Johann Dominicus Fiorillo (1748-1821) sugli artisti italiani di re Mattia Corvino: Contributi alla fortuna crìtica della Biblioteca Corvina

Johann Dominicus Fiorillo, who was also a painter, taught art history at the University of Göttingen, and is mainly known as the author of the monumental Geschichte der Zeichnenden Künste (1805-1820). In 1812, he published the work Über einige Italiänische Gelehrte und Künstler welche Matthias Corvinus König von Ungarn Beschäftigte, in which he presented the Italian humanists and artists who had relations with the Hungarian king (for example Marsilio Ficino, Francesco Bandini, Bartolomeo Fonzio, Antonio Bonfini, Galeotto Marzio, and then Filarete, Andrea del Verrocchio, Filippino Lippi, Benedetto da Maiano, etc.). With great erudition, Fiorillo re-used the works of Giorgio Vasari (the Lives), Girolamo Tiraboschi (the Storia della letteratura italiana) and Jacopo Morelli (the Notizie d'opere di disegno), inserting translations of entire passages in his text. He thus put together all of the information relating to the Bibliotheca Corvina that was known up to that time, especially as regards the Corvinus codices of Modena, Venice and Bruxelles, and the Florentine miniaturists active under Matthias (Attavante degli Attavanti, Gherardo and Monte di Giovanni), including attributions problems. The novelty of Fiorillo's work is that he found a place for the Corvinus manuscripts in the history of art. In fact, he thought that the history of art and the history of culture were inseparable. Despite the importance of his work, Fiorillo's contribution (like almost all his work outside German-speaking countries) was unknown to Hungarian scholars for a long time: they only discovered it in the second half of the nineteenth century.