Giuliano Briganti

Giuliano Briganti (Rome 2 January 1918 - 17 December 1992) Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 art historian

Art history

Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...

.
Born 1918 in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 to Clelia Urbinati and Aldo Briganti. His father, a humanist

Humanism

Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

, was an art connoisseur and dealer but also an art historian. Aldo graduated at the University of Bologna

University of Bologna

The Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating university in the world, the word 'universitas' being first used by this institution at its foundation. The true date of its founding is uncertain, but believed by most accounts to have been 1088...

 in 1914 with a thesis on Raphaelism in Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

, under Igino Benvenuto Supino, and was subsequently Adolfo Venturi’s student at the Advanced School of art history which the latter had recently added to the Faculty of Arts at the Sapienza University of Rome.

Education

In 1936 Giuliano Briganti graduated from the classical high school

Classical High School

Classical High School, founded in 1843, is a public exam school in the Providence School District, in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It was originally an all-male school, but has since become co-ed...

 Ennio Quirino Visconti

Ennio Quirino Visconti

Ennio Quirino Visconti was an Italian antiquarian and art historian, papal Prefect of Antiquities, and the leading expert of his day in the field of ancient Roman sculpture....

 in Rome. In 1940 he received a degree in history of mediaeval and modern art from the same university, disputing his thesis with Pietro Toesca on the cinquecento Bolognese painter Pellegrino Tibaldi

Pellegrino Tibaldi

Pellegrino Tibaldi , also known as Pellegrino di Tibaldo de Pellegrini, was an Italian mannerist architect, sculptor, and mural painter.-Biography:...

. The thesis would later take the form of an actual monographic essay, published after the war in 1945 by Cosmopolita with the title Il Manierismo e Pellegrino Tibaldi [Mannerism and Pellegrino Tibaldi].

Early career

Briganti’s activity as scholar and art critic began very early in life, before he was twenty: his first writings on art date to 1937, in the monthly “La Ruota”. In 1940 he sat on the editorial committee of the magazine, together with Mario Alicata, Antonello Trombadori

Antonello Trombadori

Antonello Trombadori was an Italian art critic and journalist.Born in Rome into a family of artists Trombadori lived a happy life in the Villa Strohl-Fern studio-home of his city, coming into contact with numerous intellectuals of the era...

, Guglielmo Petroni and Carlo Muscetta, contributing various pieces until 1941. In 1938 he began to publish essays and reviews in “La Critica d’Arte”, the art magazine founded by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti and Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli

Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli

Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli was an Italian archaeologist and art historian.-Biography:A Marxist, Bianchi Bandinelli was descended from ancient aristocracy in Siena. His early research focused on the Etruscan centers close to his family lands, Clusium and Suana...

. Between 1944 and 1945 he was editor of “Cosmopolita”, a magazine founded by Alessandro Morandotti in June 1944 during the liberation of Rome. This weekly of only eight pages, a precursor of “L’Espresso”, published work by many of twentieth century Italy’s foremost intellectuals: as well as Briganti himself there were Carlo Lizzani, Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...

, Enzo Forcella, Giorgio Bassani

Giorgio Bassani

Giorgio Bassani was an Italian novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and international intellectual.-Biography:Bassani was born in Bologna into a prosperous Jewish family of Ferrara, where he spent his childhood with his mother Dora, father Enrico , brother Paolo, and sister Jenny...

, Renato Guttuso

Renato Guttuso

Renato Guttuso was an Italian painter.His best-known paintings include Flight from Etna , Crucifixion and La Vucciria . Guttuso also designed for the theatre and did illustrations for books...

, Roberto Longhi, Anna Banti

Anna Banti

Anna Banti was a novelist, art historian, and translator.- Life and works :...

, Guido Carli, Arrigo Benedetti

Arrigo Benedetti

Arrigo Benedetti , was an Italian journalist and writer. He also was the editor of important news magazines: Oggi , L'Europeo , L'Espresso , and Il Mondo ....

 and Gastone Manacorda.

Accomplishments

Giuliano Briganti would continue to write for newspapers and magazines throughout his lifetime. From 1965 to 1968 he wrote the weekly art column for L’Espresso, a position formerly held by Lionello Venturi and Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti. He was art critic for “la Repubblica” from 1976, the year the newspaper was founded, until his death. In both cases he had been chosen as critic by Eugenio Scalfari

Eugenio Scalfari

Eugenio Scalfari is an Italian journalist, editor of the news magazine L'espresso , former member of parliament in the Italian Chamber of Deputies , co-founder of the newspaper La Repubblica and its editor from 1976 to 1996.-Biography:A law graduate with a interest in journalism and politics,...

, first for the weekly and then for the daily.
Giuliano Briganti expressly named two men as his masters: Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti and Roberto Longhi. He was the latter’s secretary from 1941 to 1943, at his study in Via Benedetto Fortini 30, Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

.
From 1950, with Francesco Arcangeli, Ferdinando Bologna and Federico Zeri

Federico Zeri

Federico Zeri was an Italian art historian. He was born in Rome.In 1963 he directed the foundation of the John Paul Getty Museum of Malibu. He was a specialist in the Italian painting of the 13th and 14th centuries, and latterly professor at the Catholic University of Milan...

, he was on the editorial board

Editorial board

The editorial board is a group of people, usually at a publication, who dictate the tone and direction the publication's editorial policy will take.- Board makeup :...

 of the new magazine “Paragone Arte”, founded by Roberto Longhi, which until 1961 published important essays by Briganti on seventeenth century Italian painting. He left the editorial board definitively ten years later, in 1971.

Personal life

In 1974 he married Luisa Laureati, owner of a contemporary art gallery

Art gallery

An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...

, who would remain his life companion.
In 1949 he had qualified as a university teacher and in 1972 was asked to teach history of modern and contemporary art at the University of Siena

University of Siena

The University of Siena in Siena, Tuscany is one of the oldest and first publicly funded universities in Italy. Originally called Studium Senese, the University of Siena was founded in 1240. The University has around 20,000 students, nearly half of Siena's total population of around 54,000...

. In 1983 he moved to Rome where, for a decade, he held the chair of modern art history at what was then the Magistero and today is the Third University of Rome

Third University of Rome

The University of Rome III also known as Roma Tre University is a public research university in the city of Rome, in the Lazio region of central Italy...

.
Main Works

• 1945 Il Manierismo e Pellegrino Tibaldi, Cosmopolita, Rome.
• 1950 I Bamboccianti, pittori della vita popolare nel Seicento, exhibition catalogue, Rome.
• 1961 La maniera italiana, Rome, Editori Riuniti (also in French).
• 1962 Pietro da Cortona o della pittura barocca, Florence, Sansoni.
• 1962 Il Palazzo del Quirinale, Rome, Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato.
• 1966 Gaspar van Wittel e l’origine della veduta settecentesca, Rome, Ugo Bozzi Editore (new updated edition edited by Laura Laureati and Ludovica Trezzani, Electa, Milan 1996).
• 1969 I vedutisti, Electa, Milan (also in English and German).
• 1977 I pittori dell’Immaginario. Arte e rivoluzione psicologica, Electa, Milan (revised, updated and republished in 1989).
• 1979 At Palazzo Grassi in Venice, with Ester Coen, he organised the exhibition Metaphysical Painting and edited the catalogue printed by Neri Pozza Editore, Venice.
• In 1983, with his assistants Laura Laureati and Ludovica Trezzani, he wrote the essay on Viviano Codazzi for the book I pittori bergamaschi dal XII al XIX secolo and the book on I Bamboccianti. Pittori della vita quotidiana a Rome nel Seicento, Ugo Bozzi Editore, Rome (also in English, The Bamboccianti. Painters of Everyday Life in Seventeenth Century Rome).
• 1986 Storia dell’arte italiana, edited by Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti and Antonio Giuliano, Electa-Bruno Mondadori, Milan.
• 1987, with André Chastel and Roberto Zapperi he made a study of the Galleria dei Carracci in Palazzo Farnese, Rome, putting forward new chronological interpretations: Gli amori degli dei. Nuove indagini sulla Galleria Farnese, published by Edizioni dell’Elefante, Rome.
• 1987 La pittura in Italia. Il Cinquecento, 2 vols. edited by Giuliano Briganti, Electa, Milan.
• 1990 La pittura in Italia. Il Settecento, 2 vols. edited by Giuliano Briganti, Electa, Milan.
• 1991 he published the general catalogue of De Pisis’ paintings: De Pisis: Catalogo Generale, Electa, and Il viaggiatore disincantato, Einaudi, Turin, a selection of his writings in “la Repubblica” on artists from the 18th century to the contemporary age.

Writings published after 1992

• 1993 Laura Laureati and Ludovica Trezzani published a two volume complete catalogue of the paintings and frescoes (up to 1870) in the Palazzo del Quirinale. The work begun and carried on by Giuliano Briganti was entitled Il Patrimonio artistico del Quirinale. Pittura antica. La decorazione murale I, La Quadreria II, Electa, Milan.

• 1995 Giuliano Briganti, La riconquista dell’Olimpo nel secolo XV in Italia, Spanish Academy of History, Archaeology and Fine Art, Rome, limited edition in 600 numbered copies. Giuliano Briganti, edited by Luisa Laureati, in “Quaderni del Seminario di Storia della Critica d’Arte”, Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa.

• 2002 Giuliano Briganti, Racconti di storia dell’arte. Dall’arte medievale al Neoclassico, edited by Luisa Laureati Briganti, Skira, Milan.
• 2003 Giuliano Briganti, Via Margutta, Edizioni della Cometa, Rome.
• 2007 Giuliano Briganti, Affinità, edited by Laura Laureati, Archinto, Milan.

Bibliography

• 1990 Scritti in onore di Giuliano Briganti, edited by M.Bona Castellotti, Laura Laureati, Anna Ottani Cavina and Ludovica Trezzani, Longanesi, Milan.
• 2003 Laura Laureati, Una “università privata: un sogno di Giuliano Briganti, in a number of “Paragone” dedicated to Giuliano Briganti, LIV, III series, 47-48, pp. 114–130. Giuliano Briganti: un carteggio con Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti (1937–1946), Ibid., pp. 3–78 (with foreword by Laura Laureati and a note by Riccardo Donati). Enrico Crispolti, La poetica di Giuliano Briganti, Ibid., pp. 81–90. Ester Coen, Giuliano Briganti e l’arte contemporanea, Ibid., pp. 91–99. Pierre Rosenberg, A Giuliano Briganti (1918–1992), Ibid., pp. 131–134.
• 2009 Laura Laureati, Giuliano Briganti, storico dell’arte moderna e contemporanea, in Alessandro Masi, L’occhio del critico, Vallecchi, Florence, pp. 132–146.
• 2010 Laura Laureati, La biblioteca e la fototeca di Giuliano Briganti in Via della Mercede 12a, Rome, in L’arte senese al tempo del Costituto. Libri e fotografie del Fondo Giuliano Briganti e dell’Istituto d’Arte Duccio di Boninsegna, edited by Azelia Batazzi, Lucia Simona Pacchierotti and Beatrice Pulcinelli, Monte dei Paschi di Siena Foundation.

Giuliano Briganti’s Library and Photo Library, today owned by the Municipality of Siena, are housed in Palazzo Squarcialupi, Siena

Siena

Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...

, which is part of the Santa Maria della Scala

Santa Maria della Scala (Siena)

Santa Maria della Scala is a former hospital, now turned into a museum complex, in Siena, Tuscany, Italy. Located next to the city's cathedral, it is one of the most ancient European hospitals....

complex. The books and the photographs of art works are accessible to the public. Information available online at the Comune di Siena website, Biblioteca Giuliano Briganti.