Séroux d’Agincourt, Alberti and Quattrocento: a reassessment between France and Italy, 1779-1823 Séroux d'Agincourt, Alberti e la rilettura del Quattrocento tra Francia e Italia, 1779-1823 En It

Résumé En

The Histoire de l’art par les monumens by Séroux d’Agincourt (1810-1823) reveals, beyond the attention paid to the history of medieval art, an essential interest in the artistic production linked to Antiquity, whose parabola from decadence (4th century) to rebirth (16th century) the author sets out to illustrate. The investigation of the beginnings of this rebirth is a strong point of his historiographical design, particularly with regard to architecture. Séroux considered the architects of the Italian Renaissance as the pioneers of a substantial change and presented Alberti as the initiator of a systematic investigation of Antiquity as a source for the architecture of his time. The essay investigates the context and networks, both Italian and French, between Florence, Rome, Rimini and Mantua, through which the new look at the history of 15th-century architecture, of which Séroux was one of the founders, developed between the 1770s and the 1810s