Rinascite romantiche. Wackenroder fra Vasari e Fiorillo, Raffaello e Piero di Cosimo

Abstract

The title pages of the very first two romantic œuvres, i.e. W.H. Wackenroder’s Herzensergießungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders and L. Tieck’s Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen, are adorned by the portrait of the «divine Raphael». Nevertheless both of them could have been accompanied – if only the contemporaries had known him! – by the portrait of the «abstract and deformed» (Vasari) Piero di Cosimo, to whom in the Herzensergießungen a unique and innovative chronicle is dedicated and with whom Sternbald ends up identifying. This article explores Wackenroder’s work at the wake of the most uneven Vite of painters (Francesco Francia, Leonardo da Vinci and Piero di Cosimo), mainly by examining the impact that Vasari and Fiorillo – masters of art of both Wackenroder and Tieck – had on this romantic incunable.