«Sapeva quello che non sapeva, e vedeva ciò che non aveva mai visto». Lo sguardo critico. Domenico Morelli attraverso la stampa periodica del suo tempo (1860-1880)
Isabella Valente
With this contribution, we would like to retrace the thought of the critics who evaluated Domenico Morelli’s works from the early 1860s to 1880, the year of the fourth National Exhibition in Turin. They were twenty years of great critical success. Morelli was consistently acclaimed as the founder of a new idea of art and a reform of the pictorial method. “Representing things not seen, but imagined and true” meant bringing to the table of the innovations realism brought about both historical and literary or, in general, fantasy themes. Morelli’s great invention was “Historical realism,” in which most artists aligned themselves, not only artists from the Neapolitan school but from all of Italy. Critics understood that and always expressed highly favorable judgments on every occasion, highlighting the artist’s innovation, pictorial ability and philosophical thought, and extraordinary modernity.