Farewell to Andrea Emiliani, art historian specializing in art of the 16th and 17th centuries

Art historian Andrea Emiliani, one of the leading specialists in the art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Emilia and beyond, died today in Bologna at the age of eighty-eight. He had been hospitalized for a few weeks at Sant’Orsola Hospital in the Emilia capital due to illness.

Born in Forlì in 1931, Emiliani held a number of positions during his long career: he founded the Institute for Cultural Heritage of the Emilia Romagna Region in 1974, was superintendent of Bologna, Ferrara, Forlì and Ravenna, as well as director of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, and again president of the Istituto Superiore di Industrie Artistiche in Faenza and the Accademia Clementina in Bologna. He also participated in the reorganization of many of Emilia’s major museums, such as the aforementioned Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, or again the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Ferrara, the Palazzo Milzetti in Faenza and the Pinacoteca Civica in Forlì. His contribution was fundamental to the rediscovery of seventeenth-century Bolognese art: among the numerous exhibitions he curated, the historic exhibition Nell’età del Correggio e dei Carracci (In the Age of Correggio and the Carraccis) is particularly noteworthy, an exhibition that availed itself of an international scientific committee, which had three stops (in Bologna, Washington and New York) and whose objective was to retrace the stages of Emilian painting between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Not only that: Emiliani also curated monographs on Carracci, Guido Reni, Simone Cantarini and Federico Barocci, an Urbino artist of whom Emiliani was one of the greatest experts. His last exhibition, which ended just a couple of months ago, was the retrospective devoted to Paolo Monti held in Forli.

His teaching assignments were also many: from 1970 to 1986 he taught museography and art history at the University of Bologna, but he also taught at La Sapienza in Rome, at the Polytechnic in Turin, and at the universities of Venice, Macerata, Florence, Milan and Turin. Prominent among his numerous awards are the prize for art criticism from the Ministry of Cultural Assets and Activities, awarded by the Accademia dei Lincei in 1992, and that of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, received in 1988, and the Archiginnasio d’Oro from the City of Bologna. Emiliani was also an academician of the Lincei.

“Bologna,” said Mayor Virginio Merola, “mourns the passing of an extraordinary man of culture. Emiliani taught us about art, above all he taught us that art can and must be popular and accessible to all. This he did in his life as a scholar, as a profound critic from Raphael to the Carraccis, from Guido Reni to Morandi, to Federico Barocci of whom he was the world’s foremost expert. Emiliani gave so much to our land, our culture, our city. He taught us that the museum is an open space, that the city and the environment is a living museum to be experienced. Today that Emiliani leaves us we will think about how to remember him still among us, as if he could still accompany us among the beauties of our city.”

Farewell to Andrea Emiliani, art historian specializing in art of the 16th and 17th centuries

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