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Pane, Roberto

    Full Name: Pane, Roberto

    Other Names:

    • Roberto Pane

    Gender: male

    Date Born: 21 October 1897

    Date Died: 29 July 1987

    Place Born: Taranto, Apulia, Italy

    Place Died: Sorrento, Napoli, Campania, Italy

    Home Country/ies: Italy

    Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Baroque, conservation (discipline), conservation (process), Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, Renaissance, and sculpture (visual works)

    Career(s): art critics and conservators (people in conservation)


    Overview

    Critic, conservator, and historian of Italian renaissance and baroque architecture. Pane befriended several prominent philosophers and art historians of his era, including Benedetto Croce and Bernard Berenson. Pane studied at the University of Rome under Gustavo Giovannoni, teaching renaissance and baroque architecture in Naples in the 1930’s. During this time he focused study on Renaissance and Baroque architecture and artistic historiography. In 1942 he was appointed chair of the department of Architecture at the University of Naples. After the war he acted as advisor for restoration of war-damaged art and monuments for UNESCO in Paris in 1949. He published monographs on Andrea Palladino (1948), Gianlorenzo Bernini (1953). The journal Napoli nobilissima was founded by him, which covered topics on urban planning, archaeology, and conservation in Italy. In 1964, after a book on Antonio Gaudi, he wrote the Venice Charter (the International Charter for the Restoration) with fellow architect Pietro Gazzola, which was approved by the International Commission on Monuments and Sites. In the 1970’s, Pane published a work entitled Il rinascimento nell’Italia meridionale, a critical analysis of art in its cultural context based on the ideas of Carl Jung and Croce, the latter now a personal friend. He also published several essays on Filippo Brunelleschi and Michaelangelo. His research interests also included Spanish and Central American architecture and 19th-century French literature. and Pane’s methodology can most easily be examined in the attack he made on one of the most respected books in 20th-century art history, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism by Rudolf Wittkower, at the Eighteenth International Congress of the History of Art (Venice, 1956).


    Selected Bibliography

    La casa di Loreio Tiburtino e la villa di Diomede in Pompei. Rome: La Libreria dello stato, 1947; Andrea Palladio. Turin: G. Einaudi, 1948; and Franciscis, Alberto de. Mausolei romani in Campania. Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1957; Attualità dell’ambiente antico. Florence: La nuova Italia, 1967; Il Rinascimento nell’Italia meridionale. Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1975.


    Sources

    Samek Ludovici, Sergio. Storici, teorici e critici delle arti figurative d’Italia dall 1800 al 1940. Rome; Tosi, 1946, p. 274; Wittkower, Rudolf. “Preface.” Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. 4th ed. London: Academy, 1974, p. v; Giavarina, Adriano Ghisetti. “Pane, Roberto.” The Dictionary of Art 24: 2-3; mentioned, Ackerman, James S. “In Memoriam: Manfredo Tafuri, 1935-1994.” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 53, No. 2 (June 1994): 137; [obituary] New York Times, August 8, 1987, section 1, p. 50.



    Contributors: LaNitra Michele Walker and Lee Sorensen


    Citation

    LaNitra Michele Walker and Lee Sorensen. "Pane, Roberto." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/paner/.


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