Art History. BELLORI. Descrizione delle immagini dipinte da Raffaelle d'Urbino...

Valuable edition of the work of Bellori, writer and art historian considered the equivalent of Giorgio Vasari in a Baroque key. In the last years of his life he began to collect his writings on Raphael for publication and the resulting volume came out posthumously after his death. For Bellori, Raphael constitutes the term of comparison that surpasses even the artists of antiquity. Bellori interpreted, figure by figure, the sixteen large frescoes in the rooms and the cycle of Cupid and Psyche in the Farnesina. To this exhibition he added an explanation of the literary, symbolic and allegorical meanings of the subjects, so that this work remains the main source for the seventeenth-century interpretation of Raphael's frescoes, which fueled his fame and knowledge also in the following centuries. The description is followed by a series of short and controversial articles: Della riparazione della galleria del Caracci nel Palazzo Farnese, e della loggia di Rafaelle alla Lungara, detailed report on the condition of the frescoes before the restoration, the causes of the damage and the restoration methods used; Se Rafaëlle ingrandì, e megliorò la maniera per aver veduto l'opera di Michelangelo, a dispute. in favor of Raphael, to Vasari, written that aroused heated discussions in the century. XVIII; Dell'ingegno, eccellenza, e grazia de Raffaëlle comparato ad Apelle, in which the author reaffirms his convictions on the supremacy of Raphael.