Lionello Venturi

Lionello Venturi

Lionello Venturi (25 April 1885, Modena – 14 August 1961, Rome) was an Italian historian and critic of art.

Life

The son of art historian Adolfo Venturi, Lionello Venturi was appointed Professor of Art History at the University of Turin in 1919. One of his first students there was Mary Pittagula, who wrote her thesis on Fromentin under Venturi.^[1]

Though appointed his father's successor in the art history chair at the University of Rome in 1931, he refused to swear allegiance to Benito Mussolini's regime in August 1931 and so was forced to resign from the university. He left Italy, initially moving to Paris, where he wrote, advised art dealers and museum curators, and produced the first catalogue raisonée of Paul Cézanne. After the establishment of the Vichy regime, he emigrated to the United States, living in New York City until 1945 and lecturing at a range of American universities.^[2] After the war he returned to Italy, taking up his chair in art history at Rome.

Lionello Venturi was influenced by the idealism of Benedetto Croce as well as the writing of Alois Riegl and Heinrich Wölfflin.^[1]

His son was the historian Franco Venturi.

Works

• Il gusto dei primitivi [The Taste of the Primitives], 1926
• Cézanne, son art, son oeuvre, Paris: P. Rosenberg, 1935
• History of art criticism, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1936.
• Camille Pissarro: son art, son oeuvre. Paris: P. Rosenberg, 1939.
• Les archives de l'Impressionisme, Paris and New York: Durand-Ruel, 1939
• Art Criticism Now, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1941
• Painting and painters; how to look at a picture, from Giotto to Chagall, 1945
• Italian painting, 3 vols, 1950-52
• Piero della Francesca: biographical and critical studies, 1954
• The sixteenth century, from Leonardo to El Greco, 1956
• Chagall: biographical and critical study, 1956
• Four steps toward modern art: Giorgione, Caravaggio, Manet, Cézanne, 1956
• Rouault: biographical and critical study, 1959

References