ROBERTO LONGHI E BERNARD BERENSON: UN RAPPORTO IMPOSSIBILE E FECONDO
AN IMPOSSIBLE AND FRUITFUL RELATIONSHIP: ROBERTO LONGHI AND BERNARD BERENSON

Summary/Abstract: The essay illustrates the stormy relationship between Roberto Longhi (1890–1970) and BernardBerenson (1865–1959), which started in 1912, when Longhi wrote to Berenson offering totranslate his book, Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1894–1907), still almost unknownin Italy. In reality, Longhi never carried out the promised translation, but, starting from someindications from Berenson, he developed his idea of the Italian Renaissance, in which Pierodella Francesca, rediscovered by Berenson, played a role of great importance also for Venetianpainting. In subsequent works, particularly in Officina Ferrarese (1934), Longhi continued tocontradict Berenson, above all in the field of connoisseurship. This produced a long breakin the relationship between the two scholars. While Berenson soon stopped being involvedin research and devoted himself, above all, to providing advice to museums and collectors,Longhi broadened his field of investigation to problems that nineteenth-century historiographyhad never dealt with to find a school full of students who continued their studies. Even ifconducted indirectly, theirs was undoubtedly one of the most fruitful dialogues for studying arthistory in the twentieth century.

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