Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: clues and scientific method
Carlo Ginzburg
Abstract
Between 1874 and 1876 a series of articles on Italian painting was published in the German art history journal Zeitschrift fiir bildende Kunst. They bore the signature of an unknown Russian scholar, Ivan Lermolieff, and the German translator was also unknown, one Johannes Schwarze. The articles proposed a new method for the correct attribution of old masters, which provoked much discussion and controversy among art historians. The authors shall shortly see the implications of this parallel. Meanwhile, they may profit from another of Wind’s helpful observations. To some of Morelli’s critics it has seemed odd ‘that personality should be found where personal effort is weakest’. For thousands of years mankind lived by hunting. In the course of endless pursuits, hunters learned to reconstruct the appearance and movements of an unseen quarry through its tracks - prints in soft ground, snapped twigs, droppings, snagged hairs or feathers, smells, puddles, threads of saliva.