Gebhart, Émile

GEBHART, ÉMILE. - French man of letters, b. in Nancy on July 19, 1859, d. in Paris on Apr. 21, 1908. He was a pupil of the French School at Athens and began his career as a writer with studies of Greek literature and art: Histoire du sentiment de la nature dans l'antiquité grecque et romaine (1860); Praxitèle (1864).

He later became a brilliant Italianist who contributed extensively to the diffusion of Italian thought in France. He was first a professor of foreign literatures at Nancy, then of southern literatures at the Sorbonne; in 1904 he entered the Académie française. In his works one finds both licentious texts, which earned him the nickname "Boccace Lorrain," and mystical touches inspired by Italian religiosity (St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena).

Worth remembering: Essai sur la peinture de genre dans l'antiquité (1865); De l'Italie (1876); Rabelais, la Renaissance et la Réforme (1877); Les origines de la Renaissance en Italie (1879); Introduction à l'histoire du sentiment religieux en Italie depuis la fin du XIIIe siècle jusqu'au Concile de Trente (1884); L'Italie mystique (1890); Autour d'un tiare (1894); Contes et légendes (1898); Cloches de Noël et de Pâques (1900); D'Ulysse à Pannage (1902).

Elena Bosicco