The Italian statesman who redefined Renaissance art
Writing from Rome in 1842 – ‘the only city where an artist can live as an artist, free’ – the future Italian statesman and connoisseur of Renaissance painting Giovanni Morelli (1816– 91) expressed his newly formed views on the individuality of Raphael: ‘even though he is always the same, [he] is however at the same time always another, according to the argument that is treated.’ Any reader familiar with Morelli’s life and work will immediately suspect this as psychological projection from a man who was always doubling his self, who was ‘always another’. His creation of alt...
Source: apollo-magazine.com