PURISM. - The term and the attribute "purist" have been transferred into the field of the figurative arts from that of literature, in which they undoubtedly have a very precise meaning.
In the figurative arts they serve to indicate those artistic manifestations and those artists that follow an intermediate moment between Neoclassical attitudes and the more openly Romantic ones characteristic of the years between 1850 and 1850. The latter in turn preclude the architectural eclecticism and the figurative naturalistic verism characteristic of the second half of the 19th century.
The purists — painters, sculptors, architects — in the final analysis added to an imitation of the ancient models, such as was proposed by the archaeological experiences proper to the neoclassicists, the imitation of those offered by knowledge of the art of the Renaissance. Thus painters such as Tommaso Minardi, Luigi Sabatelli and Lattanzio Quarena are called purists, sculptors such as Bartolini in some of his famous works and Tenerani, among the architects with Valadier, Poletti, Sarti, Amati, Nottolini and all those who, reflecting more the ideas and aspirations of Milizia than those of Winckelmann, study and imitate more willingly the works of Vignola and Palladio than those reflecting the precepts of Vitruvius.
To the group of the purists, therefore, the Nazarenes must also be assigned, whose principal exponent, Overbeck, in 1843 signed with Minardi and Tenerani the manifesto of purism compiled by the painter and man of letters Antonio Binachini, at a time when the ideas that had effectively nourished the movement were giving way before new demands of expression.
Bibliography3 works
Emilio Lavagnino