The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Longhi, Roberto

Born Dec. 28, 1890, in Alba, Piedmont; died June 3, 1970, in Florence. Italian art historian and art critic.

Longhi attended the literary faculty of the University of Rome where he studied with P. Toeschi. From the late 1920’s he was editor of the art periodicals Vita artistica and Pinacoteca. In 1934, Longhi became a professor at the University of Bologna and, after 1945, of the University of Florence. His studies covered a wide range (the art of the Renaissance, the 17th and 18th century, and modern art), and he was a master of attribution. Longhi sought to relate art with its historical environment, and the creative process with the social and cultural movements of its historical epoch.

WORKS

Piero della Francesco. Rome, 1927.
“Fatti di Masolino e di Masaccio.” In La critica d’arte. Florence, 1940.
Viatico per cinque secoli di pittura veneziana. Florence. 1946.
II Caravaggio. Milan, 1952. (German translation, Dresden, 1968.)

References in periodicals archive

Among these, Chardin is the only artist whom Morandi cited repeatedly as an influence; the curators have justified their focus on the others by invoking the art historian Roberto Longhi, a close friend of Morandi, who was instrumental in reviving interest in both Spanish and Bolognese art for a modern audience.

Shadow boxing: Morandi's still lifes draw on his close observation of Old Master paintings, writes Samuel Reilly

Il terzo capitolo, "Gadda comico", si sofferma innanzitutto sulla dialettica di arte come visione, trasfigurazione contro arte come falsa illustrazione di Roberto Longhi, e il rapporto che lega queste teorie alia scrittura gaddiana.

Manuela Marchesini. La galleria interiore dell'Ingegnere

This exhibition was thus a most welcomed occasion, particularly given that questions of attribution have been constant since Roberto Longhi brought this remarkable painter to light in his article, "Gentileschi: padre e figlia" in 1916, and that scholars have continued to discover documents about her life.

Artemisia Gentileschi e il suo tempo (Artemisia Gentileschi and Her Times)

Rorato discusses a wide array of reviews published for the 1951 Milan exhibition curated by Roberto Longhi. He is, in fact, the true rediscoverer of Michelangelo's genius (and of the Caravaggeschi in general, as in the case of Orazio Gentileschi and his daughter Artemisia).

Laura Rorato, Caravaggio in Film and Literature: Popular Culture's Appropriation of a Baroque Genius

After graduating with a degree in art history, Lonzi, who studied under Roberto Longhi, worked as an art critic until 1970, when, having become deeply involved with feminism, she founded Rivolta Femmini le and its publishing house.

Ohara Fumai: a palazzo gallery

Roberto Longhi believes "the two Santa Maria pictures testify to the full extent of Caravaggio's genius....

Thom Gunn and Caravaggio's Conversion of St. Paul

In a sense, these findings only proved what one of Italy's foremost art-historians, Roberto Longhi, had already proposed in 1940; in a word, that the two artists may not only have known each other but may have been well aware of, and interested in, each other's projects.

The angelic friar at the Met

Si tratta pero, ed e evidente, di minuzie: e anzi doveroso sottolineare tra i pregi del libro il gusto, probabile eredita di Apollonio, per la suggestione fulminea, per l'intuizione che abbraccia improvvisa anche spazi diversi del sapere e dell'espressione umana--graditissima presenza in alcune belle pagine e quella di Roberto Longhi. Nondimeno quasi mai, mi pare, questi slanci del pensiero sono lasciati a se stessi, senza essere sorretti da una caratteristica e piacevole pacatezza argomentativa.

Carlo Annoni. La poesia di Parini e la citta secolare

The central argument had to be visual, I decided, because what I had found came from looking at the pictures (which, as art historian Roberto Longhi pointed out to me, are primary documents).

Through the looking glass: David Hockney explains how a question about some Ingres drawings led to a whole new theory of Western art. (Point Of Departure)