Igino Benvenuto Supino

Igino Benvenuto Supino (1858-1940) started out as a painter, studying at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, where he fell in with Macchiaioli figures such as Giovanni Fattori and Telemaco Signorini before turning to scholarship. Born into a learned Jewish family in Pisa, he took a post as inspector at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in 1896 and rose to its directorship in 1904, turning out catalogues and a run of illustrated monographs for the Alinari firm on Botticelli, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Fra Angelico. He went on to hold the chair of art history at the University of Bologna until his retirement in 1933, publishing widely on Tuscan and Bolognese art and architecture. The fascist racial laws of 1938 pushed him out of Italian academic life, and he died in Bologna with a final volume on church art unfinished.