Influence of Pre-Raphaelitism on Fin-De-Siecle Italy: Art, Beauty and Culture

by Giuliana Pieri

This volume is the first comprehensive study of the influence of English Pre-Raphaelitism on Italian art and culture in the late nineteenth century. Analysis of the cultural relations between Italy and Britain has focused traditionally on the special place that Italy had in the British imagination, but the cultural and artistic exchanges between the two countries have been much misunderstood. This book aims to correct this imbalance by placing Pre-Rapahelitism in its European context. It explores the nature of its influence on Italy, how it was transmitted, and how it was manifested, by focusing on the role of Italian Anglophiles, the English communities in Florence and Rome, the writings of Gabriele D'Annunzio, and a number of Italian artists active in Tuscany and Rome. The works of Cellini, Ricci, Gioja, De Carolis, and Sartorio in particular fully demonstrate the impact of Pre-Raphaelitism on the young Italian school of painting which found in the English movement an ideal link with its glorious past on which it could build a new artistic identity. These artists show that English Pre-Raphaelitism was one of the most powerful single influences on fin-de-siecle Italian culture.

Genres: Art History

199 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2007

Reviews

[Bertrand · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was not hugely interested in pre-raphaelites before I started the book : I suffer from that widespread syndrom of having been enthusiastic about them as a goth teenager, and now being unable to see it as anything but navel-gazing covered with a thin layer of mystical/nostalgic mumbo-jumbo. No doubt this comes from my ignorance on the subject and my discomfort at my own early lyrical outbursts, as many intelligent people have shown they knew better!
I was a lot more interested in the italian fin-de-siecle, however, although I knew relatively little about it having mostly read into early XXth century liberal italy. Unfortunately, after pushing myself throughout the book, I cannot say I know a whole lot more:
The book is a dry historical study of the spread of pre-raphaelite aesthetics throughout Italy from the 1860s onward, which the author, clearly extremely knowledgeable and competent in both fields, is at pain to distinguish from other artistic currents like academic painting, Fortuny's school, aestheticism, symbolism, etc. Addressing a public of specialist she does not bother to quote the defining characteristics of pre-raphaelite painting, which becomes a bit of an issue when you note that, in her own analysis, virtually all of the aforementioned schools (and some earlier ones too, like the purists) where turning to late-medieval and early renaissance painting (that is, pre-dating Raphael) at the time.
How, then, can she manage to trace the influence of the english model in a country which hold many of the historical examples, you might wonder? Well that's where she does her job well, through excruciating analysis of correspondance, diaries, journal articles, travels and exhibition.
All in all I would say that this is probably a great book for the expert, but that for the dabbler, the absence not only of pictures (and many of the paintings she refers to cannot seemed to be found online either) save for a few B&W tiny reproductions, but also of much non-factual content makes it a rather painful and difficult read.
Nonetheless I got the infos I was looking for - some basics about Adolfo de Karolis, and a general picture of the fin-de-siecle milieu, but I wont try and read Pieri's books again until I get my PHD in XIXth century art history.