th and 18th centuries, to Giotto and Duccio, to Cimabue and Giovanni Pisano? What has been thought and written about Masaccio and Botticelli, about Carpaccio or Donatello? What fate suffered the paintings and sculptures of the 13th and 14th centuries, the frescoes, the reliefs of the Quattrocento, which the great stylistic mutations recorded now made appear as if from another time?

Thus, in his preface to The Fortune of the Primitives, Enrico Castelnuovo, by retracing its genesis through the theoretical issues of this strong moment in the historiography of art in Italy, poses the problem that the work seeks to elucidate.

After Roberto Longhi’s Piero della Francesca, of which he was a student, after Lionello Venturi’s Storia della critica d’arte, Giovanni Previtali participates in the reflection on the relationships between criticism and the history of art. His conclusions provide new explanations for the rediscovery of primitives: finding “pre-Raphaelite” paintings in Italian collections from the first half of the 18th century, he shows that, far from satisfying the criteria of taste, these works served to illustrate the progression of art. Scholarly collectors therefore preceded the art historians of the late 18th century. From the disdain displayed for evidence from the “Gothic” era to the passion of collectors and the recovery by certain schools of 19th century painting, the rediscovery of the primitives involves the interest of local specialists or great ecclesiastical and secular figures. . French travelers (Montesquieu, De Brosses), who sometimes settled in Italy like the Chevalier d’Agincourt, as well as English people, spread outside the peninsula the progress made in the knowledge and appreciation of the art of the Italian primitives. .

“This book not only offers a new image of the primitives through the history of their reception, it offers a reading of the 18th century as a founding moment in the modern history of art.

Feel free to check out the additional photos at the top left, thank you!

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