Bernabò, Nascita di una disciplina, Rivista di storia della miniatura, 2017 (original) (raw)
The article deals with the origin of the methodological divergences between the approach to book illumination which prevails in particular 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 USA 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 the 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 Laurentian Library, Florence (1959). A number of Italian art historians (Pietro Toesca, Carlo Bertelli) strongly disagreed with Salmi.