A book comes out that reconstructs the relationship between two giants of art history: Longhi and Ragghianti

The book Longhi and Ragghianti. What Remains of a Dialogue. Letters 1935-1953, edited by art historian Emanuele Pellegrini. The book takes its starting point from the correspondence of two of the greatest art historians of the Italian and European twentieth century, Roberto Longhi (Alba, 1890 - Florence, 1970) and Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti (Lucca, 1910 - Florence, 1987), who made a profound mark on the cultural history of the twentieth century.

The book offers a close analysis of their relationship, which was based on mutual esteem but was frequently broken by polemics, often violent and specious, and intends to offer the possibility of reading against the light a cross-section not only of twentieth-century art criticism, but also of the relationships within the liveliest intellectual forces animating its history.

The axis around which the book revolves is a long letter Ragghianti sent to Paola Barocchi in 1986, in which he traced his relationship with Longhi, enclosing precisely selected passages from the correspondence. Based on largely unpublished epistolary documentation, this reconstruction of the relationship between Longhi and Ragghianti in fact allows us to retrace some of the steps in the complex becoming of art-historical studies in Italy between the 1930s and the 1970s, from the co-directorship of the journal La Critica d’Arte to the teaching of Benedetto Croce, from involvement in publishing initiatives (e.g., with the publishing house Einaudi), to the organization of exhibitions and other cultural events, up to the drama of the Florence flood in 1966. The background is a different way of conceiving the role of the intellectual in relation to political horizons and civil society.

The book, in a 17 x 24 cm format with paperback binding, consists of 296 pages with 16 black-and-white illustrations. The cost is 28 euros.

The author, Emanuele Pellegrini, is associate professor of art history at IMT Alti Studi in Lucca, where he directs the doctoral course in Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage. He works on the history of art criticism, conservation and the history of collecting, particularly between the 18th and 20th centuries. He is editor of the journal Predella. Journal of Visual Arts.

Pictured: Ragghianti and Longhi.

A book comes out that reconstructs the relationship between two giants of art history: Longhi and Ragghianti

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