Dal Bello ideale al Vero (ideale?).
La difficile conquista della Storia nei
“Discorsi parenetici” dell’Accademia
Provinciale di Belle Arti di Ravenna
Alberto Giorgio Cassani
This essay examines the Discorsi parenetici delivered annually at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Ravenna
between 1829 and 1921, tracing the institution’s ideological evolution from a Bello ideale rooted in Catholic
Platonism to an increasingly secular engagement with historical and veristic aesthetics. Through orators
ranging from Alessandro Cappi and Niccolò Tommaseo to Pietro Selvatico, Olindo Guerrini and Adolfo
Venturi, the study reconstructs recurring topoi—art and peace, the ut pictura poesis tradition, art versus
science, and the contested primacy of the Greek ideal—while showing how art history as a discipline only
gradually emerged within these ceremonial addresses. Particular attention is paid to Selvatico’s 1843 call
for a historically and civically grounded art history, and to Guerrini’s 1880 lecture Del verismo, which
decisively abandoned absolute aesthetic canons in favour of historicist relativism. The essay situates this
trajectory against the broader political shift from papal rule to the Kingdom of Italy, arguing that the
Academy’s discourse mirrors the nation’s passage from confessional culture to secular modernity.