The Lure of the Baroque in Italian Visual Culture, 1898–1945

FAIN: FT-260114-18

Laura Moure Cecchini
Colgate University (Hamilton, NY 13346-1338)

Preparation of a study on the revival of the 17th-century Baroque style in Italian art and architecture from 1898-1945.

Against dominant narratives about the chief role of the classical tradition in modern Italy, Baroquemania argues that between the country’s unification and the cataclysmic fall of fascism, Italian cultural conversations mostly revolved around the Baroque and its legacy. The Baroque was seen as a period of decline but also as one of the few experiences common to the entire peninsula. Baroquemania combines archival research and close readings of visual and material culture, with critical analyses of the Italian discourse on Baroque aesthetics. The book explores imaginative responses to the style in a variety of artistic mediums, with an eye to the debates in the academy and another to those outside of it: artists, architects, critics, and political ideologues. Intervening in the study of Italian visual culture and of the Baroque revival, Baroquemania re-appraises Italian modern art and sheds new light on the role of style in the cultural politics of the 19th and 20th centuries.

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