Visitas à luz de tochas: guiando o olhar através dos museus de escultura antiga no final do século XVIII e início do XIX

Abstract

The present article analyses the practice of visiting museums of antique art by torchlight, which came into fashion in the last two decades of the eighteenth century in Rome. Our intention is to determine the role of the torchlight visit in the change from earlier modes of displaying antique art in the baroque palaces of the seventeenth century, to new exhibition strategies, which followed Winckelmann's innovative theories about the stylistic evolution of classical Greek art. The article also retraces the origin of the practice of torchlight visits to the older uses of torchlight in the context of the Academy, and academic teaching, indicating how a practice directly related to the instruction of painters in the Academies became an important instrument of art reception in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Italy.