Dezailler d’Argenville et les sources italiennes de l’Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres
Chiara Savattieri
This article discusses the way Dézailler D’Argenville deals with Italian schools of painting in his famous
work Abrégé de la vie des peintres (1745-1752; 1762). In fact, he uses Italian sources in an original way,
removing or reducing anecdotes relevant to the artists’ biographies and focusing on technical and stylistic
remarks, especially with regard to drawings. Moreover, for the first time Dézailler classifies artists into six
schools, which is an absolute novelty in both Italian and French historiography