IMBRIANI, VITTORIO. – Writer, born in Naples on 27 Oct. 1840, died at Pomigliano d’Arco on 1 Jan. 1886. He was an art and literary critic, collector of folk songs and fairy tales, poet and short-story writer.
Unable to maintain a balanced view of moral interests, he conceived religion as a product of “hallucinated imaginative power” (letter to De Meis in Critica, 5 [1936], pp. 380–85). His Libro di preghiere muliebri is a cold stylistic exercise. An advocate of an Italian State with absolutist forms (cf. La croce sabauda and other unpublished writings, Bari 1938), he posited, as one of the essential factors for its consolidation, reconciliation with the Church.
BIBL.: Works: Critica d’arte e prose narrative, ed. G. Doria (with bibliography), Bari 1937; review by E. Cone in Letteratura, I (1937), pp. 155–58; and by E. Carli in La critica d’arte, 3 (1938), pp. 38–39; F. Flora, V. I. in Taverna del Parnaso, Rome 1943, pp. 11–51. Lanfranco Fiore.