Download PDF | John Julius Norwich (ed.) - The Italians_ History, Art, and the Genius of a People-Harry Abrams Publisher, New York (1983).
276 Pages
THERE ARE TWO ITALys — the one that Italians themselves live in and the one that foreigners see. Both are made up of the same elements, but seen from different angles they can seem almost two different countries. In the succeeding chapters of this book the viewpoint will be consistently Italian, presenting the history and people of Italy in their own terms and through their own works. In this opening section we approach them from outside and ask: what draws people from all over the world to Italy? What do they go to see? What do they see?
From the Renaissance to the 18th century foreigners went to Italy primarily for the sake of its classical remains. This was natural enough at a time when education was itself primarily classical, when Roman history was more familiar to most European gentlemen than the history of their own country and when surviving Roman buildings were the models for architects from Russia to America. From the mid-18th century and throughout the 19th this classical interest remained paramount, but visitors also expected to study and admire the splendours of Renaissance art and to learn something of Italian literature and music. In the zoth century that interest has expanded: today’s tourist is ready to appreciate everthing from the Roman Forum to Milan Railway Station.
But while dutifully absorbing the artistic achievements of Italy, the Northern visitor increasingly found himself succumbing to another charm — that of the Italian way of life itself. Here he found many of the qualities that captivated him in Italian culture — an apparently innate sense of style; a warmth of emotion spilling over from the family circle and expressed directly and without inhibition; an instinct for display, for the large gesture in life as in art; and underneath it all, the feeling of a community rooted in the past with intense local loyalties. All these go to form a picture of Italy which perhaps only the outsider can see, but which is nevertheless as real as that offered by the historian, the economist and the social scientist.
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