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The drawings preserved in the collection of the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe di Palazzo Rosso in Genoa include three sketches concerning the involvement of Francesco Gandolfi (1824‑73) in the pictorial decoration of Genoa’s first railway station between 1859 and 1860. Except for the medallion under the entrance porch, these frescoes have been considered lost since the early 20th century. This research is grounded in the stylistic and cultural homogeneity that these drawings express, as well as in the remarkable evidence they provide about an iconographic scheme intended for a novel public space in the 19th-century city. The aim of this paper is also to outline the artistic and social environment of Genoa at the time when it became the first commercial centre of the Kingdom.

This paper investigates for the first time the restoration work carried out on the refectory of the monastery of San Michele in Bosco in Bologna, which was supervised by Alfonso Rubbiani between 1892 and 1895. In spite of the vast literature on the ‘restorer’, this work has so far been scarcely considered both because of the chronology of the building (mid-16th century) as well as because it did not entail radical changes. Indeed, the limited size of the room and the numerous documentary traces – carefully tracked by Rubbiani and his patron, the lawyer Giuseppe Bacchelli – were addressing the operation philologically. The discovery of unpublished archival evidence contributed to a more appropriate understanding of the overall work; in particular, it is possible to note how the initial intentions of the architect and the commissioner, which were based on erudite investigations that involved intellectuals and politicians of the time, did not, unfortunately, come to fruition.

This paper aims to investigate the intriguing phenomenon of costumed parties held in Rome between 1880 and 1900 through the study of photographic material. In particular, the essay focuses on two main iconographic aspects: the carnival masquerades, conceived in most cases by the painter and antiquarian Attilio Simonetti and interpreted by some members of the International Artistic Association; and the tableaux vivants, the so-called living pictures, which were figurative compositions usually set up in the patrician residences, including that of the counts Giuseppe and Luigi Primoli, who were an active part in their creation. A crucial role was also played by Henri Le Lieure, a professional photographer of French origin who was responsible for much of the visual documentation of the time.

The publication in 1885 of the Raphaelesque monograph written by the Bolognese politician and statesman Marco Minghetti gave rise to a large number of negative or controversial reviews. The attention of some detractors certainly focused on the structure and contents of the volume, on the inaccuracies and naivety that characterized some pages, but in perspective it extended to a criticism against Giovanni Morelli, famous connoisseur and Minghetti's close friend, and his controversial experimental method. Some papers survive documenting Minghetti's ‘Morellian’ training, the making of his monograph, the connection with Raphaelesque celebrations in 1883 and with events and episodes in the art market. Today these archival materials allow to open a window on a not secondary conjuncture in late-19th-century Italian culture.

Among the least investigated personalities of the milanese erudition between the 18th and 19th century, we find Carlo Amoretti (1741-1816): polygraph, naturalist, Winckelmann’s first Italian translator and Leonardo scholar as prefect of the Ambrosiana Library. Starting from the manuscripts kept at the Istituto Lombardo – Accademia di Scienze e Lettere in Milan, this paper aims to shed a first light on the observations of Amoretti around 14th and 15th century artworks in the Lombard territory. In particular, his travel diaries provide unpublished insights into the debate on medieval and proto-Renaissance art that involved some of the leading antiquarians of the 19th century, with whom Amoretti himself was in contact: from Giuseppe Bossi to Seroux d’Agincourt, from Tommaso degli Obizzi to Stefano Borgia.

This paper focuses on the artworks commissioned to Antonio Canova by Portuguese patrons in 1805: the monument to Alexandre de Sousa Holstein, ordered by his son, the young diplomat Pedro de Sousa Holstein (1784-1850), and the statue of the Genius of National Independence for the Portuguese Prince John VI. New information about these projects has been uncovered through the analysis of unpublished letters, highlighting the influence of the writer and art connoisseur Giovanni Gherardo De Rossi (1754-1827). Therefore, this article will explore the relationships between De Rossi, Canova, and Pedro de Sousa Holstein, which may play a significant role in understanding Portuguese commissions.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the events connected with the establishment of the Reale Galleria di Torino as a public museum in 1832 in relation to the training path of its first director, Roberto d'Azeglio, who was in voluntary exile in Paris, where he came into contact with artists from the entourage of David's pupils in the 1920s. The function of the museum for d'Azeglio is the same as that identified by Quatrémere de Quincy: an institution of high civic value strongly linked to the present. Contemporary art and ancient art can thus establish a close dialogue to consolidate the ethical and civic involvement of visitors.

This contribution describes, through letters and printed documents, the history of the Catalogo di antiche medaglie consolari e di famiglie romane (Naples, 1855) by the collector Gennaro Riccio, the connections with the training environment, the scientific choices and the printing techniques of the book. The illustrated plates of ancient coins were produced experimentally in relief with the galvanoplastic method and with a special metal hue simulating gold, silver and bronze, in order to obtain a very realistic view of these coins. This method of illustration was successful, but also suffered criticism; it gained fame and later it was forgotten. The spectroscopic investigations carried out on some papers for the identification of the material sand of the execution techniques (ft-ir, Raman and frx spectra) enable the reconstruction of the kind of paper used for the hollow printing, the layer of «white lead» and the composition of metal used in hues suggesting the presence of gold, silver and copper coins in relief, but reveal the absence of precious metals and especially the presence of copper particles (for gold and bronze coins) and tin (for silver coins).

The Quatre Saisons by Eugène Delacroix are among the lesser-known and hitherto little-explored works of the French artist. Designed in 1821, the paintings served as decorations for the dining room in the hôtel particulier of the French actor François-Joseph Talma in Paris. Stylistically, the series draws inspiration from ancient art, especially from the Roman wall paintings of Herculaneum and Pompeii that were rediscovered during the eighteenth century. However, rather than imitating models from the past, the artist adapts and rearranges them, thus also revitalising the motif of the four seasons that was very popular for interior decorations in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The paper discusses Delacroix’s four-part cycle as a striking example of both the rediscovery and appropriation of antiquity in nineteenth-century art. In doing so, it examines the artist’s close relationship with ancient art and the way in which Delacroix draws on models from the past and eclectically transforms them for his own artistic needs. The interest for ancient Roman art is also considered according to the role the patron Talma played in the development of the décor.

James Cavanah Murphy (1760-1814), one of Ireland’s foremost antiquarian architects, is considered as a protagonist of the Gothic and Moorish Revival. His work was a catalyst on reception and dissemination of architectural styles in continental Europe. Murphy’s essay on the origins of Gothic architecture set the stage for his monograph, Royal Monastery of Batalha (1795). Murphy’s monumental opus Arabian Antiquities of Spain (1815) was an exponent of Moorish Revival architecture. A material source for Owen Jones’s Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra produced from 1836 to 1845. This paper sets out to locate Murphy as a pioneer of developing style, ornament and colour in the Nineteenth century.

In 19th century Italy and Europe the phenomenon of religious buildings as State-owned properties and their reuse as ‘public services’ assumed the characteristics of a real urban and cultural revolution. In the case of Venice, this phenomenon consisted in an effective project of ‘regeneration’ of an historical city. Thanks to the extensive use of archival sources, this article investigates Venice as a case study of a complex urban plan that occurred massive transformations, especially considering the suppressions of religious buildings undertaken between 1805 and 1808 in the lagoon area. The papers also offer an insight on the French plan of reuse of ‘emptied’ buildings for allocating there new services.

William Beckford’s statue of Saint Anthony, sculpted by John Rossi, included one of the most valued pieces of his art collection. As this paper argues, this statue was modeled after a sixteenth century sculpture of the Church of Saint Anthony located in Lisbon. The statue played a major role at Fonthill Abbey, where it was displayed in a sumptuous sanctuary. The same occurred in Lansdown Tower, enthroned in a new oratory. After Beckford’s death, the art collector Francis Cook purchased the statue for his Monserrate estate in Sintra, where Beckford lived between 1794 and 1795. The Lansdown sanctuary was then recreated in Monserrateas an intriguing homage to Beckford.

The aim of this paper is to show how French sculpture briefly resumed the impasse in which it was stuck in the middle of the nineteenth century thanks to the reliance on fifteenth-century Florentine sculpture. An analysis of the commentaries made by the critics of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, which was the first journal to assess and promote neo-Florentine sculptors in the 1860s and 1870s, allows to better grasp the evolution and failure of the trend, as well as the various issues that were at stake, such as originality and naturalism in sculpture. This revival provided French art with a new generation of successful sculptors and inspiring works that eventually lead to the unprecedented – and short-lived – triumph of sculpture at the Exposition Universelle of 1878.

This paper focuses on the evolution of the sentiment of landscape in Gustave Flaubert’s work, both in his travel stories (in Brittany and, especially, in Near East, with the famous Voyage en Orient) and in his major literary works (Salammbô, Madame Bovary, L’éducation sentimentale, Bouvard et Pécuchet). It is part of a more general and collective research in the School of Architecture of Granada about the image of architecture, town and landscape in literature and painting.

The present paper takes the cue from an anonymous letter sent in 1844 to the camerlengo Tommaso Riario Sforza to denounce the poor conservative conditions in which Veronese’s Rape of Europe, in the Pinacoteca Capitolina in Rome, was placed. Considered one of the gems of the Roman collections, as the contemporary sources attest, especially due to the scarcity of works by Venetian masters in Rome, the large canvas was important above all as a model for young artists to exercise on colouring. Following this complaint, the painting will be taken over by the under-inspector Filippo Agricola, who will make the design for a new frame and will entrust the restoration to Giovanni Regis.

A small 19th century painting by an anonymous Master; a portrait of Dante, its subject; a note which reads ‘E. Degas’. These three elements form the basis of the study presented in this paper, which relates to a painting whose extremely high quality is self-evident, executed in the manner of old starting from an abbozzo, as not always was customary in 19th century, a painting which was in turn taken from Dante’s death-mask, which Degas among many other artists had drawn. Added to this is a small iconographical mystery: the poet’s face as depicted here is different from the usual depiction of the angry, elderly Florentine poet in exile. Indeed it shows a youth whose expression is at once enigmatic and appeased: could he be the Dante of Purgatory, known, from the Divine Comedy’s three cantiche to have been best loved by Degas? And if the author were not the youthful copyist Degas, is our painting then definitely by a French Master? Could the unique ‘young Dante’ be the work of a Nazarene or, rather, of a Purist? In short: ‘a painting, the philology and perhaps a name’.

Art-historical partners J. A. Crowe (1851) and G. B. Cavalcaselle (1865) made individual surveys in Denmark. This paper speculates on their interactions with Danish expert N. L. Høyen. It focuses on Cavalcaselle’s Danish sketches (Marciana, Venice). It also offers new perspectives on G. F. Waagen’s stay in Copenhagen (1868). It expounds on the fortuna and conservation history of the Man of Sorrow by Mantegna, the alleged Portrait of Antonio Galli and other – mostly Valenti Gonzaga – paintings now in the Statens Museum for Kunst. It investigates the 19th-century criticism of draperies by Mantegna and Leonardo. It hypothesyses the identification of a Portrait of Thomas Gresham.

In Argentina, by the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, several opera houses appeared, in both large cities and small urban centers. One example is the Teatro Muncipal in San Nicolás de los Arroyos, inaugurated on August 10, 1908. This paper analyzes the historical-artistic aspects of the theater and the imaginary it contributed to build in a provincial city at the beginnings of 1900. Some peculiarities of this theatre lead us to highlight alternative routes of artistic circulation, where Buenos Aires is not always the center and where local intermediaries have had preeminence; since a greater dialogue with the city of Rosario than with the nation’s capital was established.

This paper examines the exhibition of Islamic art at the Weltausstellung in Vienna (1873) and the Paris Exposition Universelle (1878). In particular, it explores how European officials represented both inhabitants and their traditional decorative arts. As will be demonstrated, such displays anticipated more scholarly, specialized exhibitions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries through their strategic concentration on objects from specific societies.

In May 1899, the town of Como inaugurated an universal exhibition organized for the centenary of the invention of the battery by Alessandro Volta. The exhibition, set up in honour and celebration of an illustrious citizen of Como, was not focused on electricity alone, but also on decorative arts and the silk and furniture industry, including a special section of artistic objects from the territories of the Diocese of Como curated by Santo Monti, author a few years later of a pioneering study on the arts in Northwestern Lombardy. The operation resonated with national and international press: a congress of electricians was presented at the exhibition, anticipating the famous international symposium of physics that would be held in Como in 1927 with the participation of, among others, Fermi, Marconi and many Nobel prizes in a changed political and cultural context. The exhibition halls, designed by engineer Eugenio Linati, occupied much of the area then destined to become a public garden, on which the first museum dedicated to Volta’s work, the Tempio Voltiano, was founded in 1928. The exhibition architectures were characterized by a magniloquent style in a fusion of classical, allegorical, eclectic elements, in order to provide a valuable framework for the public rituals of the inauguration in presence of King Umberto I and Queen Margherita. Mostly destroyed by a fire, from which the hall of Belle Arti survived, the exhibition buildings were quickly reconstructed and reassembled. This paper explores the multiple aspects of the great exhibition, from the architecture of buildings to the media propaganda (posters, periodicals, etc.) and investigates the connection between the promotion of historical and artistic studies on the territory, the heritage preservation, the decorative and industrial arts ranging from the eclectic style to Art Nouveau.

In the 18th century, at a time in which the taste for the Graeco-Roman past prevailed in the European arts as aesthetic solution and a new way of expression, numerous architects, included architects from Spain, travelled to Italy and especially to Rome in order to study ancient monuments. Their sketches reflect the archaeological interest of the 18th and 19th century in antiquity and they constitute an important graphic documentation of the state of conservation of the classical buildings at that time. This paper deals with the scientific approach of Spanish architects in those centuries to a single monument, the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina located in the Roman Forum. As a science whose practical implications require a perfect understanding of the models being studied, architecture deals with the analysis of antiquity with a precision which has no precedent in the mentality of antiquarians of the time, as demonstrated by the examples of the representation of the architectural plans of the Temple consecrated to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius and his wife Faustina the Elder.

In the first half of the 1860s two photographic campaigns were conducted on the Grimani Breviary (Venice, Marciana Library): the first one by Antonio Perini, who in 1862 published the photographs of 110 miniatures among the most relevant of the manuscript; the second was realised around 1864 by initiative of the French publisher Léon Curmer, who aimed at publishing thirty-six chromolithographs taken from the same miniatures. Since then the Breviary was no longer photographed. On the basis of archival documents and the analysis of some copies of those reproductions, the paper shows that the negatives obtained by Perini were employed for further editions of the images in 1878, 1880-1881, 1903 and 1906.

The paper aims to describe the process that links architecture and decorative arts with an educational role in Italy before and after the country’s unity. The considered case study is Turin, the city where both the politic way for the Italian unity and the industrial development begin. Here, from 1829, a series of exhibitions focused on industrial products take place, located at the Valentino Castle, a former royal residence that became, after the exhibition episodes the venue of Turin Polytechnic school. The mission of almost all the exhibitions, better and better specified, is to educate to the good taste all the social groups, involved in the economical, political and cultural development. The media is a mix of industrial product, artefacts and masterpieces to outline a shared idea of national identity.