«Ai tempi di Cimabue non era sì barbara in Lombardia, quanto Vasari la vuol far credere, l’arte della pittura» Prime tracce di ‘primitivi’ negli scritti di Carlo Amoretti

Among the least investigated personalities of the milanese erudition between the 18th and 19th century, we find Carlo Amoretti (1741-1816): polygraph, naturalist, Winckelmann’s first Italian translator and Leonardo scholar as prefect of the Ambrosiana Library. Starting from the manuscripts kept at the Istituto Lombardo – Accademia di Scienze e Lettere in Milan, this paper aims to shed a first light on the observations of Amoretti around 14th and 15th century artworks in the Lombard territory. In particular, his travel diaries provide unpublished insights into the debate on medieval and proto-Renaissance art that involved some of the leading antiquarians of the 19th century, with whom Amoretti himself was in contact: from Giuseppe Bossi to Seroux d’Agincourt, from Tommaso degli Obizzi to Stefano Borgia.