PREFACE
Giovanni Morelli and my father hrst met in 1876,
and from then on until Morelli's death in February
1891 they exchanged letters, sometimes as often as
twice a week. This correspondence is almost com-
plete, for Morelli kept my father's letters and my
father kept Morelli's; and after Morelli's death my
father's letters were returned. On my father's death
in 1937 the correspondence was found among his
papers. My sister Irma (Morelli's godchild) realized
its interest for present-day art-historians and planned
for its publication. This project I have tried to carry
out after her death.
In B. Berenson's recent book »Essays in Appre-
ciation«, 1958, p. 100, Giovanni Morelli is called »the
rationalizer and reformer of connoisseurship«. The
scientific method introduced by Morelli, that is, the
examinationof the individual forms and the attribution
of paintings to their respective artists on the evidence
of these forms, is now taken for granted. It has
become the basis of connoisseurship not only in
Renaissance paintings, but in all art, including Greek
vase-painting. That an artist reveals himself in the
manner in which he draws ears, nostrils, hands, feet,
folds, etc., and that these concrete forms are a con-
IX
Giovanni Morelli and my father hrst met in 1876,
and from then on until Morelli's death in February
1891 they exchanged letters, sometimes as often as
twice a week. This correspondence is almost com-
plete, for Morelli kept my father's letters and my
father kept Morelli's; and after Morelli's death my
father's letters were returned. On my father's death
in 1937 the correspondence was found among his
papers. My sister Irma (Morelli's godchild) realized
its interest for present-day art-historians and planned
for its publication. This project I have tried to carry
out after her death.
In B. Berenson's recent book »Essays in Appre-
ciation«, 1958, p. 100, Giovanni Morelli is called »the
rationalizer and reformer of connoisseurship«. The
scientific method introduced by Morelli, that is, the
examinationof the individual forms and the attribution
of paintings to their respective artists on the evidence
of these forms, is now taken for granted. It has
become the basis of connoisseurship not only in
Renaissance paintings, but in all art, including Greek
vase-painting. That an artist reveals himself in the
manner in which he draws ears, nostrils, hands, feet,
folds, etc., and that these concrete forms are a con-
IX