Il contributo di Giacomo Carrara alle Vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti bergamaschi

Giacomo Carrara’s contribution to Francesco Maria Tassi’s Vite de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti bergamaschi (1793) is known in relation to its footnotes, as is stated in its Preface. Unpublished evidence (namely three letters written by Carrara to Bottari preserved in the library of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana in Rome, and papers in Carrara’s personal archive) sheds new light on the weight and quality of Carrara’s contribution. It highlights Carrara’s specific competence in stylistic analysis, a knowledge of the «carattere» and «maniera» of artworks, as a basic contribution to Tassi’s historical method. More broadly, it allows us to outline more precisely the troubled genesis of Tassi’s Vite vis à vis the two scholars’ different attitudes and methodologies in art writing.