Evgenij Anan’in and the problem of the Italian Renaissance

Abstract

A reevaluation of the dogmas and canons rooted in the Renaissance historiography was а сommon trend in the studies in this field in the first half of the 20th century. At that time, there appeared many original concepts that corrected or completely refuted the previous ones. The present article is devoted to the participation of the Russian historian Evgenij Anan’in, who lived and worked in Italy, in the debates around the notion of the Italian Re­naissance and to his attempts to contribute to the elimination of various cliché from the field of Renaissance studies (primarily to abolish the postulated opposition of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and the idea of the Renaissance as the revival of antiquity). A signifi­cant part of Anan’in’s publications in Italian scientific journals consists of polemic articles and reviews that reveal a panorama of Renaissance concepts in Europe in 1920–1930s. The Russian researcher was strongly opposed to foreign historians who denied the originality of the Italian Renaissance. He was also against all kinds of attempts to use the concept of the Renaissance ad usum proprium (national, ideological, etc). The article focuses on the con­cepts of the Renaissance and their authors (Burkhard, Burdach, Papini, Walser, Zabughin, Neumann, Nordström), which Anan’in analized (or, conversely, сlearly ignored) in his texts as well as on his own views that are hidden inside his critical remarks. The publication also deals with a campaign that began in Italy in the mid-1930s against a foreign “occupation” of the Renaissance field (according to that campaign, the primacy in the Renaissance stud­ies belonged to Italians). Finally, the paper explores the case of an open confrontation be­tween Anan’in and Giovanni Papini, who became the head of the National Institute of the Renaissance studies established in Florence in 1937.