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Giovanni Morelli

The name of Giovanni Morelli (here painted by Lenbach left) says today, many no longer in his lifetime was different. He was on 25 February 1816 Born in Verona, his Huguenot family was from southern France. He was an extraordinary man, he studied medicine but never practiced as a physician. But at the University of Munich, Dr. Morelli has held anatomical lectures. He was the Italian Risorgimento there and fought with weapons in hand, against the Austrians. He was also Minister of the Provisional Government of Italy at the Frankfurt Federal Assembly in 1848. German, he was perfect, he had many Friends in the Berlin and Munich intelligence. In addition, he was also a writer and translator. As it was a united Italy, he was MP for Bergamo, he was a senator and later dealt with the Italian cultural policy.

addition to the doctors Morelli and politicians, there is the connoisseur Morelli, who invented the method Morelli. His books he wrote in German under the name Ivan Lermolieff (a thinly veiled allusion to the name of Giovanni Morelli). The art of science was then still in its beginnings. was at X-ray, Wood's light, dendrochronology and FT-IR spectroscopy to determine the age of paintings not yet to think. You could use written sources to an image. If they were there. The rest was connoisseurship, something many distinguished art historian in this first phase of art history. What would have been Wilhelm von Bode and Bernard Berenson without their connoisseurship, intuition and discernment? Today even learn some by heart a catalog, a beautiful woman who accompany them in an art gallery, to impress before the pictures. Do not laugh, I know of examples of such behavior.

The best thing happened to me with an Australian professor I had betüddeln for several days and took in an art museum. While I was talking with his wife, he slipped to the next Picture Wall got a name by heart, came back and said, quite nonchalantly Ah. Dr Jay, is not that a fine Philipp Hackert over there? The thought, I do not notice that. The man was a real lie Baron, a word that now even gained a new meaning. It is likely that the hot yet to be defined for this unit and soon a gbg (1 Guttenberg).

But such "expert" I do not now. I mean even more people like Bode or Berenson (the elegant men left), the world BB called. Although often enough in his life has been wrong and the collaboration, which he received with the English art dealer Joseph Duveen , his reputation badly damaged. Opinion against complacency good money and things like that. And yet, we would probably not know all the painters of the Italian Renaissance, when Berenson did not name the pictures assigned. When Berenson has later turned away from Morelli's methods in public, he owes Morelli (which he had not seen it) but a lot.

His method formulated Morelli in old age, until then he writes a wonderful essay-style full of wit and humor, elegant parlierend. For example, about his Friend Wilhelm von Kaulbach, and the image Hunnenschlacht (left): When I was recently in Kaulbach's studio, several women were also added, and then asked for one of them, 'How many figures are probably out'? - How stupid and silly sound that question back then, so appropriately it would be understandable coming from a; could for as many pieces as there are already so many thousands are still attached without winning the Composition and would lose, but in the composition of Raphael, Giulio Romano or a Michelangelo never the case; with them every character has its importance, that is, their compositions are purely historical, But the genre in terms of Kaulbach . Do I have to say more about Kaulbach?

has Thirty years ago, the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg published an interesting article ☞ , who had the title Morelli, Dr. Freud and Sherlock Holmes. You know my method says Sherlock Holmes to Dr Watson. And Dr. Morelli is now the first in the science of art, which has a method. The even Sherlock Holmes (or his creator) impressed. The picture up there was one in Dresden for a work by Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato. And you thought it was a copy after Titian. Up came the Dr. Morelli and said that it was a Giorgione. And to this day the name of Giorgione is under the picture.

Morelli's method - and in this he is similar to Sherlock Holmes - an examination of the small details. Not the whole composition, not the big gestures, which can copy any painting from another. Morelli is the hitherto neglected details in the image viewer, hands, feet, ears. The art historian Edgar Wind has said in Art and Anarchy on the method: Morelli invites us to identify a great artist, not by the power with Which He moves us, nor by the importance of what he has to say, but by the nervous twitch and the slight stammer Which are just a little different from the quirks of his imitator .

Morelli has never claimed, and there have him do his critics misunderstand well aware that this is all. It is a precursor to seeing. If when you see the little things that you will be able to see the big ones. In the preface to the works of Italian masters in the galleries of Munich, Dresden and Berlin. A critical test Morelli says: My 'critical omissions and comments' do not make the slightest claim to somehow provide perfect. My grades are above the pictures themselves, Curran calamo, and originally made without any intention of publication; I too am well aware that my often very bold verdicts can not be considered the last word . Now this is not only a captatio benevolentiae , he means absolutely Sun

course is added for an art historian, he knows a lot of pictures and (as Sherlock Holmes) has good intuition. But the detailed analysis is said Morelli, one of the most important first steps in the attribution of a painting style criticism. Sigmund Freud was fascinated by Morelli, even if he has it in his interpretation of Moses by Michelangelo, a little misinterpreted. But he saw many similarities between Morelli and method of psychoanalysis.

You can see and work out the detailed knowledge. When I was studying art history, each student had large file boxes full of A6 postcards. And students asked themselves from constantly held up by the other person for a few seconds, a postcard from the box. In my research I test my professor, the picture is a painting pushed across the table, where everything was covered except for a few square millimeters, which showed the foot of a piece of furniture. I did not hesitate for long and said Maître de Flémalle, Merode Altar, right wing . I liked him. He had me on the day and the slightly curved give index finger of Botticelli's Venus can, I would have recognized him.

Morelli, in contrast to their German colleagues never understood as an art historian, as more of an art dealer and art collector. And for which such skills are vital. Or do they need such as Lord Duveen a Bernard Berenson, who does for him. Today is a work of art seems only to be there for it to achieve at Sotheby's or Christie's sensational prices sold on postcards or in the laboratory for its layers of paint to be analyzed. Maybe we should just re-Morelli, this brilliant outsider art history, follow and learn from seeing works of art.

Giovanni Morelli's most important writings on this website ☞ of arthistoricum accessible.