PURISMO. — The term and the designation p. and purist were transferred to the field of the figurative arts from the literary sphere, in which they undoubtedly have a very precise meaning.
In relation to the figurative arts, they designate those artistic manifestations and those artists who occupy an intermediate position between the neoclassical attitudes and the more explicitly Romantic ones characteristic of the years between 1850 and 1850. The latter, in turn, paved the way for the architectural eclecticism and the naturalistic verism in the figurative arts characteristic of the second half of the 19th century.
The Purists—painters, sculptors, and architects—in the final analysis, added to an imitation of ancient models, as proposed by the archaeological investigations characteristic of the Neoclassicists, an imitation of those offered by knowledge of Renaissance art. 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; and, among architects, Valadier, Poletti, Sarti, Amati, Nottolini, and all those who, reflecting Milizia’s ideas and aspirations more than Winckelmann’s, studied and imitated the works of Vignola and Palladio more willingly than those reflecting the precepts of Vitruvius.
The Nazarenes must therefore also be assigned to the group of the Purists; their principal exponent, Overbeck, in 1843 signed with Minardi and Tenerani the manifesto of p. drawn up by the painter and man of letters Antonio Binachini, at a time when the ideas that had actually nourished the movement were yielding before new demands for expression.