‘The ‘purification of the personality of Sanmicheli’. Review of: Il Michele Sanmicheli di Antonio Morassi: La tesi all’Università di Vienna e una monografia perduta (1916-1920) by Giulio Zavatta, Treviso: Zel, 2022, 230pp, 49 col. Illus. ISBN 9788887186307 €25.00.

Abstract

he respected art historian Antonio Morassi, as a student under Max Dvořák in Vienna in 1912–16, wrote a thesis on the Renaissance architect Michele Sanmicheli (1487–1559), who was active in Verona and Venice. This, later, formed the basis of an article that was intended for publication but never surfaced, and the thesis and putative article form the subjects of a new book (Giulio Zavatta, Il Michele Sanmicheli di Antonio Morassi, Treviso: Zel, 2022). The book explores Morassi’s thesis in the context of his experience of the emerging discipline of art history in Vienna, while the thesis reveals itself to be particularly well conceived and informative, and also remarkably prescient of later ways of thinking about Sanmicheli and his architecture.