Outside the Fascist Canon of Ancient Art: Edoardo Persico, Arte romana (1935) and an Alternative Look toward Antiquity

The paper offers a reflection on some case studies of alternative approaches to ancient Roman art by Italian critics and artists during the fascist regime. Specifically, the starting point of the text is Arte Romana – a volume on Roman art consisting of a groundbreaking essay and a long sequence of striking photographs, edited by the art critic Edoardo Persico in 1935. The book represented a unique episode in the Italian cultural context of the 1930s, both from a graphic and thematic perspective. Differently from most critics of the time, Persico avoided any form of magniloquent celebration of antiquity. Conversely, he proposed an interpretation of the artworks according to a purely formal and stylistic approach. Furthermore, he stated a strong ideal connection between ancient sculptures and works of international contemporary art, which was then regarded with suspicion by the fascist official culture. On the basis of these considerations, Roman sculpture was unexpectedly presented as an incentive to rethink contemporary culture and society from a progressive perspective: the distance from the ideals of fascist regime could not be more evident.