Questioni di metodo al di fuori del Saggio sul metodo: bibliografia bizantina

The subject matter of the present paper is the so-called Byzantinische Frage, the Byzantine question, as the historiographical topic appears in Ferdinando Bologna’s 1962 book La pittura delle origini. One does not find an explicit stand there on the theoretical aspects of the relationship between Byzantine and Western art, which have fueled a long debate and divergent positions among European and Italian scholars. Bologna prefers to focus his attention directly on the works, checking them for cultural components that can be traced back to the East or to the West and those that have blended to give rise to new expressive results. However, in the present paper, an examination of Bologna’s selected bibliographical entries on Byzantine art allows us to trace the methodological reasons behind his choices, compared to the major historiography on the subject in German, French, and Italian. The conspicuous absence of the classics of the School of Vienna, the preference given to French authors, and the full acceptance of the Italian bibliographical contributions of Pietro Toesca and Roberto Longhi are explained within the framework of a method that marks the abandonment of generalizing and categorical concepts, such as the very terms East or West, in favor of a closer contact with the history of works and artists – a method that can be taken as Bologna’s personal interpretation of Benedetto Croce’s ideas.