Francesco Milizia
Francesco Milizia (15 November 1725 – 7 March 1798) was an Italian architectural theorist, art historian and art critic of Neoclassicism.[1][2]
Biography
Milizia was born in Oria, Apulia.[3] He is remembered as a leading polygraph of early Neoclassicism. His primary field of interest was architecture, to which he devoted various historical and theoretical publications. He is for this reason mistakenly believed to be an architect; on the contrary, "he did not practically practice architecture, but possessed the doctrines that concur to make a connoisseur of it." He was not a scholar of architecture. He advocated the need to imitate the masterpieces of Greek art, since these artists had been able to draw inspiration from a nature and society that had not yet been corrupted.
In Principles of Civil Architecture, architecture is for him an art of imitation of nature and is not subject to fashions; it arises from concrete needs tending toward beauty and thus an invention governed by rules. The Greeks are placed at the pinnacle of these aesthetic achievements, the closest to the perfect realization of good taste that occurs according to principles of perfection and symmetry chosen according to reason. A brief history of architecture is then also traced, in which the author shows himself aware of the evolution and change of styles that move with an alternation of decline and excellent execution. In these pages he also extols Gothic architecture considered original because completely unknown in Greece and Rome, it was derived from nature studied in its great. However, his judgment remains implanted in the dense web of comparisons with Greco-Roman art on the one hand and modern art on the other. He codifies his judgment in a scale of values in which Gothic is inferior to ancient art but superior to modern art; but this hierarchy is partly subverted unconsciously when he states a little later that one could make buildings that on the outside refer to Greek art that is primarily exterior architecture and on the inside to Gothic art that is better not only than modern but also than ancient.
He was a spokesman for an architectural criticism influenced by the functionalism of Franciscan Carlo Lodoli, but with a good dose of pragmatism, and above all based on the study of French treatises and essays on the arts. He criticizes stylistic abuses and advocates the progressive simplification of styles brought about in Neoclassicism: this is the case, for example, of the Sacristy of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, which was commissioned from Carlo Marchionni in 1776 and which Milizia called the most sumptuous and "the most unreasonable ... of the globe."
In 1761, he went to Rome to administer buildings owned by the King of Naples in the Papal States. He held this post for a quarter of a century, until 1786 to devote his time to historical and theoretical studies of art and architecture.
Militia was also interested throughout his life in subjects unrelated to art. He dabbled, for example, in the medical sciences, writing a Dictionary of Domestic Medicine based on the work of Scottish physicist and physician William Buchan. He was attracted to the natural sciences and especially astronomy, and on that subject he wrote a compendium of the famous Histoires (works on the history of astronomy) of the French astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly in the text History of Astronomy by M. Bailly Reduced to a Compendium by Mr. Francesco Milizia. The work was published by Remondini in 1791, and served as the main basic text for the work of a young Giacomo Leopardi, the History of Astronomy written in 1813.
A further interest of his was in the humanities, which resulted in the work Political Economy, sent to the same publisher, Remondini, in October 1797 but printed only posthumously in Rome by Damaso Petretti in 1798 under the title Public Economy), at the same time as the release of his Dictionary of the Fine Arts extracted largely from the Encyclopedia metodica.
His criticism of Baroque architecture set taste against this style until the end of the 19th century when Cornelius Gurlitt rehabilitated the thinking on the subject as once again worthy of study.
After his death, part of his library and manuscripts was donated to the national Library of Rome. Manuscripts and letters are also at Biblioteca del Seminario of Padua; his last will and testament is at the National Archives of Rome.
Works
- Le Vite de' più celebri architetti d'ogni nazione e d'ogni tempo, precedute da un Saggio sopra l'architettura (1768; 3rd edition, revised and enlarged, Memorie degli architetti antichi e moderni, 1781)
- Del Teatro (1771)
- Principj di Architettura Civile (1781)
- Dell'arte di vedere nelle belle arti del disegno secondo i principj di Sulzer e di Mengs (1781; 1786, revised and enlarged)
- Storia dell'astronomia di M. Bailly ridotta in compendio dal signor Francesco Milizia (1791)
- Roma. Delle belle arti del disegno. Parte prima: dell'Architettura Civile (1787)
- Dizionario delle belle arti del disegno estratto in gran parte dalla Enciclopedia metodica (1797)
Notes
- ↑ Bazin, Germain (1986). Histoire de l'Histoire de l'Art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, pp. 83–85.
- ↑ Kultermann, Udo (1993). The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, p. 125.
- ↑ Portoghesi, Paolo (1954). Dizionario Enciclopedico di Architettura e Urbanistica, Vol. 4. Roma: Istituto Editoriale Romano, p. 54.
References
- Cardinali, Antonmaria (926). "Vita di Francesco Milizia Scritta da Lui Medesimo." In: Opuscoli Diversi di F. Milizia Risguardanti le Belle Arti. Bologna: Dalla Stamperia Cardinali e Frulli, pp. v–xxxiv.
- Kaufmann, Emil (1955). Architecture in the Age of Reason: Baroque and Post-Baroque in England, Italy and France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Manfredi, Tommaso (2010). "Milizia, Francesco." In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 74. Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.
- O'Neal, William B. (1954). "Francesco Milizia, 1725-1798" The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. XIII, No. 3, pp. pp. 12–15.
- Pasquali, Susanna (2005). "Francesco Milizia a Roma, 1761-1798." In: Antonio Canova: La Cultura Figurativa e Letteraria dei Grandi Centri Italiani. Atti a Cura di Fernando Mazzocca e Gianni Venturi. Bassano del Grappa, pp. 89–101.
- Romano Ansaldi, Giulio (1934). "Milizia, Francesco." In: Enciclopedia Italiana. Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.
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