Abstract

After Giovan Battista Niccolini, Paolo Emiliani Giudici brought the first teaching of "Aesthetics" together with "Principles of Art History to the Florence Academy of Fine Arts" between 1859 and 1863; no written records of it remain. Comments on the formal reading of the art of the past are sought in his other works, in which he linked the arts to history, with the unprecedented approval of Pietro Selvatico. After him, Aleardo Aleardi was called to the chair; but it was Camillo Jacopo Cavallucci, with his critical vision of moderate positivism, who defined the first historical artistic teaching at the Academy. He was a professor from 1874 to 1906, and highlighted some references to the specialist studies of the time in his "History of Art Manuals", published since 1895.