Una spuntatura affrettata: arte italiana e arte tedesca di Roberto Longhi

In 1941 Roberto Longhi gave a lecture that would later become 'Arte italiana e arte tedesca'. In this work the art historian traces a parallel between two opposing styles of artistic expression: the German one, distinguished by scrupulous attention to detail and to naturalistic aspects, and the Italian one, more typically characterised by a synthesis of elements drawn from life. Longhi's analysis, starting from the Fall of the Roman Empire, traces the development of these two different approaches during the course of art history right up until the modern era. Italian artists like Giorgio Morandi and Carlo Carrà, and Germans like Otto Dix are therefore included in the scholar's treatise. It is interesting to read Longhi's text together with the text that Heinrich Wölfflin published in 1931: Die Kunst der Reinaissance. Italien und das Deutsche Formgefiihl. While in Wölf-flin's text the differences between the German and Italian styles are explained in terms of 'national' characteristics, Longhi counters this abstract interpretation with more complex interpretative schemes which tend to emphasize the role of the artists themselves in the definition of the 'national style'. A much more in-depth analysis of 'Arte italiana e arte tedesca' - for that matter never before undertaken -thus reveals Longhi's radical opposition to the book of his German colleague.