ANDREA EMILIANI (1931–2019)
Andrea Emiliani, one of Italy’s leading art historians, died at the Sant’Orsola hospital in Bologna, on March 25, where he spent the past weeks fighting an infection, reports La Repubblica_. While the family is planning a private funeral, Bologna and Urbino—the two cities in which Emiliani lived, worked, and studied for most of his life—will organize a public memorial.
Born in Forlì in 1931, Emiliani studied art history in Urbino, Bologna, and Florence, where he worked with Roberto Longhi and Francesco Arcangeli. Emiliani became the head of the departments for cultural and artistic treasures in Bologna, Forlì, and Ravenna, and was subsequently appointed the director of Bologna’s Pinacoteca Nazionale, where he played a crucial role in the institution’s reorganization. He also served as the president of the Higher Institute for Artistic Industries in Faenza and the Accademia Clementina in Bologna, and he was a member of the Accademie Raffaello in Urbino and Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di San Luca. In 1974, he founded the Institute for Cultural Treasures of the Emilia-Romagna Region.
As a professor, Emiliani taught museography, phenomenology of styles, art history, and museology at the University of Bologna and lectured and held conferences at the universities of Florence, Macerata, Milan, Turin, and Venice. His most significant collaborations were with the Sapienza University of Rome, the Polytechnic University of Turin, and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice.
A specialist in Baroque art from Bologna, Emiliani curated various international exhibitions, most notably of work by the Italian masters Federico Barocci, the Caracci brothers, and Guido Reni. He received two prizes for art criticism for books written about these artists—the first in 1988 from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the second from the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Cultural Activities in 1992.
“Bologna cries for this loss of an outstanding man of culture,” Virginio Merola, the mayor of Bologna, said. “Emiliani taught us to learn about art, but most important, he taught us that art can and must be for the public, and accessible to everyone. He has done so throughout his life as a scholar and a critic . . . Emiliani has given much to our world, our culture, our city. He showed us that the museum is an open space and the city and its environment are a living museum.”
Awarded Bologna’s prestigious honorary prize the Archiginnasio d’oro in 2000, Emiliani was known to be an obsessive researcher and writer, who worked between the Pinacoteca and his home office until his recent hospitalization. He leaves several unfinished books and unpublished works.
