Federico Zeri (12 August 1921 – 5 October 1998) was an Italian art historian specialised in

Italian Renaissance painting Italian Renaissance painting is the painting of the period beginning in the late 13th century and flourishing from the early 15th to late 16th centuries, occurring in the Italian Peninsula, which was at that time divided into many political stat ...

. He wrote for the Italian newspaper '' La Stampa'', and was a well known television-personality in Italy. Zeri was born in central

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, and graduated from

Sapienza University of Rome The Sapienza University of Rome ( it, Sapienza – Università di Roma), also called simply Sapienza or the University of Rome, and formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a public research university located in Rome, Ita ...

in 1945. Not wishing to enter the academic world, he worked in the Ministry of Public Education until 1952. In 1948 he was nominated director of Galleria Spada in Rome. In 1963 Zeri was among the founding members of the

Getty Villa The Getty Villa is at the easterly end of the Malibu coast in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. One of two campuses of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Villa is an educational center and museum dedi ...

's board of trustees. He left in 1984, after his argument that the

Getty kouros The Getty kouros is an over-life-sized statue in the form of a late archaic Greek kouros. The dolomitic marble sculpture was bought by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, in 1985 for ten million dollars and first exhibited there i ...

was a forgery and should not be bought, was rejected. Following this episode, Zeri became notorious for denouncing

forgeries Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally refers to the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific intent to defraud anyone (other than themself). Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be forbid ...

and mis-attributions. In 1984, when four students in Livorno hoaxed both the city and Modigliani experts into believing that a group of sculptures they have made were authentic, he was one of the few who called on their amateurish style. Zeri also argued that some of the frescoes in the

Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi The Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi ( it, Basilica di San Francesco d'Assisi; la, Basilica Sancti Francisci Assisiensis) is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Order of Friars Minor Conventual in Assisi, a town in the Umbria region in ce ...

, were made by of

Pietro Cavallini Pietro Cavallini (1259 – c. 1330) was an Italian painter and mosaic designer working during the late Middle Ages. Biography Little is known about his biography, though it is known he was from Rome, since he signed ''pictor romanus''. His fir ...

and not

Giotto Giotto di Bondone (; – January 8, 1337), known mononymously as Giotto ( , ) and Latinised as Giottus, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the Gothic/ Proto-Renaissance period. G ...

. Zeri's insistence that a painting can be attributed to an artist, by means of a careful examination or

connoisseur A connoisseur (French traditional, pre-1835, spelling of , from Middle-French , then meaning 'to be acquainted with' or 'to know somebody/something') is a person who has a great deal of knowledge about the fine arts; who is a keen appreciator o ...

ship, without resort to external evidence such as documents or dates, met controversial responses. Zeri edited and researched

catalog Catalog or catalogue may refer to: *Cataloging **'emmy on the 'og **in science and technology ***Library catalog, a catalog of books and other media ****Union catalog, a combined library catalog describing the collections of a number of libraries ...

ues of the collections of many institutions, including the Frederick Mason Perkins collection in the

Sacro Convento The Sacro Convento is a Franciscan friary in Assisi, Umbria, Italy. The friary is connected as part of three buildings to the upper and lower church of the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi, which contains the body of Saint Francis. St. Franci ...

in Assisi;

Accademia Carrara The Accademia Carrara, (), officially Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti di Bergamo, is an art gallery and an academy of fine arts in Bergamo, in Lombardy in northern Italy. The art gallery was established in about 1780 by , a Bergamasco col ...

; Museo Civico Amedeo Lia, La Spezia; Galleria Spada, Rome;

The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, New York;

The Walters Art Museum The Walters Art Museum, located in Mount Vernon-Belvedere, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is a public art museum founded and opened in 1934. It holds collections established during the mid-19th century. The museum's collection was amassed ...

, Baltimore. and Narodna Galerija in

Ljubljana Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center. During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the are ...

(with Ksenija Rozman). Zeri died at the age of 77, in his villa in

Mentana Mentana is a town and ''comune'', former bishopric and present Latin Catholic titular see in the Metropolitan City of Rome, Lazio, central Italy. It is located north-east of Rome and has a population of about 23,000. History Mentana's name in ...

on 5 October 1998. He bequeathed his estate to the

University of Bologna The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in continu ...

, complete with his

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

and papers, a collection of about 400 ancient

inscription Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the w ...

s and a grand collection of photographs. Most photographs documented artworks from Italy and elsewhere, some done by himself and some acquired from other collections, including part of the collection of

Evelyn Sandberg-Vavalà Evelyn Sandberg-Vavalà ( Evelyn May Graham Sandberg; 1888 - 8 September 1961), also known by her married name as Evelyn Kendrew, was a British art historian who studied iconography in the Italian Renaissance. She published a book on ''Italian ...

. The collections and accompanying database are managed, partly digitized, by the Federico Zeri Foundation. All through his life, Zeri maintained close connections with

Bernard Berenson Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865 – October 6, 1959) was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. His book ''The Drawings of the Florentine Painters'' was an international success. His wife Mary is thought to have had a large ...

Roberto Longhi Roberto Longhi (28 December 1890 – 3 June 1970) was an Italian academic, art historian, and curator. The main subjects of his studies were the painters Caravaggio and Piero della Francesca. Early life and career Longhi was born in December 18 ...

, and his teacher Pietro Toesca. he taught art history at the University of Rome, and had visiting positions at Harvard, where he delivered a series of lectures on Lauro De Bosis in 1962, and at the

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in New York.

References

External links

Zeri Foundation
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zeri, Federico 1921 births 1998 deaths Writers from Rome Italian art historians Italian art critics Italian art curators Members of the Académie des beaux-arts 20th-century Italian historians Directors of museums in Italy Sapienza University of Rome alumni 20th-century Italian male writers Italian male non-fiction writers

References

Further reading

External links