Fernand de Dartein storico dell’arte medievale e il fondo di disegni al CÉSCM di Poitiers. Un capitale apporto alla conoscenza del romanico europeo nel XIX secolo

Fernand de Dartein (Strasbourg 1838 - Paris 1912), an Alsatian engineer, was an historian of Medieval art in Europe of XIXth century. His studies are placed at the time of the disciplinary codification of that knowledge. In Italy he is known above all for the work dedicated to Lombard Romanesque architecture and latently to northern Italy. Despite being affected by the historical context of reference, Dartein was a pioneer of the archeology of medieval construction and of a careful and updated approach to all the buildings investigated, always studied and surveyed with an analytical historical-artistic method. This article briefly outlines a biographical profile. The discovery, in the French private archives of his descendants, of various preparatory material for the edition of the book (carnet with notes and drawings, written during his numerous trips to Italy, letters, photos, etc.) constitutes an opportunity to re-study the monuments seen and detected by him during the restorations of the second half of the XIXth century and therefore to update the knowledge on Romanesque construction sites. Part of this documentation is being digitized and cataloged at the Center d’Études Supérieures de Civilization Médiévale in Poitiers at the service of the scientific community.