Luigi Magnani Rocca Biography
Luigi Magnani Rocca was born in Reggio nell'Emilia in 1906. His childhood was comfortable, but lonely and melancholy. He had two sisters, Lisetta and Ada, who both died young from tuberculosis. His father, although involved in corporate affairs, was a sensitive and affectionate man, a lover of music. His mother, a woman of vast and refined culture, introduced him to the study of the piano from an early age; from her he also developed a love for literature and the figurative arts. As a teenager, he had the privilege of visiting the main museums of Europe under the guidance of an extraordinary master like A. Venturi. In 1927, during his university studies in Rome, he won the Naborre Campanini prize from the Royal Deputation of Homeland History for a memoir on Gerolamo Toschi and the Roman Academy of Natural Philosophy (Modena 1928, extract from the magazine Arkelon, IX [1928 ]). In 1929, he graduated in Modern Literature with a thesis in art history on the sixteenth-century Modenese sculptor Antonio Begarelli, which was later published (Antonio Begarelli, Milan 1931) and was the first of many studies in the history of art. Also in Rome he obtained a specialization diploma in art history. In 1938, he obtained the qualification to teach in the history of medieval and modern art. In the meantime, Magnani continued to deepen his study of music with the same seriousness and commitment. In 1943, he resumed collaboration with the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia, which was defining the project of the Biographical Dictionary of Italians, dealing in particular with the biographies of sixteenth-century Emilian sculptors. He also collaborated on the musical section of a Dictionary of Contemporary Arts for the publisher F. Ballo of Milan. From 1949 to 1962, he was professor of history of the decorative arts of manuscript and book at the University of Rome, while from 1949 to 1967 he taught at the Special School for Archivists and Librarians of that University. He subsequently joined the Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts and Letters of the Virtuosi at the Pantheon in Rome. In 1957 he published "The frontiers of music. From Monteverdi to Schönberg" (Milan-Naples), a collection of essays already published in various newspapers, focused on the study of the relationship between music and poetry over time. In 1976, Magnani left teaching at the University of Rome to dedicate himself with determination to the idea of creating an artistic foundation for his collection. The following year, his wish was realized with the legal establishment of the Magnani-Rocca Foundation in memory of his parents. Luigi Magnani Rocca died on 15 November 1984 in his villa in Mamiano di Traversetolo.
