Decio Gioseffi, an in-depth study by Maurizio Lorber

On Tuesday, 15 October, the eighth appointment of the conference series promoted by the Cultural Association ‘Manlio Cecovini Study Society’ was held at the Trieste Campus, located in via Locchi 25. 
The lecture by Maurizio Lorber - lecturer in the History of Art Criticism and Art Historical Research Methodology at the University of Trieste - delved into the figure of Decio Gioseffi.

Decio Gioseffi held the position of Director of the Institute of Medieval and Modern Art History at the University of Trieste continuously from 1964 to 1993.

From his very first publications, Gioseffi emerged as a staunch advocate of the philological skills required by art historians. Reviewing a Chinese art exhibition in 1954, he wrote that "the initiation [of the art historian] must be primarily of a visual nature [...]". He won the Olivetti Prize (1957 and 1961) with two texts that were met with immediate positive international recognition: Perspectiva artificialis. For the History of Perspective: Notes and Observations (1957) and The Vatican Dome: A Michelangelesque Hypothesis (1961), both published by the University of Trieste. Alongside his scientific work, Decio Gioseffi also pursued a prolific career as an active art critic, widely featured in radio programmes and from 1945 to 1962 through articles in the Giornale di Trieste and Il Piccolo. Modest and reserved, Gioseffi was a highly regarded member of numerous committees and scientific councils for cultural institutions, exhibitions, museums, and academic journals. Among others, he was part of the scientific councils of the International Centre for the Study of Architecture in Vicenza and the International University of Art in Florence, as well as the editorial board of the journal Critica d’Arte. From 1980 to 1989, he served as President of the Committee for the Arts and Historic Heritage at the Ministry of Cultural Heritage.

A meticulous scholar, Gioseffi encouraged young local researchers to delve into art history, and to this end, he founded and directed the journal Arte in Friuli Arte a Trieste from 1975 to 1993, which served as the official voice of the research conducted within the then Institute of Art History in Trieste.

From the outset, with the aforementioned Perspectiva artificialis (Trieste 1957) and his work on Canaletto (Canaletto: The Venetian Galleries Notebook and the Use of the Camera Obscura, Trieste 1958), concerning the use and implications of the camera obscura in creating views, Gioseffi demonstrated mastery of technical aspects that typically challenge scholars in the humanities.

Gioseffi’s approach to his studies, focused on conventions and interpretative criteria of images, is evident in his work on Giotto the Architect (1964) as well as in some forays into contemporary art, such as The False Prehistory of Piet Mondrian and the Origins of Neoplasticism (1957) and Picasso, Guernica, and the Mozarabic Codices (1965). His passion for architecture, already apparent in his early studies, remained a constant throughout his career. In particular, articles on Andrea Palladio and Palladianism were published in the Bulletin of the International Centre for Architectural Studies between 1972 and 1980. Gioseffi passed away in Trieste on 1 March 2007, but in 2022 some of his students curated the publication of his last work, History of Art in Europe, completed thirty years earlier.

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