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.

Numismatist and gem scholar. Agostini worked during the reign of Pope Urban VIII as the antiquarian to the Barberini family. His letters, written to the family while in exile (1646-50) today form a trove of information on the archaeological activity of the time. After the return of the Barberini, Agostini continued to collect for them, arranging their collection into one of the most comprehensible schemas of the time. He was appointed commissioner of collections under Pope Alexander VII, directing the excavations of the Roman Forum and baths near San Lorenzo in Panisperna.

Dramatist whose works helped bring about the re-evaluation of Michelangelo. Alfieri was born to a noble and wealthy family. His father was Count Antonio Alfieri and his mother Monica Maillard de Tournonthe marquis di Cacherano of Savoy. Count Alfieri died when Vittorio was less than one year old. His mother married a third husband, the cavalier Giacinto Alfieri de Magliano. Vittorio was privately tutored under Don Ivaldi, a priest whose education was poor enough to move him in 1758 to the Military Academy of Turin.

Photo-documentarian, early participant of the Fratelli Alinari photoarchive together with his brothers. The son of an engraver, Alinari grew up in a Florentine art family. His older brother, Leopoldo Alinari studied with engraver Luigi Bardi and learned the emerging art of photography.

Photo-documentarian, founder of the Fratelli Alinari together with his brothers. The son of an engraver, Alinari grew up in a Florentine art family. Leopoldo studied with engraver Luigi Bardi and learned the emerging art of photography while training in the 1840s. In 1852 he established a studio in the Via Nazionale in Florence.

Modernist. Art historian of Bolognese and Emilian art from the fourteenth century to the contemporary; critic. Arcangeli was born to Adolfo and Maria Villani. He was one of four siblings, all of whom were creative. Gaetano was a poet and humanities professor, Nino was a musician, and Bianca was a painter. Arcangeli began his studies at the University of Bologna in 1933 where he studied under the respected art historian and critic Roberto Longhi, Professor of Art History and chair in History of Medieval and Modern Art.

Art critic and writer, collaborator with Vasari; his Letters form a proto-art history. Aretino's father was a shoemaker, known as Luca del Tura. Aretino himself trained both as a writer and an artist. After time in Venice and Siena, Aretino was in Rome by 1517 where he was attached to the household of Agostino Chigi (1466-1520). There he met Sebastiano del Piombo and Jacopo Sansovino, Raphael, and Michelangelo. He was briefly in the circle of Pope Leo X (1475-1521). Aretino was frequently associated with political tracts, satires and illustrated erotica.

Marxist art historian, professor at University of Rome 1959-1976; specialist in Italian art. Argan's father, Valerio Argan, was an administrator of a women's mental hospital and his mother, Libera Roncaroli, a primary school teacher. An uncle's subscription to the journal La Critica, founded by Benedetto Croce, introduced the ideas of that art philosopher to Argan at a young age. He attended the Liceo Classico Cavour in Turin where the classes of the young Giusta Nicco Fasola instilled a passion for art.

After teaching at the universities of Bologna and Catania, Arias joined the department of archaeology at the University of Pisa in 1961. His survey of Greek vase painting, Mille anni di ceramica greca, published in 1960, was published in English, German and French. In 1968 he was appointed chair of the department.

Painter and first historian of the Roman Baroque through two early art histories, a biography of artists, Vite de' pittori, scultori, architetti (1642), and a survey of Roman churches, Le nove chiese di Roma (1639). Baglione described himself as having descended a noble family from Perugia. In his autobiography appended to his Lives of the Artists, Le vite, 1642, Baglione claimed as well that he studied art under the painter Francesco Morelli in Rome. He worked as a painter, employing a Caravaggesque style, and received numerous commissions.

Historian of the Italian Renaissance; headed restoration in Italy after Arno River flood, 1966. Baldini studied art history under Mario Salmi at the University of Florence. In the 1940's began working as a conservator in Florence. After the war, he was appointed a temporary worker in the restoration office in 1949, housed at the time in the loggia of the Uffizi.

Collector of drawings and connoisseur; worked on a universal history of art. An annotated translation of his life of Bernini was annotated and translated into German by the eminent Austrian art historian Aloïs Riegl, published in 1912.

Wrote memoirs of artists; first published in 1905.

Author, art scholar, cinema critic, and translator; wife pupil of the art historian Roberto Longhi. Banti was born Lucia Lopresti. Her father, a lawyer for the railways, Luigi-Vincenzo, was an avid literature enthusiast and her mother was Gemma Benin, both of them of Calabrian background. She attended the Liceo Tasso di Roma (a lyceum or high school), where in 1914 she encountered the young art historian (and future husband) Roberto Longhi.

Etruscan specialist. Banti worked at the Vatican Library between 1930 and 1940 and on the excavations at Crete before her appointment to the University of Rome in the history of religions. In 1948 she was appointed chair of archaeology at the University of Pavia, moving two years later to Florence to teach Etruscan studies, 1950-65 [Archivio biografico italiano states 1954-74]. She also lectured at various American universities during this time. In 1965 she became director of the Istituto di Studi Etruschi, which she held until 1972.

First female professor at La Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa; known for publishing an authoritative monograph on Giorgio Vasari’s Lives. Barocchi grew up spending time in her family's goldsmith shop in Florence, Italy, near the Ponte Vecchio, which she admitted helped refine her aesthetic sense of experiencing the world as a visual field (Passerini).

Documentary architectural historian

Italian priest who wrote the first serious biographical account of artists of Ferrara, beginning in 1704, and other histories of art. Baruffaldi was the son of the collector and scholar Nicolò Baruffaldi (1645-1748). He initially attended the Jesuit seminary in Ferrara before studying under his father. He was ordained a priest, then a doctor of philosophy, joining the literary Colonia Ferrarese dell'Arcadia.

Art historian of classical art. Educated at the University of Rome under Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Becatti was appointed to the Superintendency of Ostia in 1938 at a time when Mussolini sped up excavations in order to showcase them at the (unrealized) International Exposition in Rome. Becatti altered his publishing interests from Etruscan subjects to Roman Ostia as a result.

Antiquarian, art theorist and biographer in the tradition of Vasari; Librarian to Queen Christina of Sweden, and curator for Pope Clement X. Bellori was raised by his uncle, the antiquarian Francesco Angeloni (1559-1652). He studied from Angeloni's private archaeological collection and drawings by Annibale Carracci, and painting (perhaps with Domenichino) though few artworks by Bellori are known. Bellori became Angeloni's heir at Angeloni's death in 1652. He assembled his own collection of paintings, including those by Titian, Tintoretto, [Annibale] Carracci, as well as coins and medals.

Historian of the trecento Italian Renaissance. Bellosi was the son of Enrico Bellosi and Maria Cuccuini (Bellosi). His father worked as a gardener and his mother in domestic service. The younger Bellosi attended the University of Florence where he wrote his dissertation under Roberto Longhi in 1963 on the trecento artist Lorenzo Monaco. After a year in the Italian military, 1963-1964, he worked under the Soprintendenza per I Beni Artistici e Storici di Firenze, 1969 to 1979. Bellosi was awarded the Premio Viareggio (award) in 1974.

His La Madonna di Santa Maria in Trastevere redated a pivotal panel of painting in the church from the sixth to the eighth century, arguing against the dating of Cesare Brandi. Brandi's date has subsequently proven correct.

Mannerism; Renaissance Italy; studied the studiolo of Francesco I, Grand-Duke of Tuscany.

notes about Bertini Calosso's opinions on Giotto appear in Richard Offner's annotated catalog of the 1937 Mostra Giottesca.