{{Short description|Literary and artistic movement}} {{Infobox art movement |name = Romanticism in Italy |image = El Beso (Pinacoteca de Brera, Milán, 1859).jpg |caption = ''The Kiss'' by Francesco Hayez, iconic painting of Romantic art in Italy |yearsactive = Late 18th century to 19th-mid-late |country = Italy |majorfigures = Ugo Foscolo, Vittorio Alfieri, Giovanni Berchet, Ludovico di Breme, Carlo Porta, Alessandro Manzoni, Giacomo Leopardi, Giuseppe Mazzini, Antonio Rosmini, Vincenzo Gioberti, Massimo d'Azeglio, Francesco De Santis, Bertrando Spaventa, Francesco Hayez, Giovanni Migliara, Giuseppe Bezzuoli, Francesco Podesti, Gioacchino Rossini, Giuseppe Verdi |influences = Vico,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/historiography/Romantic-historiography|title=Romantic historiography|publisher=Britannica}}</ref> Herder,{{r|r=Alfredo Galletti (1913), introduction to: G. Berchet, ''Lettera semiseria di Grisostomo'', Carabba, Lanciano, p. 52.<ref name="Li Gotti"/>}} Goethe, Jansenism, Graveyard poets, Scottish school,<ref name=rota/> Cousin |influenced = Italian Risorgimento, Italian opera, Italian idealism }} '''Romanticism in Italy''' was a distinctive blend of European romantic ideals and Italian cultural traditions. It emphasized relationship with nature,<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal |last=Betti |first=Franco |date=1997 |title=Key Aspects of Romantic Poetics in Italian Literature |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/480076 |journal=Italica |volume=74 |issue=2 |pages=185–200 |doi=10.2307/480076 |jstor=480076 |issn=0021-3020|url-access=subscription }}</ref> emotion, imagination and individual freedom, as well as reevaluating the spiritual, religious, and historical aspects of national identity, generating a desire for political union.
Romantic culture in Italy thus played a key role in the Risorgimento, tying itself to the struggle for national unity. While sharing common ground with Romanticism elsewhere in Europe, such as opposition to the Enlightenment and Neoclassicism, Italian Romanticism developed distinctive characteristics influenced by Italy's own classical heritage and its unique political context.{{sfn|Luzzi|2008|p=[https://books.google.it/books?id=-LGTFT2D8ZMC&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false 3]}}
==Early developments== Italian Romanticism found its early development influenced by the Napoleonic era and its dramatic shifts in political landscapes and social structures.
The experience of the Jacobin republics contributed to the convergence of two factors: the desire for independence from foreign domination, and the need for liberal reforms, that would guarantee freedom of thought, in economy and religion, against the despotism of absolutist regimes.<ref name=traniello>{{cite book|author=Francesco Traniello|title=Storia contemporanea|location=Torino|publisher=SEI|date=1989|pages=40–44}}</ref> [[File:Ugo Foscolo.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.7|Portrait of Ugo Foscolo by François-Xavier Fabre]] Among the first pre-Romantic authors, influenced nevertheless by classicism, Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803) in his tragedies exalted individual heroism against all tyranny, including that arising from the French Revolution, and incited the redemption of the homeland and the struggle for self-affirmation.
Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827) imbued the concept of homeland with sentimental and even epic or mythological meanings, and actively worked to awaken Italians' national consciousness and desire for freedom. In ''The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis'', inspired by Goethe's ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'', and the cemetery poem ''Sepulchres'', Foscolo combined classicist themes, including the cult of antiquities, with typically Romantic sensibilities, exploring feelings such as pain, joy, passionate love, and inner torment.
Another example of cemetery poetry along the English lines is in Ippolito Pindemonte (1753–1828), permeated with a melancholic spirit. Following the model of Giuseppe Parini (1729–1799), Vincenzo Monti (1754–1828) also combines classicism with patriotism, looking to Dante and Petrarch as the founders of Italian national feeling.
As regards the legal and political reflection of the late eighteenth century, a strong link with the philosophical principles of the Italian Enlightenment was maintained (especially in Gioia and Romagnosi), although Vincenzo Cuoco (1770–1823), who examined the failure of the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799, anticipated romantic and proto-nationalist themes by referring to Giambattista Vico; he highlighted the need to defend the historical specificities of peoples, with their "customs" and traditions, against the abstract application of universal principles.<ref>Paul Hamilton, [https://books.google.it/books?id=XFA2CwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA639#v=onepage&q&f=false ''The Oxford Handbook of European Romanticism'', p. 639], Oxford University Press, 2016.</ref>
This period of transition was not limited to political or literary spheres. In the scientific realm, the discovery of galvanism — a biological electricity inherent to animals, experimented with by Luigi Galvani (1737–1798)<ref>{{Treccani|luigi-galvani_(Il-Contributo-italiano-alla-storia-del-Pensiero:-Scienze)/|Galvani, Luigi|Marco Bresadola, edited by Umberto Eco|language=it|2013}}.</ref> and popularized across Europe by his nephew Giovanni Aldini (1762–1834) — opened a new avenue of investigation into the possibility of deeply penetrating the secrets and hidden forces of life.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Raffaella Simili|title=Erasmus Darwin, Galvanism, and the Principle of Life|url=https://site.unibo.it/cisr/it/la-questione-romantica/erasmus-darwin-galvanism-and-the-principle-of-life|journal=La Questione Romantica|editor=Centro Interuniversitario per lo Studio del Romanticismo|year=2007|publisher=Liguori Editore|issue=17|pages=13–27}} Physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond also noted that the scientific storm produced by Galvani's work in 1791 could "only be compared to that which disturbed at that time the political horizon of Europe", see: {{cite book| title=On Animal Electricity| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0dGHhI1m2Y0C&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false|author=E. Du Bois-Reymond|pages=7-8|publisher=J. Churchill|date=1852}}</ref>
==The literary debate on Romanticism== [[File:Il Conciliatore.jpg|thumb|Page from ''Il Conciliatore'']] A controversy between classicists and romantics broke out in January 1816, the date on which Italian Romanticism is usually officially begun, when the French writer Madame de Staël published in Milan, on the magazine ''Biblioteca Italiana'', her article ''On the manner and utility of translations'', in which she invited Italians to know and translate foreign literatures as a means of renewing their own culture.<ref>Laura Bandiera, Diego Saglia, [https://books.google.it/books?id=menU8x_flgcC&pg=PA244#v=onepage&q&f=false ''British Romanticism and Italian Literature'', p. 244], Rodopi, 2005.</ref>
Young intellectuals such as Pietro Borsieri (1788–1852), Giovanni Berchet (1783–1851), Ludovico di Breme (1780–1820), firmly sided with the romantic renewal advocated by Staël, while others such as Pietro Giordani remained faithful to the principles of classicism.
Berchet wrote a pamphlet entitled ''Grisostom's Semi-Serious Letter to His Son'', considered the manifesto of Italian Romanticism, for which true poetry springs from the popular spirit.{{r|r={{cite book|author=Alfredo Galletti|date=1913|contribution=introduction|title=''G. Berchet,'' Lettera semiseria di Grisostomo|page=37|publisher=Carabba|location=Lanciano}}<ref name="Li Gotti">Quoted in {{cite book|first=Ettore|last=Li Gotti|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wOMyAQAAIAAJ&q=%22negli+scritti+dello+Herder%22|title=G. Berchet: la letteratura e la politica del risorgimento nazionale (1738-1851)|page=81|publisher=La Nuova Italia|date=1933}}</ref>}} Di Breme defined Romanticism as «the liberation of the soul from the constraints of old forms and as a creative impulse»;<ref>{{cite web|url=https://laprovinciapavese.gelocal.it/pavia/cronaca/2011/06/21/news/il-romantico-ludovico-di-breme-1.696053|title=Il romantico Ludovico di Breme|date=2011|language=it}}</ref> he was among the founders of a new liberal magazine, ''Il Conciliatore'', organ of romantic school established in 1818 at Milan, whose members included, in addition to Borsieri, Berchet, di Breme, Silvio Pellico, Tommaso Grossi, Maroncelli, Scalvini, Confalonieri, Lambertenghi, Romagnosi, but their activity was nipped in the bud by Austrian censorship, which imprisoned many of them or forced them into exile.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/53298966.pdf|title=La modernità del "Conciliatore": preludio culturale della "nuova Italia"|access-date=11 July 2022|language=it|page=13}}</ref>
The experience of the ''Conciliatore'', which was addressed to the most progressive bourgeoisie and aimed to involve italian people in the diffusion of romantic sentiment and patriotic ideals,<ref>Luca Tognaccini, [https://books.google.it/books?id=7zgWEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA80#v=onepage&q&f=false ''Breve Storia della Letteratura Italiana'', p. 80], Youcanprint, 2021.</ref> was taken up in Florence by the journal ''L'Antologia'' (1821–1833), founded by Giovan Pietro Vieusseux and Gino Capponi; in Naples by Giuseppe Ricciardi's ''Il Progresso'' (1832–1847), which Baldacchini and Cagnazzi collaborated on.<ref>{{cite book|author=Edmondo Cione|title=Napoli romantica: 1830–1848|location=Naples|publisher=Morano Editore|date=1957|language=it}}</ref>
Meanwhile, the uprisings of the Risorgimento following the Restoration of Conservative Order were already spreading across the peninsula, and to these tensions Italian Romantic literature would prove closely linked. More than any other form of literature, Romanticism was committed to the construction of a national identity. At least in the first half of the nineteenth century, it was less concerned with defining strategies of struggle and institutional forms of government, and more focused on moralistic, humanitarian, and pedagogical aims.<ref name=traniello/>
===Manzoni and Leopardi=== [[File:Pinacoteca-di-Brera-Ritratto-Alessandro-Manzoni-restauro.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni by Francesco Hayez (Pinacoteca di Brera)]] The main instigator of a national redemption was Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873). He formulated the objects of the new Romantic school, saying that it aspired to try to discover and express ''"the true historian"'' and ''"the moral truth"'', not only as an end, but as the widest and eternal source of the beautiful, against mythological-pagan "fictions". It is realism that characterizes Italian literature from Manzoni onwards.{{sfn|Bartoli|Oelsner|1911|p=911}}
Although starting from Enlightenment and neoclassical positions, shaped by the models of Giuseppe Parini and Cesare Beccaria, he developed his own personal vision of Romanticism, influenced by his religious conversion to the Catholic faith and by his conception of history as marked by Divine Providence.
Hid historical novel ''The Betrothed'' (''I promessi sposi'') is the work that has made him immortal.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.lanazione.it/firenze/cronaca/itinerario-manzoni-1.1502730|title=Manzoni a Firenze: i Promessi Sposi in un affresco in riva all'Arno|date=20 November 2015 |access-date=11 July 2022|language=it}}</ref> The idea of the historical novel came to him from Sir Walter Scott, but he succeeded in something more than an historical novel in the narrow meaning of that word; he created an eminently realistic work of art.
So ''The Betrothed'' is generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature.<ref name="britannica">{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alessandro-Manzoni|title=Alessandro Manzoni | Italian author|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|date=18 May 2023 }}</ref> The novel is also a symbol of the Italian Risorgimento, both for its patriotic message<ref name="britannica"/> and because it was a fundamental milestone in the development of the modern, unified Italian language, understandable by both scholars and common people.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://manzoni.classicauthors.net/IPromessiSposiOrTheBetrothed/IPromessiSposiOrTheBetrothed1.html|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718073016/http://manzoni.classicauthors.net/IPromessiSposiOrTheBetrothed/IPromessiSposiOrTheBetrothed1.html|url-status=dead|title=I Promessi sposi or The Betrothed|archivedate=18 July 2011}}</ref>
In it, Manzoni dives down into the innermost recesses of the human heart, and draws thence the most subtle psychological reality. In this his greatness lies, which was recognized first by his companion in genius, Goethe. As a poet too he had gleams of genius, especially in the Napoleonic ode, ''The Fifth of May'', and where he describes human affections, as in some stanzas of the ''Hymns'' and in the chorus of the ''Adelchi''. But it is on the ''Bethored'' alone that his fame now rests.{{sfn|Bartoli|Oelsner|1911|p=911}}
[[File:Leopardi, Giacomo (1798-1837) - ritr. A Ferrazzi, Recanati, casa Leopardi.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Portrait of Giacomo Leopardi by Stanislao Ferrazzi]] The great poet of the age was Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837), born thirteen years after Manzoni at Recanati, of a patrician family, bigoted and avaricious. He became so familiar with Greek authors that he used afterwards to say that the Greek mode of thought was more clear and living to his mind than the Latin or even the Italian. Solitude, sickness, domestic tyranny, prepared him for profound melancholy. From this he passed into complete religious scepticism, from which he sought rest in art.{{sfn|Bartoli|Oelsner|1911|p=912}}
Everything is terrible and grand in his poems, but besides being the greatest poet of nature and of sorrow, he was also an admirable prose writer. In his ''Operette morali'' (''Small Moral Works''), dialogues and discourses marked by a cold and bitter smile at human destinies that freezes the reader, the clearness of style, the simplicity of language and the depth of conception are such that perhaps he is not only the greatest lyrical poet since Dante, but also one of the most perfect writers of prose that Italian literature has had.{{sfn|Bartoli|Oelsner|1911|p=912}}
He is widely seen as one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of the 19th century<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/115276/giacomo-leopardis-zibaldone-reviewed-adam-kirsch|title=The Least Known Masterpiece of European Literature|magazine=The New Republic |access-date=11 July 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/leopardi/projects/index.aspx|title=The Zibaldone project|access-date=11 July 2022|archive-date=23 May 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150523011333/http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/leopardi/projects/index.aspx|url-status=dead}}</ref> Although he was educated in the Enlightenment culture, he highlights its negative and destructive aspects, and despite his pessimistic materialism he maintains a paradoxical relationship with Platonism, which does not cancel but rather exalts the «eternal mystery/ of our being», reaching an unconscious harmony with German Romanticism, even though he has nothing in common with Idealism.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://www.scuoladipitagora.it/libreria/il-pensiero-di-leopardi-ebook?tmpl=component&format=pdf|title=Il pensiero di Leopardi|publisher=La scuola di Pitagora|author=Mario Andrea Rigoni|isbn=978-88-6542-726-2|date=2020|language=it}} See also: {{cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26266691|journal=Lettere Italiane|author=Mario Andrea Rigoni|title=Leopardi, Schelling, Madame de Staël e la scienza romantica della natura|volume=LIII|issue=2|pages=247–256|publisher=Leo S. Olschki|date=April–June 2001|jstor=26266691|language=it}}</ref>
===Patriotic and political literature=== Manzoni's pedagogical realism inspired the spread of the historical novel, which included works by Massimo d'Azeglio (''Ettore Fieramosca''), Tommaso Grossi (''Marco Visconti''), Cesare Cantù (''Margherita Pusterla''), Giovanni Ruffini (''Doctor Antonio''), Silvio Pellico, Luigi Capranica, Niccolò Tommaseo and others. Their novels conveyed patriotic ideals behind events set in the distant past, especially the Middle Ages, to circumvent Austrian censorship. [[File:Del Primato Morale e Civile degli Italiani.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|''Moral and civil Primacy of Italians'', in which Gioberti defended the moral supremacy of Italy as a «princely nation».]] But after 1840, even history returned to its spirit of learned research, from the manner of Botta and Colletta, as is shown in such works as the ''Archivio storico italiano'', established at Florence by Giovan Pietro Vieusseux (a continuation of his ''Antologia'', which was suppressed in 1833 owing to the action of the Austrian government), the ''History of Italy in the Middle Ages'' by Carlo Troya, a remarkable treatise by Manzoni himself (''On Some Points of Lombard History in Italy''), and the fine history of the Sicilian Vespers by Michele Amari.{{sfn|Bartoli|Oelsner|1911|p=912}}
The literary movement that preceded and was contemporary with the political revolution of 1848 may be said to be represented by four writers: Giuseppe Giusti (1809–1850), Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi (1804–1873), Vincenzo Gioberti (1801–1852) and Cesare Balbo (1789–1853). Giusti wrote epigrammatic satires in popular language. Guerrazzi had a great reputation and great influence, but his historical novels, though avidly read before 1848, were soon forgotten. Gioberti was a powerful polemical writer; his ''Moral and civil Primacy of Italians'' will last as an important document of the times, manifesto of Neo-Guelphism which recalling the medieval Guelphs outlined the goal of a national federation of the various Italian states, of which Catholic universalism would be the religion that defined Italian identity, since «Italy is the most cosmopolitan of nations».<ref>Andrea Battistini, ''La cultura cattolica italiana tra cosmopolitismo e identità nazionale'', in "Annali di storia moderna e contemporanea", vol. 10, Vita e Pensiero, 2004, pp. 247-8.</ref> Like Gioberti in his early years, Balbo was zealous for a civil papacy and a federation of Italian states, but presided over by the House of Savoy; his ''Summary of the History of Italy'' is an excellent example.{{sfn|Bartoli|Oelsner|1911|p=912}}
By contrast, Giusti and Guerrazzi called themselves neo-Ghibellines, personified also by Pepe, Cattaneo, Ferrari, Sismondi, La Farina, and the playwright Giovanni Battista Niccolini (1782–1861).<ref name=medievalismi/> Patriotic literature was still expressed in the novel ''Confessions of an Italian'' by Ippolito Nievo (1831–1861), about the exploits of Giuseppe Garibaldi's Thousand. Late Romanticism was represented, among others, by Francesco Dall'Ongaro, Giovanni Prati, Aleardo Aleardi.{{sfn|Bartoli|Oelsner|1911|p=912}}
==Philosophical spiritualism and historicism== In philosophy, Italian Romanticism saw the development of various currents pervaded by a spiritualism contiguous to that which in France had found its first theoretician in Victor Cousin. In Italy too, particular attention was paid to the religious, moral and transcendent dimension, always linked to patriotic themes and the valorization of national identity, in opposition to the Enlightenment materialism.{{sfn|Sciacca|1966|pp=105–128}}
Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821), a French-speaking Savoyard thinker who had a significant influence on Italian conservative catholic thought,<ref>{{cite book|author=Francesco Traniello|title=Storia contemporanea|location=Torino|publisher=SEI|date=1989|page=34}}</ref> had already defended authority, tradition and the Catholic religion as the foundations of society, opposing French revolutionary ideas. A key figure of the Counter-Enlightenment, he advocated a radical pessimism about human nature, tempered by a providential view of history, and developed a political theology based on the "throne and altar" duality, that is, on the divine right of kings.<ref>{{cite book|author=Mario Astarita|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wYRIuAEACAAJ|title=Tra trono e altare. Il conservatorismo cattolico di Donoso, de Maistre e Solaro|publisher=Il Pensiero|date=2018|isbn=978-8899469511}}</ref>
The subsequent penetration of European and German Romanticism brought other philosophical impulses, albeit more liberal in tone. Kantian philosophy was initially assimilated by the Neapolitans Pasquale Galluppi (1770–1846) and Ottavio Colecchi (1773–1847), but a profound re-elaboration of it was made by Antonio Rosmini (1797–1855),{{sfn|Sciacca|1966|pp=105–128}} father of Italian Idealism, who rejected sensism of Gioia and Romagnosi, and laid the foundations for the ethical spiritualism that would characterize the various philosophical movements aiming at Unification of Italy.<ref>{{cite book|author=Luciano Malusa|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tlZ-KHnmc_AC&pg=PA69|title=Antonio Rosmini per l'unità d'Italia: tra aspirazione nazionale e fede cristiana|page=69|location=Milan|publisher=FrancoAngeli|date=2011 | isbn=978-88-568-4377-4 }}</ref> [[File:First meeting between Giuseppe Garibaldi.jpg|thumb|Garibaldi's adherence to Mazzinian Ideals of Young Italy (Risorgimento Museum, Turin)]] Rosmini along with Vincenzo Gioberti are considered the main spokesmans of liberal Catholicism:<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Scarangello |first1=Anthony |title=Major Catholic-Liberal Educational Philosophers of the Italian Risorgimento |journal=History of Education Quarterly |date=1964 |volume=4 |issue=4 |pages=232–250|doi=10.2307/367499 |jstor=367499 |s2cid=147563567 }}</ref> both took up the Augustinian neoplatonic themes of the interiority of conscience and divine illumination, but the former aspired to a religious reform oriented toward the transcendence, the latter more oriented toward the recovery of the civil function of Christian tradition.<ref name=rota/>
Gioberti, in fact, sought to challenge the subjectivism of modern philosophy emerging from Descartes, reaffirming the preeminence of ontology,<ref>Gioberti's philosophical position is known as "ontologism": {{Treccani|ontologismo_(Enciclopedia-Italiana)/|Ontologismo|Guido Calogero||1935}}.</ref> understood in an almost pantheistic way. He affirmed the value of the Italian philosophical tradition, which encompassed the Pythagorean, Patristic, and Scholastic schools up to Giambattista Vico's historicism.<ref name=rota>{{Treccani|le-tradizioni-filosofiche-nell-italia-unita_(Storia-della-civiltà-europea-a-cura-di-Umberto-Eco)/|Le tradizioni filosofiche nell'Italia unita|Giovanni Rota, edited by Umberto Eco||2014}}. See also: {{cite book|author=Michele Federico Sciacca|title=Il pensiero italiano nell'età del Risorgimento|publisher=Marzorati|date=1963|language=it}}</ref> On the other hand, he was hostile to the conservative and reactionary traits that he saw embodied in the Jesuits.
Giuseppe Mazzini instead experimented Romantic Spiritualism with revolutionary and anticlerical overtones, as well as pedagogical ones, inspired by a syncretic vision of politics and religion in the supreme service of the nation. Driven by a strong idealistic strain, on which he based his Young Italy and Young Europe, Mazzinism conceived of God as an immanent force in history, which translates into the moral duty of peoples to act collectively for freedom, progress, and democracy, in order to fulfill the mission entrusted to them.
German idealism was more widely received in southern Italy. In the Kingdom of Naples a neo-Hegelian school was formed, whose major representatives were: Augusto Vera (1813–1885), a religious interpreter of Hegel's Science of Logic; Francesco de Sanctis (1817–1883), who saw the most significant ferments of European romanticism to be expressed by Hegelian aesthetics, according to which Art was «the sensitive appearance of the Idea», and from which he intended to draw inspiration for the construction of an heroic and "Alfierian" morality; Bertrando Spaventa (1817–1883), promoter of a renewed «Italian philosophy», who reformed Hegelian dialectics within the framework of Kant's transcendental self-consciousness, introducing other original themes from the indigenous Italian tradition, such as historicism. In this way Spaventa intended to demonstrate how modern philosophy, both secular and idealistic, was born in Italy with the Renaissance authors Bruno, Campanella and Vico, and then, due to the obstacles of the Counter-Reformation, it went on to fertilize the thought of the other side of the Alps.<ref>Gaetano Origo (2006), ''[https://books.google.it/books?id=OTIQAAAACAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&hl=it&redir_esc=y Da Bruno a Spaventa. Perpetuazione e difesa della filosofia italica]'', Rome, Bibliosofica, 2006.</ref>
The season of Italian idealism of Croce and Gentile would take its cue in the following century from this romantic spiritualism.<ref name=rota/>
==Visual art== Concurrently with European artistic Romanticism, purism began to develop in Italy, inspired by the German Nazarenes. However, a specific current of Romanticism also took root here, the so-called "historical Romanticism,"<ref name=Giudice>{{Treccani|il-romanticismo-storico-in-italia_(Storia-della-civilt%C3%A0-europea-a-cura-di-Umberto-Eco)/|Il romanticismo storico in Italia|Alberto Del Giudice, edited by Umberto Eco||2014|language=it}}.</ref> which focused on historical-patriotic themes. Its greatest exponent was Francesco Hayez (1791–1882), influenced by Tiepolo and other masters of the late Baroque. Along with him, who worked mainly in Lombardy-Venetia, the major painters of this current were Giuseppe Bezzuoli (1784–1855) in Tuscany, and Francesco Podesti (1800–1895) in Papal States.
The paintings the of the "historical Romanticism" tend to depict subjects from the past, mostly reminiscent of the italian Middle Ages, in an attempt to reproduce situations similar to that so-called "vulgar Era", considered to be formative of Italian traditions and popular folklore<ref name=Giudice/> (exactly as Manzoni did in ''Adelchi''). Hayez's repertoire also includes portraits of famous people of his time, from the aforementioned Alessandro Manzoni to Garibaldi and Camillo Benso di Cavour. His best-known painting, entitled ''The Kiss'' (1859), depicts a man about to go into battle for his country, who dedicates a passionate and sincere kiss to his beloved: underlining the primacy of sentiment, it resonates with the ideals of Italian unification and of political-military commitment.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://zuriest.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/a-jewel-in-romanticism-hayezs-the-kiss/|title=A Jewel in Romanticism: Hayez's "The Kiss"|date=21 November 2011|publisher=zuriest.wordpress.com|access-date=14 February 2015}}</ref>
Pelagio Palagi, Baldassare Verazzi, Eliseo Sala, Carlo Arienti, Amos Cassioli,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.aboutartonline.com/il-romanticismo-in-italia-i-capolavori-della-grande-mostra-milanese/|title=Il Romanticismo in Italia|author=Mario Ursino|date=12 January 2019 |publisher=Società per la storia dell'arte|language=it}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.finestresullarte.info/recensioni-mostre/recensione-mostra-romanticismo-milano-gallerie-italia-poldi-pezzoli|title=Come nacque e si sviluppò il Romanticismo in Italia|author=Federico Giannini|publisher=Finestre sull'Arte|language=it}}</ref> also belong to the civil painting with historical subjects.<ref name=finestre>{{cite web|url=https://www.finestresullarte.info/arte-base/il-romanticismo-in-italia|title=Il Romanticismo in Italia|date=2022|language=it}}</ref> In Giovanni Carnovali there are more intimate mythological scenes,<ref name=Giudice/> while in the romantic art of Palermo the Arab-Norman Middle Ages of Sicily are rediscovered.<ref>Franco Tomaselli, ''Il ritorno dei Normanni: protagonisti ed interpreti del restauro dei monumenti a Palermo nella seconda metà dell'Ottocento'', Officina, 1994.</ref> <gallery mode="packed" heights="120"> File:Giuseppe bezzuoli, lorenzino de' medici che muore pugnalato sulla piazza dei santi giovanni e paolo a venezia, 1840 (pt, museo civico), 04.jpg|''Lorenzino de' Medici dies stabbed in Venice'', by Giuseppe Bezzuoli (1840) File:Francesco Hayez 023.jpg|''The Sicilian Vespers'', by Francesco Hayez (1846) File:Podesti-Giuramento anconetani.jpg|''The Oath of the Anconetani'', by Francesco Podesti (1855) File:Pelagio palagi lincontro di carlo viii e gian galeazzo sforza a pavia103649).jpg|''Charles VIII meets Gian Galeazzo Sforza in Pavia'', by Pelagio Palagi (1822) File:Antonio Puccinelli, dino compagni in san giovanni predica la pace tra guelfi e ghibellini 02.jpg|''Dino Compagni preached peace among Guelphs and Ghibellines'', by Antonio Puccinelli (1879) File:Il carroccio (La battaglia di Legnano) Massimo Tapparelli d'Azeglio.jpg|''The Battle of Legnano'', by Massimo d'Azeglio (1831) File:Francesco Hayez – -36883.jpg|''The two Foscari'', by Francesco Hayez (1844) File:Morte di Aminta, di Giovanni Carnovali detto il Piccio.jpg|''Death of Aminta'', by Giovanni Carnovali (or «il Piccio») (1832) </gallery> Worthy of mention is also the landscape painting, which partly recalling the eighteenth-century ''veduta'', offers a sentimental and lyrical representation of nature. It is found in the paintings of Giuseppe Pietro Bagetti(1764–1831), Giovanni Migliara (1785–1837), Massimo d'Azeglio (1798–1866), Antonio Fontanesi (1818–1882), Giuseppe Camino (1818–1890); around Giacinto Gigante (1806–1876), who experimented with expressions of the romantic sublime,<ref name=finestre/> the school of Posillipo was formed, which influenced Gabriele Smargiassi, Giuseppe and Filippo Palizzi, Teodoro Duclère.<ref name=Giudice/> Paintings of a realistic-naturalistic nature were also those of the Palermitans Salvatore Lo Forte and Francesco Lojacono.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://iris.unicas.it/retrieve/de2a6153-c230-86a2-e053-1705fe0a3017/Pittura%20Ottocento.pdf|title=La pittura dell'Ottocento in Sicilia|publisher=Flaccovio editore|editor=Maria Concetta di Natale|location=Palermo|date=2005|language=it}}</ref> <gallery mode=packed heights=120px> File:Gigante giacinto.jpg|''Costiera amalfitana'', di Giacinto Gigante (c. 1844) File:Camino-Blanc.jpg|''Mont Blanc'', by Giuseppe Camino (c. 1870) File:Antonio Fontanesi, La Solitudine, 1876.png|''Solitude'', by Antonio Fontanesi (1876) File:Francesco Lojacono Veduta di Palermo 1875 SAM 0628.JPG|''Golden Conch of Palermo'', by Francesco Lojacono (1875) File:Massimo d'azeglio, una vendetta, 1835, 01.jpg|''A revenge'', by Massimo d'Azeglio (1835) File:Giovanni Migliara Eine vom Sturm unterbrochene Prozession.jpg|''A procession interrupted by a storm'', by Giovanni Migliara (c. 1830) File:Carlo Ademollo - Travellers in the mountains (1850).jpg|''Travelers in the Mountains'', by Carlo Ademollo (1850) File:Beniamino De Francesco Ferdinand II in den Katakomben von San Gennaro.jpg|''Ferdinando II in the Catacombs of S.Gennaro'', by De Francesco (1835)</gallery> There is finally genre painting, which has as its subject scenes and events of daily life, sometimes of patriotic subject, which was addressed in the paintings of Domenico (1815–1878) and Gerolamo Induno (1825–1890), Luigi Sabatelli (1772–1850), Giacomo Trecourt (1812–1882), Gioacchino Toma (1836–1891), Federico Faruffini (1833–1869);<ref name=Giudice/> this latter belonging to the Lombard Scapigliatura, which includes among others Tranquillo Cremona and Daniele Ranzoni, followers of Carnovali. Often they are also authors of portraits.<ref name=Giudice/> <gallery mode=packed heights=120px> File:Gerolamo induno triste presentimento 1862.jpg|''Sad feeling'', by Gerolamo Induno (1862) File:Pelagio Palagi - Newton's Discovery of the Refraction of Light - WGA16864.jpg|''Discovery of the refraction of light by Newton'', by Pelagio Palagi (1827) File:Giocchino Toma - Luisa Sanfelice in carcere.jpg|''Luisa Sanfelice in prison'', by Gioacchino Toma (1877) File:Federico Faruffini - Raffaello e la Fornarina.jpg|''Raffaello and la Fornarina'', by Faruffini (1857)</gallery>
==Music== Romanticism in Italy was a period of particular renewal for opera, whose subjects were drawn less from mythology and classical studies than from historical themes.
The early Italian Romantic period saw the apogee of ''bel canto'', inaugurated by Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868), who composed operas such as ''The Barber of Seville'', ''Cinderella'', ''The Thieving Magpie'', ''William Tell''. His style was adopted by his contemporaries Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835) and Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848). While Rossini's comic operas are today known primarily for their rousing overtures, Donizetti and Bellini predominate for their tragic content. The most important Italian instrumental composer of this period was the legendary "Devil's Violinist" Niccolò Paganini. [[File:Nabucco.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Scene from ''Nabucco'' with the famous "Va pensiero" chorus.]] The face of Italian Romantic opera, however, is Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), whose slave chorus in ''Nabucco'' is a memorable hymn to all of Italy. Italian nationalistic aspirations were reflected in those of the Jews of the Exodus:{{sfn|Plantinga|1989|pp=[https://books.google.it/books?id=HL2VZEpLwhIC&pg=PA302#v=onepage&q&f=false 302-3]}} {{Verse translation|head1=Italian|lang1=it|O mia patria sì bella e perduta.|head2=English|lang2=en|Oh my homeland, so lovely and lost!|attr1=Words from the chorus ''Va pensiero''}} Its success at La Scala of Milan in 1842 marked a turning point in the composer's career, and helped redefine musical taste of the era, with historical-realistic elements that matched typical themes of Romanticism, such as sentiment, freedom, patriotism.{{sfn|Plantinga|1989|pp=[https://books.google.it/books?id=HL2VZEpLwhIC&pg=PA302#v=onepage&q&f=false 302-3]}} Also Verdi's trilogy formed by ''Rigoletto'', ''The Troubadour'' and ''The Fallen Woman'' are among his major works, but he reached the peak of his art with ''Otello'' and ''Falstaff'' at the end of his career. He infused his operas with unparalleled dramatic vigor and rhythmic vitality.
Verdi followed the path of well-composed melodrama, similar to Wagner despite their differences. His immense charisma eclipsed all other Italian composers, including Amilcare Ponchielli (1834–1886) and Arrigo Boito (1842–1918), who also wrote the librettist for his last operas, ''Otello'' and ''Falstaff''.
In the second half of the 19th century, operas by "young school" exponents, such as Mascagni's ''Rustic Chivalry'', Leoncavallo's ''The Clowns'',{{sfn|Plantinga|1989|p=[https://books.google.it/books?id=HL2VZEpLwhIC&pg=PA326#v=onepage&q&f=false 326]}} and especially those of Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924), Verdi's undisputed successor, transcended realism into verism: his ''La Bohème'', ''Tosca'', ''Madame Butterfly'' and ''Turandot'' are melodic operas loaded with emotion and late Romantic feeling.{{sfn|Plantinga|1989|p=[https://books.google.it/books?id=HL2VZEpLwhIC&pg=PA326#v=onepage&q&f=false 326]}}
==Architecture== Romantic architecture in Italy was also influenced by medievalism, but less widespread than in other parts of Europe. It was expressed in Romanesque Revival, Gothic Revival, exotic or eclectic styles,<ref name=medievalismi>{{cite journal|url=https://journals.uniurb.it/index.php/materialismostorico/article/download/2148/1931/8905|title=Medievalismi italiani: una questione nazionale|author=Nicolò Maggio|pages=221–9|journal=Materialismo Storico|issue=1|date=2019|volume=V|language=it}}</ref> primarily devoted to the completion of the facades of great cathedrals, and the construction of new churches (particularly for Protestant denominations who found its "austere expressiveness" attractive).
A significant example of this architecture is the Gothic façade of Santa Croce in Florence, which became a sort of national temple, already celebrated as Hall of Fame by Ugo Foscolo, being the burial place of illustrious authors, artists, and intellectuals in Italian history.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ausiliotecafirenze.org/facilefacile/scheda.php?schermata_id=311&lezione=Ugo%20Foscolo%20e%20il%20tempio%20degl%27Italiani:%20Santa%20Croce|title=Ugo Foscolo e il tempio degl'Italiani: Santa Croce|date=25 April 2019 |language=it}}</ref> <gallery mode=packed heights=130px> File:Santa Croce Firenze.jpg|Santa Croce, Florence File:Rom - Chiesa Sacro Cuore del Suffragio - panoramio.jpg|Sacro Cuore del Suffragio, Rome File:Basilica minore dell'Addolorata (facade).jpg|Basilica of Our Lady of Sorrows (Isernia) File:Rocchetta Mattei (smaller view).jpg|Rocchetta Mattei (Metropolitan City of Bologna) File:Gressoney-Saint-Jean - Castello Savoia 2.jpg|Savoy Castle, Gressoney-Saint-Jean </gallery>
==Interpretation difficulties== Several interpretative difficulties have emerged regarding the nature of Italian Romanticism, anomalously called upon to construct a national identity in opposition to classicism, in which Italian culture had its distinctive trait.{{sfn|Camilletti|2015|p=[https://books.google.it/books?id=iZNECgAAQBAJ&pg=PA32#v=onepage&q&f=false 32]}}{{sfn|Luzzi|2008|p=[https://books.google.it/books?id=-LGTFT2D8ZMC&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false 3]}} Anglophone foreign observers often failed to understand, precisely during the period when Italy was their beloved destination on the Grand Tour, that many Italian authors sought to use classicism itself as an instrument of modernity.<ref name=review/>{{sfn|Costazza|2017|p=[https://books.google.it/books?id=JHfQDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA9#v=onepage&q&f=false 9]}}
Furthermore, those Italian writers who did not participate in the debate between classicists and Romantics detested being grouped into a single category of writing.{{sfn|Camilletti|2015|pp=[https://books.google.it/books?id=iZNECgAAQBAJ&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=false 25-26]}} Therefore, Romantic Italy can seem to be home of numerous isolated literary figures, without a univocal meaning for the term "Romanticism" itself.{{sfn|Camilletti|2015|pp=[https://books.google.it/books?id=iZNECgAAQBAJ&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=false 25-26]}}
In 1908 Gina Martegiani even wrote in ''The Voice'' an essay titled ''Italian Romanticism Does Not Exist'',{{sfn|Luzzi|2016|p=[https://books.google.it/books?id=XFA2CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA378#v=onepage&q&f=false 378]}} arguing that 19th-century writers in Italy were either all classicists, or those who considered themselves Romantics merely imitated German works, while Romanticism is supposed to be anything but an imitation. Although well-argued, her essay was nevertheless considered paradoxical,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Spaggiari|first=William|chapter=Intersezioni classico-romantiche nella polemica letteraria milanese del 1816|editor=Alessandro Costazza|title=Il romantico nel Classicismo, il classico nel Romanticismo|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JHfQDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA31|page=31|publisher=LED Edizioni Universitarie|location=Milan|date=2017|isbn=978-8879168717|language=it}}</ref> and instead helped to emphasize that Italian Romanticism had different connotations than those in the rest of Europe.<ref name=review>{{cite journal|url=https://journals.openedition.org/transalpina/1648?lang=it|title=Il romanticismo italiano e l'Europa. Fantasia e realtà nell'immaginario occidentale|author=Luca Bani|journal=Transalpina. Études Italiennes |date=2 October 2014 |issue=17 |pages=261–263 |doi=10.4000/transalpina.1648 |department=review to Joseph Luzzi, ''Il romanticismo italiano e l'Europa. Fantasia e realtà nell'immaginario occidentale'', Rome, Carocci, 2012|language=it}}</ref>
Benedetto Croce in ''La Critica'' responded that her thesis was based on a reductive conception of Romanticism as a poetic "deviation" from classical canons, when in reality it was to be considered the second great revolution of the European spirit after the Renaissance, which affected all fields of knowledge, such as philosophy or politics, and involved every country.<ref name=Croce/> Therefore, the very contrast between classicism and Romanticism was misleading.<ref name=Croce>{{cite journal|author=Benedetto Croce|title=Sulla poesia italiana dal Parini al Leopardi|journal=La Critica. Rivista di Letteratura, Storia e Filosofia|issue=24|date=1926|pages=34–46}} See Croce's quotes in {{cite web|url=https://usiena-air.unisi.it/bitstream/11365/1224794/3/phd_unisi_093857.pdf|author=Fabiano Bellina|title=Ossian in Italia: studio sull'influenza della traduzione cesarottiana|publisher=Università di Siena|date=2023|pages=21–22|language=it}}</ref>
Beyond its nominal designation, it led to a renewal of Italian culture, as Stendhal noted, toward modernity,{{sfn|Raimondi|1997|p=[https://books.google.it/books?id=N1IdO-ZFX6gC&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false 3]}} and the recovery of early Romantic texts in the second half of the twentieth century confirms this assessment.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Spaggiari|first=William|chapter=Intersezioni classico-romantiche nella polemica letteraria milanese del 1816|title=Il romantico nel Classicismo, il classico nel Romanticismo|editor=Alessandro Costazza|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JHfQDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA32|page=32|publisher=LED Edizioni Universitarie|location=Milan|date=2017|isbn=978-8879168717|language=it}}</ref>
==Notes and citations== {{reflist}}
==Bibliography== *{{cite book|title=Ludovico Di Breme (1780-1820), der erste Theoretiker der Romantik in Italien|first=Wolfram|last=Krömer|publisher=Librairie Droz|year=1961|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tcQn_s37U7gC|location=Geneva|language=de}} *{{Treccani|le-tradizioni-filosofiche-nell-italia-unita_(Storia-della-civiltà-europea-a-cura-di-Umberto-Eco)/|Le tradizioni filosofiche nell'Italia unita|Giovanni Rota, edited by Umberto Eco||2014}} *{{Treccani|il-romanticismo-storico-in-italia_(Storia-della-civilt%C3%A0-europea-a-cura-di-Umberto-Eco)/|Il romanticismo storico in Italia|Alberto Del Giudice, edited by Umberto Eco||2014}} *{{cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26266691|journal=Lettere Italiane|author=Mario Andrea Rigoni|title=Leopardi, Schelling, Madame de Staël e la scienza romantica della natura|volume=LIII|issue=2|pages=247–256|publisher=Leo S. Olschki|date=April–June 2001|jstor=26266691|language=it}} *Carlo Tivaroni, ''[https://books.google.it/books?id=Fuc7AQAAIAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Storia critica del Risorgimento italiano]'', L. Roux, 1889. *Andrea Maurici, ''[https://books.google.it/books?id=00gpAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it#v=onepage&q&f=false Il romanticismo in Sicilia]'', R. Sandron, 1893. *{{cite book|author=Francesco de Sanctis|title=La scuola cattolico-liberale e il Romanticismo a Napoli|editor=Carlo Muscetta and Giorgio Candeloro|location=Turin|publisher=Einaudi|date=1953|language=it}} *{{cite book|author=Edmondo Cione|title=Napoli romantica: 1830–1848|location=Naples|publisher=Morano Editore|date=1957|language=it}} *{{cite book|author=Michele Federico Sciacca|title=Il pensiero italiano nell'età del Risorgimento|publisher=Marzorati|date=1963|language=it}} *{{cite book|first=Michele Federico|last=Sciacca|chapter=Lo spiritualismo italiano e A. Rosmini|title=La filosofia nel suo sviluppo storico: dal secolo XIX ai nostri giorni|chapter-url=https://it.scribd.com/document/846862935/M-F-Sciacca-La-filosofia-nel-suo-sviluppo-storico-per-i-licei-3-Dal-secolo-XIX-ai-nostri-giorni|volume=3|chapter-format=VI|location=Rome|publisher=Cremonese|date=1966|language=it}} *{{cite book|first=Leon|last=Plantinga|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HL2VZEpLwhIC|title=La musica romantica. Storia dello stile musicale nell'Europa dell'Ottocento|publisher=Feltrinelli|date=1989|isbn=978-8807180064|language=it}} *{{cite book|first=Ezio|last=Raimondi|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N1IdO-ZFX6gC&pg=PT7|title=Romanticismo italiano e romanticismo europeo|publisher=Mondadori|editor=Lucia Rodler|location=Milan|date=1997|isbn=978-8842494454|language=it}} *{{Cite book|last=Camilletti|first=Fabio A.|title=Classicism and Romanticism in Italian Literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iZNECgAAQBAJ|publisher=Routledge|date=2015|doi=10.4324/9781315655192|isbn=978-1315655192 }} *{{Cite book|last=Costazza|first=Alessandro|title=Il romantico nel Classicismo, il classico nel Romanticismo|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JHfQDwAAQBAJ|publisher=LED Edizioni Universitarie|location=Milan|date=2017|isbn=978-8879168717|language=it}} *{{cite book|first=Joseph|last=Luzzi|title=Romantic Europe and the Ghost of Italy|publisher=Yale University Press|date=2008|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-LGTFT2D8ZMC|isbn=978-0300151787}} *{{cite book|first=Joseph|last=Luzzi|chapter=The Task of Italian Romanticism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XFA2CwAAQBAJ|publisher=Oxford University Press|date=2016|editor=Paul Hamilton|title=The Oxford Handbook of European Romanticism|isbn=978-0191064975}} *{{EB1911|wstitle=Italian Literature|volume=14|pages=897–912 |first1=Adolfo |last1=Bartoli |first2=Hermann|last2=Oelsner}}
==External links== *{{cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/art/Italian-literature/Literary-trends-of-the-19th-century|title=Italian literary trends of the 19th century|publisher=Britannica}} *{{cite journal|url=https://revistas.ufpr.br/letras/article/viewFile/20044/13225&ved=2ahUKEwi-7r6o6oKOAxVWgP0HHZp5HzgQFnoECCwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3IL1ErUiSOVhohL7pg-wHW|title=Il Romanticismo in Italia|author=Luigi Castagnola|publisher=Federal University of Paraná|date=November 2010|journal=Revista Letras|volume=4 |issue=4|doi=10.5380/rel.v4i0.20044|language=it|doi-access=free}}
{{Romanticism}} {{Risorgimento}} {{Italy topics}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Romanticism In Italy}} Category:18th century in Italy Category:19th century in Italy Category:1790s in Italy Category:1800s in Italy Category:1810s in Italy Category:1820s in Italy Category:1830s in Italy Category:1840s in Italy Category:1850s in Italy Category:1860s in Italy Category:1870s in Italy Category:Cultural history of Italy Category:Italian unification Category:Italian literary movements Category:Italian art movements Category:Romanticism by country