Despite a life spent mostly between Florence, Venice, and Rome, he was born in Rimini in 1939, the son of antique dealers, and had known the smell of ancient things since he was a child. Some years later, his son Fabrizio, an archaeologist, would complete a doctorate at the Alma Mater in Bologna.
He would later direct the Vatican Museums from 2007 to 2016 and in recent years had contributed to some of the most important exhibitions at the San Domenico Museum in Forlì, of which he had been the president of the scientific committee from the beginning. “My first visual formations were born there, in front of the frescoes of Giovanni da Rimini in the church of Sant’Agostino, which was my parish.
And my father’s workshop was right nearby, and I frequented it a lot as a child.” He no longer remembered the author of the first painting that had struck him as a child: “It must have been a Bolognese from the 17th century, something in the style of Guido Reni.
I wonder what happened to that painting.” The indispensable tools for an art historian, for him, were the eyes, “the right eye and the left eye”, still quoting Longhi.
To young people who wanted to pursue his career, he advised them to “look, look, wander, wear out their eyes inside the churches, inside the museums, I believe it’s the best advice.” It arrives directly in your inbox every day at 12.
February 5, 2024
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