Arte bizantina e collezioni romane nel 19. secolo

In the nineteenth century various Byzantine objects belonged to private Roman collections, such as the Borghese, Pallavicini, Campana, Massarenti, Castellani, Stroganoff and so on. Each collection differs from one another as to quality, number of pieces and appreciation. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, an Italian art-historian writer, Leopoldo Cicognara (1769-1834), used ‘bizantino’ as an adjective to point at ‘la maniera greca’, that is, the Greek manner, expressing his negative idea of Byzantine art. In this confusion of words and besides analysing the collections’ inventories, it is difficult to have a precise description of the Byzantine objects’ extent. Accordingly, scholars’ evidence is of great help since scholars like, for istance, Xavier Barbier de Montault or Adolfo Ventury etc., visited noble and rich palaces and made descriptions not only of private treasures but also of particular classes of objects. I will try to outline the situation in brief even if it is continuously changing. So, what did the collectors purchase? Firstly icons and the ivoires and reliquaries. At moment we can find these Byzantine pieces dispersed in museums, some of them became private possessions, other disappeared. Making an analysis of ancient collections, as for the Borghese and Pallavicini, it is impossible to deduce the exact period of acquisition of pieces. On the contrary, regarding more recent collections, we might establish, at times, the occasion and/or the time when a particular object was purchased. At the end of the century in relation with the development of European studies and D’Annunzio’s Aestheticism a greater interest in Byzantium spread throughout Italy, especially in Rome. The apex was in 1905 when an exhibition which took place in Grottaferrata Abbey, near Rome, was dedicated to Byzantine art. But it is necessary to wait longer to have Byzantium and its artistic culture appreciated in a greater and modern sense.