Birth of a New Discipline. Weitzann, Toesca, Salmi: The Path Splits

Massimo Bernabò
Birth of a New Discipline. Weitzann, Toesca, Salmi:
The Path Splits
The article deals with the origins of the methodological
divergences between the approach to book illumination
which prevailed particularly in German, American, and
French studies and, in contrast, the Italian approach. On
one side, the German archaeologists and art historians
Otto Jahn, Carl Robert, and, later, Adolf Goldschmidt
prepared the grounds for studying miniatures as text illustrations,
by investigating the Tabulae Iliacae and Odysseace,
the Homeric bowls and the Medieval manuscripts
of Terence and other classical authors. Their methodology
was adopted in the University of Princeton by Charles
R. Morey and Albert M. Friend and was codified by the
German art historian Kurt Weitzmann when he moved to
the United States and published Illustrations in Roll and
Codex in 1947. On the other side, Italian studies in book
illumination were dominated by a formalistic approach,
which was rooted in Croce's aesthetics. After the end of
the Second World War, Italian art historian Mario Salmi
promoted an exclusively stylistic approach to miniatures,
when he organized the Mostra Storica Nazionale della
Miniatura (1953-1954), published the Storia della miniatura
italiana (1955), and edited the facsimile volume of
the Syriac Rabbula Gospels in the Biblioteca Medicea
Laurenziana in Florence (1959). Nevertheless, a number
of Italian art historians (as Pietro Toesca and Carlo Bertelli)
strongly disagreed with Salmi.

Index

Alessia Marzo On the Origins of the Manerius Style: The Contribution of the Great Gloss on the Psalms Belonging to Canon and Magister Cotta of Vercelli
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Laura Violi The Bible 1 in the Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana in Lucca: Text, Images, Authorship
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Andrea Cravero The Florentine Bible of the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria of Turin
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Stefania Coniglio Word and Image in the Vita Gloriosissimae Virginis Mariae Manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Canon. Misc. 476)
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Stefano Candiani Some Observations on the Iconography of the Ambrosian Saint Bishops in the 14th-Century Berlin-Milan Martyrologium
vai all'articolo »
Marta Guagnozzi Two Illuminated Law Manuscripts at the Biblioteca Nazionale of Napoli from the “pulchra libraria” of the Monastery of Capestrano
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Eleonora Mattia A Plutarch Commissioned in Verona in The Royal Library of Copenhagen
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Marina Vitullo Three Emilian Illuminated Manuscripts at the Biblioteca di Santa Maria dei Miracoli in Casalbordino
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Cristina Quattrini Within the Influence of Giapeco and Bartolomeo Caporali. Two Choir Books for an Observant Convent in Montefeltro
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Chiara Copes The Representation of the Lombard Domestic Interiors in Cristoforo de Predis's Illuminations
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Serena Franzon Depiction of Jewellery in 15th- and 16th-Century Book Illumination. Similarities and Differences between Italian and Flemish Miniatures
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Margherita Zibordi Studies on Book Illumination in Venice during the Nineteenth Century: Cesare Foucard's Lecture at the Accademia di Belle Arti (1857)
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Massimo Bernabò Birth of a New Discipline. Weitzann, Toesca, Salmi: The Path Splits
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