VENTURI, ADOLFO. - Born in Modena on 4 September 1856, died at Santa Margherita Ligure on 10 June 1941.
He is the greatest of the modern historians of Italian art. Self-taught, he began his research at a very young age in the archives and in the Galleria Estense in Modena, of which, at barely twenty-two, he was appointed inspector. Having very quickly acquired well-deserved authority in the field of studies arrested for "Jacobinism," but he was very soon restored to liberty. For over a decade he was minister of Italy in Switzerland, where he worked energetically on behalf of the Catholic cult; to the discharge of his duties he alternated his beloved studies, in which he achieved European renown. Having returned to private life in 1813, he took up residence in Reggio, where he remained undisturbed even after the ducal restoration; in this last phase of his life he continued to cultivate physics, publishing numerous, highly esteemed works, especially in the field of hydraulics and the history of science. He linked his name to an instrument - the "tube" of V. - widely used in hydraulics.
Bibliography5 works
Renzo U. Montini
VENTURI, ADOLFO - art historian.
In 1880 he was called to Rome to the Ministry of Public Education with inspection duties and with the task of reorganizing certain national Galleries as well as setting up the work of cataloguing the works of art scattered throughout the various regions of Italy. Having obtained in 1890 the libera docenza in Art History, he began at the University of Rome, where from 1896 he created a School for the furtherance of his favorite studies, a teaching activity that, carried on with growing success for fully 35 years, in the eyes of many took on the value and meaning of a true apostolate for a better knowledge and conscious defense of the Italian artistic heritage.
A tireless traveler and worker; author of innumerable writings published in the principal specialized journals of Europe and America and particularly in the Gallerie nazionali italiane and in L'Arte, which he founded and directed for a long series of years, his principal work is constituted by the monumental Storia dell'arte italiana, which in 22 large vols. (Milan 1901-36) reconstructs, with architectural lines not devoid of solemnity, the vicissitudes of Italian art from the beginnings of the Middle Ages to the end of the 16th century. Endowed with a marvelous visual memory and a surprising faculty of synthesis, he availed himself of these in his research while yet neglecting no element of a historical or documentary character that could in any way illuminate the work of art, which he always investigated in its every formal element in order to define its style. Thereby he transferred the method of investigation, first fully implemented in Italy by Francesco De Sanctis in the field of literary studies, into that of the figurative arts. A master and tireless animator, endowed with a profound sense of humanity, he trained in his school the majority of the Italian scholars who in the last fifty years have devoted their activity to the Italian administration of Fine Arts and to teaching. He was a senator of the Kingdom.