VENTURI, ADOLFO - RITISTO.
in art-historical matters, in 1880 he was summoned to Rome to the Ministry of Public Education, with supervisory duties and the task of reorganizing several National Galleries, as well as establishing the cataloguing of works of art scattered throughout the various regions of Italy. Having obtained the qualification to teach Art History in 1890, he began teaching at the University of Rome, where from 1896 he established a School for the advanced study of his preferred subjects. His teaching activity, carried out with increasing success for no fewer than 35 years, came in the eyes of many to assume the value and significance of a true apostolate for a better knowledge and conscious defense of Italy’s artistic heritage.
An indefatigable traveler and worker; author of innumerable writings published in the principal specialized journals of Europe and America, and especially in Gallerie nazionali italiane and in L’arte, which he founded and directed for many years, his principal work is the monumental Storia dell’arte italiana, which in 22 large vols. (Milan 1901–36) reconstructs, with architectural lines not lacking in solemnity, the development of Italian art from the beginnings of the Middle Ages to the end of the sixteenth century. Endowed with a marvelous visual memory and a surprising capacity for synthesis, he made use of these faculties in his research, without neglecting any historical or documentary element that might in any way illuminate the work of art, which he always examined in each of its formal components in order to define its style. In this way he transferred to the visual arts the method of investigation first fully applied in Italy by Francesco De Santis in the field of literary studies. A tireless teacher and animator, endowed with a profound sense of humanity, he trained at his school most of the Italian scholars who, during the last half-century, devoted their activity to the Italian administration of the Fine Arts and to teaching. He was a senator of the Kingdom.