Italian purism
Purismo was an Italian cultural movement which began in the 1820s. Purismo is the name of an art movement of the Ottocento Italy (nineteenth century) that emerged after the influence of painters known as the Nazarenes. The term was coined in 1833 by the Hellenist and Latinist Antonio Bianchini, referring to painters who sought to recover the “purity” of “primitive” Italian artists (primitive Italians – from Cimabue to “the first” Raphael, through Fra Angelico and Giotto among others-, the same to whom they sought to return from a simultaneous artistic movement: the Pre-Raphaelites). In analogy with this, something similar happened in the Italian letters of that time when they were tried to recover expressive forms considered pure inspired by the Tuscan Trecento.
The group intended to restore and preserve language through the study of medieval authors, and such study extended to the visual arts. Although they rejected neoclassicism, Italian purist painters found themselves strongly influenced by the work of the Frenchman Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Inspired by the Nazarenes from Germany, the artists of Purismo reject Neoclassicism and emulated the works of Raphael, Giotto and Fra Angelico.
In Italy was fed growing interest in Italian national identity and artistic heritage. Italian purism reflected a taste for styles that sought to restore Italian national identity and cultural heritage. Many of these authors also devoted themselves to Pompeian or Hellenistic themes, such as Giuseppe Sciuti, recreating typical scenes of classical antiquity.
History
In 1842 was published the official manifesto of the movement: Purism in the arts, written by Antonio Bianchini and signed by the painter Tommaso Minardi, the Roman sculptor Pietro Tenerani, and the Nazarene Johann Friedrich Overbeck.
The main interpreter of the movement in Rome was Tommaso Minardi, whose Bianchini became a pupil by devoting himself to painting; as early as 1834, in a lesson at the Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts in San Luca, he took up the terms of the debate and posed as a starting point that he had to reject the painting of Raphael that the purists refused, because precisely they saw in these works the seeds of the abstract conventions of neoclassicism. The purists intended to replace the imitation of the classics, synonymous for them with lies, by simply showing, in a clear and appropriate manner, the things represented. They were also influenced by the works of Ingres and Lorenzo Bartolini.
Next to the already mentioned signatories of the Manifesto, Tenerani and Minardi, the only personality with some relief was Luigi Mussini, who worked in Tuscany and who in 1841, with La Musica Sacra (La Musique Sacrée) (Gallery of Modern Art, Florence), had added the reference to the shaded painting of the Quattrocento, from which the Nazarene movement was born, to the formal lesson taken at Ingres. To this movement we must attach the pupils of Minardi: Antonio Ciseri and Constantino Brumidi and the pupils of Mussini: Alessandro Franchi, Amos Cassioli and Cesare Maccari.
With the first Italian Exhibition of 1861, which took place in Florence, the vogue for purism began to decline, supplanted by new styles of macchiaioli and new poetic verists.
To represent this current in Liguria was mainly Maurizio Dufour. He was joined by other artists, such as Luigia Mussini-Piaggio. The major achievement in Genoa in this field is the church of the Immaculate Conception.
Purism in the Italian regions
In Liguria this current was mainly represented by Maurizio Dufour. We can bring him closer to other artists like Luigia Mussini-Piaggio. The main achievement in Genoa in this area is the Church of the Immacolata.