MORELLI, GIOVANNI (1816-1891), Italian patriot and art critic, born at Verona on Feb. 16, 1816, was educated first at Bergamo and then at Aarau in Switzerland. At 18 he commenced his university career at Munich, being debarred as a Protestant from entering any Italian college, and became the pupil of Ig natius DoRinger, the celebrated professor of anatomy and phy siology. He specially devoted himself to natural philosophy and medicine but was also keenly interested in all scientific and literary pursuits. His brilliant gifts and independence of thought and judgment attracted the attention of the most distinguished men of the day. In Paris his intimacy with Otto Miindler was not without its effect in determining the direction of his future studies; and while in Switzerland, he formed a friendship with Louis Agassiz, whose teaching made a lasting impression upon him. On his return to Italy in 1840 he became associated in Florence with the patriots who were working for the deliverance of their country from Austrian rule. He took part in the war of 1848, and was chosen by the provisional Lombard government to plead the cause of Italian unity before the German parliament.
In 1860 Victor Emmanuel named Morelli a citizen of the Sar dinian kingdom, and in the next year he was elected deputy for Bergamo to the first free Italian parliament. He was a staunch supporter of Cavour, and exercised a considerable influence over the most prominent statesmen of the Right, who valued his sound judgment, integrity, moderation and foresight. After his election he drew the attention of parliament to the urgent need of reform in the administration of matters relating to the fine arts and a commission was appointed to bring under government con trol all works of art which could be considered public property. The commission, of which Morelli was president, began its work in Umbria and the Marches, and he appointed as his secretary G. B. Cavalcaselle, who was then engaged in collecting materials for a work on Italian art. Much that Cavalcaselle then learned from his chief was embodied in the well-known History of Paint ing, published in 1864 in conjunction with Sir Joseph Crowe.
The immediate result of Morelli's first labours in the Marches was an enactment, which bears his name, prohibiting the sale of works of art from public and religious institutions. In 1873
he became a senator of the kingdom of Italy, having voluntarily resigned his seat in the Lower House owing to the increasingly democratic tendencies of the Chamber. In Milan, his home, he published some of his researches into the history of Italian art. In order to be free to speak his mind unreservedly, he adopted a pseudonym and wrote in German. His first contributions, a series of articles on the Borghese gallery, were published in Liitzow's Zeitschrift fur bildende Kunst (1874-76). Posing as an art-loving Russian, he adopted the pseudonym of Ivan Lermolieff—an anagram of his own name with a Russian termination—and de scribed his essays as Ein kritischer V ersuch, translated from the Russian by Johannes Schwarze—a Germanized form of Morelli.
In 1880 Morelli published under the same pseudonym, Die Werke italienischer Meister in den Galerien von Munchen, Dres den and Berlin, which inaugurated a new and more scientific method of criticism, and marks an epoch in the art studies of the 19th century. The book was translated into English in 1883, with Morelli's own name upon the title-page, a few years later into Italian. A volume of Critical Studies, first of a series of three which, under the title of Kunstkritische Studien, was to contain all Morelli's contributions to art literature, was published in 1890. The first part, cast in dialogue form, contains a detailed exposition of his method. Then follow The Borghese Gallery, a reissue of his former articles with many important additions, and The Doria Gallery, an entirely new contribution. The second volume deals with the galleries of Munich and Dresden, and is a revised edition of the first two parts of the original book of 188o; but here again copious additions rendered it practically a new book. The third volume was to treat of the Berlin gallery, and was also to contain an exhaustive account of the drawings of Italian masters, but it was not carried out. Morelli was taken seriously ill in Feb. 1891 and died at Milan on Feb. 28.