Resumen de Per una definizione storica di ‘dilettante’ (1660-1800)
The term ‘dilettante’ is often used anachronistically, as if it were appropriate for all periods from Humanism on. In reality, the word was not coined until the second half of the 17th century, once the art academies had been granted the power to determine who was a ‘professor’ of art, i.e. a professional artist. The dilettante was dedicated to art, yet neither as a professional nor for profit. The term was immediately well-received around Europe and entered into competition with other words (e.g. the French amateur and the German Liebhaber). This essay reconstructs the cultural interference and the changes in meaning which the term eventually underwent. Diderot’s criticism of the amateurs and its subsequent impact in Germany, the various observations made by Sulzer on down to Goethe and the long-distance debate between Milizia and Lanzi are just some examples that attest to transformations in the term, which following attacks by bourgeois critics and the French Revolution, lost its positive connotations and took on the limited and derogatory meaning it holds today
