Rediscovered lectures by medievalist Arsenio Frugoni become a book on Italian painting history

A cache of thirty-one lectures on Italian art, written between 1944 and 1946 by Arsenio Frugoni while he was a high school teacher in Brescia and sheltering from bombings on Lake Iseo, has been rediscovered and published as "Storia della pittura d'Italia" (Morcelliana, 2020). The volume, edited by Saverio Lomartire and introduced by Frugoni's daughter Chiara Frugoni, contains fifteen lectures specifically on painting, accompanied by color slides. Frugoni, later a renowned medievalist at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, approached images as historical sources, a method he would develop further. The texts were originally printed in small booklets by Scuola Editrice di Brescia and thought lost until Chiara Frugoni found a single surviving copy in an attic. The book covers Italian painting from paleochristian times to the contemporary era, discussing major and minor artists in relation to their personal lives and historical contexts. Frugoni challenges stereotypes, for example arguing that Leonardo's encounters with Botticelli and Perugino at Verrocchio's workshop did not dilute his genius but distinguished it from mere imitation. The writing is discursive and engaging, intended not as a textbook but as a book to be read for pleasure. Frugoni was familiar with Aby Warburg's iconology, having written about it in the Giornale di Brescia.