La via pura della saggistica. La lezione di Roberto Longhi: Cesare Garboli e Alfonso Berardinelli

Roberto Longhi's work marked the decisive choice of a critic itinerary which found in the form of essay its most intimate and deepest nature. Incomparable art scholar, Longhi succeeded not only in building a new story of Italian painting, but also in expressing a literary talent which, condensed in his critical activity, took to a popular esteem of his style. If Longhi's lesson was assimilated by writers and directors, his style has also formed successive critics who took him as a reference point. Among these there are Cesare Garboli and Alfonso Berardinelli who, in different ways, assimilated Longhi's lesson in the building of their personal essay writing. Garboli, as shown by the numerous speeches dedicated to him, has always been extremely sensitive to Longhi's genius. Such speeches are also a means to ask himself questions about the contemporary charter of the essay. In Scritti servili and Falbalas a study about the physiology of the essay form is met. This essay form repeatedly dialogues with the structure of Longhi's texts. Berardinelli, on the other side, in his La forma del saggio finds the «virtues» of Longhi's style and his work one of the reasons of the «revaluation of the essay as a literary genre». Berardinelli identifies in Longhi's look a pure vertical instruments which is able, through the essay style, to respect the accuracy of the object in order to guarantee its real presence.