Diventare antifascisti: i motivi che portarono Lionello Venturi a rifiutare il giuramento di fedeltà al fascismo del 1931 - Becoming anti-fascists: the reasons that led Lionello Venturi to refuse the 1931 oath of allegiance to Fascism

Abstract

The reasons that led the art historian Lionello Venturi to refuse his oath of allegiance to Fascism in 1931 were numerous and varied, of a public but also private nature. His training had led him to cultivate a liberal-democratic and largely inclusive nationalism, but in the 1920s his cultural alienation from Fascism had not prevented him from trying to use his networks of influence in the new Italy to confirm his contacts and his relationships, his ascendancy, and his individual freedom. At the beginning of the 1930s, however, the regime tried to limit his travels abroad and to prevent him from having relations with the collector Riccardo Gualino, asked him to swear allegiance to Fascism and arrested his son, while denying him access to the chair of Art History at the University of Rome. Lionello Venturi therefore decided that the construction of his role as a scholar and connoisseur could also continue outside  the University and far from Italy.