Henry Moore and the historiography of early Italian art

Abstract

Henry Moore’s fascination with early Italian art manifests itself not only in his work but also in interviews, letters and other texts. His comments on Giotto, Masaccio and Giovanni Pisano are of special interest. They testify to Moore’s admiration for these artists and for qualities in their work that fuelled his own modernist ambitions. They also bear witness to art-historical debates about early Italian art at a moment when it was undergoing a particularly formalist construction. In this article, Moore’s ideas will be situated against the background of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century scholarship on early Italian art. The article will explore to what extent Moore’s observations are comparable to that of contemporary art historians. It will also identify moments where Moore’s ideas offer unique and original perspectives on the work of Giotto, Giovanni Pisano and Masaccio that were not shared by his contemporaries.