VERONICA TURCUȘ
Abstract
The present study, based on an original archival material preserved in Rome at the Accademia di San Luca, intends to bring new data on aspects of institutional evolution and, especially, related to internal life and relations within the scholarship community of the Romanian School in Rome, an institution created after the Great Union of 1918 and opened in November 1922 in the wake of the cultural policy supported by Greater Romania to strengthen relations with Italy. The work focuses on the correspondence of the first generation architect scholarship holders specializing in the Italian capital, Horia Teodoru and Ion Anton Popescu – interested in the techniques of restoration of the historical monuments –, with the Italian archaeologist and topographer Giuseppe Lugli (1890-1967), corresponding member of the Romanian Academy and scientific secretary of the Romanian School in Rome. The correspondence, spread over decades (1920s-1960s), provides information on the scientific interests of the Romanian scholars, whose works developed during the Roman internship have so far remained reference points in the historiography of the problem, as well as data on the mechanism of scholarships’ distribution, to the internal life of the Institute, to the relations of professor Lugli with the Romanian academic environment, the main objective being to restore a complete fresco on the evolution of the Romanian School in Rome at the centenary, the institution representing a nodal point of the Romanian-Italian cultural relations during the interwar period and a pivot of post-war cultural diplomacy from the perspective of bilateral relations.
Keywords:
Romania, Italy, Romanian School in Rome, architecture, restoration.