Arduino Colasanti

Arduino Colasanti (1877 – 1935) was an Italian Renaissance scholar who served as general director of the Department of Antiquity and Fine Arts in Rome.

On January 12, 1920, the general director of Antiquity and Fine Arts in Rome, Arduino Colasanti, disseminated a tract called 'Circular No. 13: Collection of Decorative Elements of Italian Peasant Art'. A Renaissance scholar turned bureaucrat, Colasanti urged superintendents, directors, gallery inspectors, artists and students of art to begin collecting peasant art before it was forever lost or destroyed, owing to what he perceived to be the threat of incipient industrialization and urbanization.

Colasanti was "an Italian Renaissance scholar who had recently been appointed general director of the Department of Antiquity and Fine Arts in Rome".

Dr. Colasanti, Director-General of the Beaux Arts, was highly taken with the picture but said that he could not declare that it was totally Leonardo and was inclined to think that Melzi had done a great part of it. The hair he thought was Leonardo and the upper part with the eyes and nose of the face, but the throat muscle was wrong and did not give the idea of being able to turn round which was extremely noticeable in all throats painted by Leonardo. He had read Eyre's book but thought that more documentary evidence was necessary. He was particularly strong on the question of the hair. As a picture he stated that the value was extremely great, leaving aside the authenticity of Leonardo. It was undoubtedly of the same period and from Leonardo's studio, but how much he had to do with it was difficult to say. The background did not worry him, it was not Leonardo, whilst that of the Mona Lisa in Paris undoubtedly was and can be compared with that of the Madonna della Roccia. He excluded Ambrogio de Predis, as the laying on of the paint was too fine.