Art Historian and scholar of Sicilian art and decorative arts, Director, Museo Nazionale di Messina (1949-1966). Maria Accascina was born in Naples in 1898 to a family originally from Palermo. Accascina moved to her family’s city, Palermo, to study Literature. After graduation she went to the Regia Scuola di Perfezionamento in Storia dell’Arte Medievale e Moderna dell’Università di Roma. At this time, she studied under Adolfo Venturi who assisted her with her thesis on medieval goldsmithing.

Historian of 17th- and 18th-century Italian art; Soprintendente ai Beni Artistici of Campania, 1965-1984. Causa attended the University of Naples completing his studies with a thesis on the 17th-century Neapolitan painter Micco Spadaro (1609-1675). In 1946 Causa was appointed Ispettore of the Soprintendenza (Naples), where he remained until 1965. During his tenure, he supervised restorations, organized exhibitions and produced art-historical studies of considerable interest.

Historian and important esthetician for art history. Croce was born to Pasquale Croce and Luisa Siparia, a wealthy land-owning couple and raised in a Roman Catholic boarding school. At age sixteen in 1883 he and his family were buried in their home in Ischia during the Casamicciola earthquake of only he and his brother survived. He lived with an uncle in Rome, the politician Silvio Spaventa (1822-1893), who introduced him to art, intellectuals and politics. After briefly attending the University of Rome studying law, he quit college settling in Naples in 1886.

Author of Vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani, 1742-5.

Early progressive museum director and professor of art history and Brown University and Bennington College. Dorner came from a long line of distinguished theologians and clergy. His grandfather, Isaak August Dorner (1809-1884), had been a professor at the University of Berlin and rector. His father, August Dorner (1846-1920), was a professor of theology and Philology at Wittenberg; his mother, Alice Hasselmeyer (1862-?), was raised in English-speaking India. Like his parents, Dorner was a free-thinker and adamantly opposed the Prussian imperialism.

Renaissance humanist and early chronicler of artists. Facio was educated in Verona under Guarino Guarini and later (by late 1420s) studied Greek in Florence. He held several initial posts in Genoa and Lucca, before being named Genoese envoy to Naples in 1443. By 1445 he was in the employ of King Alfonso of Naples where he secured the job of royal historian and tutor to Prince Ferrante. After various translations and essays on happiness and the dignity of man, Facio issued his De viris illustribus in 1456, over ninety lives of his contemporaries organized by their professions.

Architect; antiquario for Alphonse II; scholar of Rome; encyclopedic art history of classical world.

Italianist, Giotto and Bellori scholar. Previtali came from a family of prominent musicians, his father was the conductor Fernando Previtali (1907-1985) and his mother the daughter of the conductor Vittoria Gui (1885-1975). He studied art history under Roberto Longhi. He assumed the editorship of Longhi's magazine, Paragone. In 1961 he was appointed to the University of Messina. In 1964 he published a pioneering study of reception of medieval art, La fortuna dei primitivi dal Vasari ai neoclassici.

Amateur archaeologist whose finds were important for art history and archaeology; excavator of Mycenae and Troy. Schliemann was the son of a Protestant minister accused of embezzlement when Schliemann was a boy. Between 1836-41 Schliemann worked as a grocery clerk. His attempt to seek his fortune in the United States ended in shipwreck in Amsterdam. There merchant bankers B. H. Schröder & Co took him on for his aptitude of languages and business drive. After studying Russian and Dutch, the firm sent him to St.

Early classical art historian at Cambridge University, part of the classical art studies curriculum created by Sidney Colvin. Waldstein was the son of Henry Waldstein and Sophie Srisheim (Waldstein), German Jewish immigrants. His father was a merchant in the city. The younger Waldstein attended Columbia College of Columbia University, New York, and then the university in Heidelberg for graduate work. He moved to England in 1876, receiving his Ph.D. at King's College, Cambridge. His mentor was the scholar Henry Bradshaw (1831-1886).