BARTOLI, Adolfo
Critic and scholar, born in Fivizzano (Massa) in 1833, died in Genoa in 1894. He collaborated with Vieusseux on the *Archivio storico italiano*, taught in secondary schools from 1860 to 1868 and from 1869 at the Higher School of Commerce in Venice. In 1874 he was called to the Florentine Institute of Higher Studies to teach Italian literature. Initially devoted to philosophy, history, and politics, he later established the direction of literary criticism, “bringing it back from the most sanctified aesthetic conception to historical tradition,” integrated with a more rigorously scientific method.
In addition to publishing the *Lettere del Beato Colombini* (Lucca 1850), the *Vite di uomini illustri* by Vespasiano da Bisticci (Florence 1859), and the *Viaggi di Marco Polo* (ibid. 1863), he wrote a vast *Storia della letteratura italiana*, which he carried as far as the seventh volume, stopping at Petrarch. It is still read with pleasure today for its clear and lively style, the abundance of information, and the spirit that Bartol i infused into the narrative, though his critical criteria appear simplistic, consisting in “exalting pagan humanism against Christian asceticism” (B. Croce).
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BARTOLI, Adolfo
Physicist and chemist, born in Florence on March 19, 1851, died in Pavia on July 18, 1896; he is remembered for his work in electrochemistry, especially on the electrical conductivity of solutions, and for other notable studies on light and heat. In his memoirs on the constitution of electrolytes (1882), he posited that in a conducting liquid the dissolved substance is dissociated into parts that are made to migrate to the electrodes by the electric current and thus separated. This is the hypothesis of Arrhenius, which took his name from the scientist.