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Mario Praz
Mario Praz (Italian: [ˈmaːrjo prats]; 6 September 1896 in Rome – 23 March 1982 in Rome) was an Italian critic of art and literature, and a scholar of English literature. His best-known book, The Romantic Agony (1933), was a survey of the decadent, erotic and morbid themes that characterised European authors of the late 18th and 19th centuries (see Femme fatale for a reference of one of his chapters). The book was written and published first in Italian as La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica in 1930; and the most recent edition was published in Florence by Sansoni in 1996.
Praz was the son of Luciano Praz (died 1900), a bank clerk, and his wife, the former Giulia Testa di Marsciano (died 1931), daughter of Count Alcibiade Testa di Marsciano. His stepfather was Carlo Targioni (died 1954), a physician, whom his mother married in 1912.
He studied at the University of Bologna (1914–15), received a law degree from the University of Rome (1918), and received a doctorate in literature from the University of Florence (1920).
Praz married, on 17 March 1934 (separated 1942, divorced 1947), Vivyan Leonora Eyles (1909–1984), an English-literature lecturer at the University of Liverpool whom Praz met during his time there as a special lecturer in Italian studies. She was a daughter of the English novelist and feminist writer Margaret Leonora Eyles (1889–1960), who addressed to her in 1941 an autobiographical work entitled For My Enemy Daughter. She remarried in 1948, as her second husband, art historian Wolfgang Fritz Volbach. Praz and Eyles had one child, a daughter, Lucia Praz (born 1938).
Praz's only other known romantic attachment was to an Anglo-Italian woman named Perla Cacciguerra, whom he met in 1953 and called "Diamante" in the book The House of Life.
Praz's residence in Palazzo Primoli in Rome has been turned into the Museo Mario Praz. In Orhan Pamuk's novel The Museum of Innocence it is mentioned as "the most magnificent writer's museum I had seen".
Praz was a well-respected Italian-born art critic and scholar of the English language. He taught Italian Studies at the Victoria University of Manchester between 1932 and 1934. He then went on to teach English Literature at the University of Rome from 1934, until he retired in 1966. In 1962, he became an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Though Praz is perhaps best known for his writings in the English literary field, he has made strong contributions to the concepts, writings and perception of both interior design and interior decoration. The concepts that were presented in his The Romantic Agony have been shaped into his design and art criticism. This writing style has been successfully employed in Praz's two most noteworthy design books, The House of Life and An Illustrated History in Interior Design. These works highlight his theories of the interiority of a space, and reveal his concepts of how a person inhabits the interior and how they shape it to make it their own. His ground-breaking work Studies in seventeenth-century imagery, first published in 1939 and reissued many times since, is one of the first attempts to produce a systematic catalogue and analysis of the early modern allegorical genres of the emblem and the personal device.
Praz has had a profound impact not only on writings about interior design and decoration but also on the history, and the development, of design. The work, An Illustrated History of Interior Decoration from Pompeii to Art Nouveau has allowed the creation of a photographic album to be made, "Praz's rediscovery of this minor but fascinating art . . . was a revelation, and the historic no less than aesthetic importance of the subject is now recognised by a group of informed collectors". His work "provides a selection of visual representations of domesticity from ancient Greece through to the Art Nouveau, and a commentary upon them." The images show the interior decor and design of Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance and Victorian Homes in Europe between the period of 1770 and 1860. The sketches, paintings, and watercolour representations capture the spatial qualities and features of the interiority and decoration of the overall space. The images record accuracy to the shape of the room, from the carpet to the furniture, pictures, fabrics, wall colour, the hang of curtains and the placement of light. Praz's work has documented all these interior characteristics that would have shaped the space for the residents in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This work has had a strong contribution to the impact of not only researching the interiority of a space, but also providing a new groundwork for recording the history of an interior.
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Mario Praz
Mario Praz (Italian: [ˈmaːrjo prats]; 6 September 1896 in Rome – 23 March 1982 in Rome) was an Italian critic of art and literature, and a scholar of English literature. His best-known book, The Romantic Agony (1933), was a survey of the decadent, erotic and morbid themes that characterised European authors of the late 18th and 19th centuries (see Femme fatale for a reference of one of his chapters). The book was written and published first in Italian as La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica in 1930; and the most recent edition was published in Florence by Sansoni in 1996.
Praz was the son of Luciano Praz (died 1900), a bank clerk, and his wife, the former Giulia Testa di Marsciano (died 1931), daughter of Count Alcibiade Testa di Marsciano. His stepfather was Carlo Targioni (died 1954), a physician, whom his mother married in 1912.
He studied at the University of Bologna (1914–15), received a law degree from the University of Rome (1918), and received a doctorate in literature from the University of Florence (1920).
Praz married, on 17 March 1934 (separated 1942, divorced 1947), Vivyan Leonora Eyles (1909–1984), an English-literature lecturer at the University of Liverpool whom Praz met during his time there as a special lecturer in Italian studies. She was a daughter of the English novelist and feminist writer Margaret Leonora Eyles (1889–1960), who addressed to her in 1941 an autobiographical work entitled For My Enemy Daughter. She remarried in 1948, as her second husband, art historian Wolfgang Fritz Volbach. Praz and Eyles had one child, a daughter, Lucia Praz (born 1938).
Praz's only other known romantic attachment was to an Anglo-Italian woman named Perla Cacciguerra, whom he met in 1953 and called "Diamante" in the book The House of Life.
Praz's residence in Palazzo Primoli in Rome has been turned into the Museo Mario Praz. In Orhan Pamuk's novel The Museum of Innocence it is mentioned as "the most magnificent writer's museum I had seen".
Praz was a well-respected Italian-born art critic and scholar of the English language. He taught Italian Studies at the Victoria University of Manchester between 1932 and 1934. He then went on to teach English Literature at the University of Rome from 1934, until he retired in 1966. In 1962, he became an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Though Praz is perhaps best known for his writings in the English literary field, he has made strong contributions to the concepts, writings and perception of both interior design and interior decoration. The concepts that were presented in his The Romantic Agony have been shaped into his design and art criticism. This writing style has been successfully employed in Praz's two most noteworthy design books, The House of Life and An Illustrated History in Interior Design. These works highlight his theories of the interiority of a space, and reveal his concepts of how a person inhabits the interior and how they shape it to make it their own. His ground-breaking work Studies in seventeenth-century imagery, first published in 1939 and reissued many times since, is one of the first attempts to produce a systematic catalogue and analysis of the early modern allegorical genres of the emblem and the personal device.
Praz has had a profound impact not only on writings about interior design and decoration but also on the history, and the development, of design. The work, An Illustrated History of Interior Decoration from Pompeii to Art Nouveau has allowed the creation of a photographic album to be made, "Praz's rediscovery of this minor but fascinating art . . . was a revelation, and the historic no less than aesthetic importance of the subject is now recognised by a group of informed collectors". His work "provides a selection of visual representations of domesticity from ancient Greece through to the Art Nouveau, and a commentary upon them." The images show the interior decor and design of Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance and Victorian Homes in Europe between the period of 1770 and 1860. The sketches, paintings, and watercolour representations capture the spatial qualities and features of the interiority and decoration of the overall space. The images record accuracy to the shape of the room, from the carpet to the furniture, pictures, fabrics, wall colour, the hang of curtains and the placement of light. Praz's work has documented all these interior characteristics that would have shaped the space for the residents in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This work has had a strong contribution to the impact of not only researching the interiority of a space, but also providing a new groundwork for recording the history of an interior.
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