Purismo 1820 - 1860

Purismo was an Italian cultural movement which began in the 1820s The group intended to restore and preserve language through the study of medieval authors, and such study extended to the visual arts

The term was coined around 1838 by the classicist and painter Antonio Bianchini , referring to those painters who intended to recall Italian primitive artists from Cimabue to the first Raffaello, analogous to what was happening in the literary field, where purely inspired linguistic forms To the Tuscan 14th century For this reason we can talk about them as pre-Raphaelites ahead of the letter

Inspired by the Nazarenes from Germany, the artists of Purismo reject Neoclassicism and emulated the works of Raphael, Giotto and Fra Angelico

In 1842, the official manifestation of the movement: Purism in the Arts, written by Bianchini, was signed by the painter Tommaso Minardi, the Roman sculptor Pietro Tenerani and the Nazarene Johann Friedrich Overbeck

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The group's ideals were iterated in their manifesto Del purismo nelle arti, in 1842–43 which was written by Antonio Bianchini and co-signed by Tommaso Minardi (1787–1871), the major proponent of Purismo, Nazarene co-founder Friedrich Overbeck and Pietro Tenerani

The movement flourished through 1860, and reflected the taste for revivalist styles, which in Italy was fed growing interest in Italian national identity and artistic heritage

Principal interpreter of the movement in Rome was Tommaso Minardi, of whom Bianchini will become a pupil devoted to painting, which in 1834, in a prologue to the Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts of San Luca, summarizing the terms of the debate, was the main point devaluation Of the painting of the mature Raffaello, which the purists refused, precisely because in those works they saw the germs of abstract neoclassical conventions The purists intended to replace the imitation of the classics, synonymous with falsehood, a simple, clear and convenient demonstration of the things represented, not to be confused with the poetics of the true, which will only come after and to which these artists are strangers They were also influenced by the work of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Lorenzo Bartolini

In addition to the aforementioned signatories of the Manifesto, Tenerani and Minardi, a prominent personality is Luigi Mussini, named from Paris as director of the Royal Institute of Fine Arts, in 1841, with La Musica Sacra (Florence, National Gallery of Modern Art ), Conjugated the reference to the Umbrian painting of the fifteenth century, of Nazarene ascension, with the formal lesson derived from Ingres Minardi's pupils, Antonio Ciseri and Costantino Brumidi, and students of Mussini: Alessandro Franchi, who became his son-in-law, Amos Cassioli and Cesare Maccari; But also: Bartolomeo Pinelli, Giambattista Gigola and Giovanni De Min

With the first Italian Exposition of 1861, held in Florence, the fortunes of purism began to decline, supplanted by the new styles of the paintings and the new poetic traditions

Representing this current in Liguria was mainly Maurizio Dufour He joined other artists, such as Luigi Mussini-Piaggio The greatest achievement in Genoa in this field is the church of the Immaculate Conception
https://hisour.com/art-movements/purismo-1820-1860/