The Archive of Lionello Venturi is a study and research centre that preserves the entire documentation regarding Lionello Venturi's scientific, social and political activities from 1903 to 1961 (the year of the scholar's death) and some posthumous documents. 

The 428 folders in the archive contain a wide range of materials: manuscripts and typescripts for books and articles; reading cards; travel notes; notes taken after visiting museums and collections; pamphlets; exhibition catalogues; appraisals; photographs; correspondence. 

These materials were acquired, by donation, by the then Institute of Art History, now the Department of History Anthropology Religions Performing Arts - SARAS, over a period of time from 1997 to 2014-2015.

Acknowledging the inestimable value of the documentation, in 2010 the Lionello Venturi Archive was declared of particularly important historical interest by the Archival Superintendence Office for Lazio.

Lionello Venturi is one of the greatest Italian art historians of the 20th century. He is the son of Adolfo, the founder of modern Italian art history. Since 1915, he has been a professor at the University of Turin where his many students include Giulio Carlo Argan and Mario Soldati. In 1931, he was one of the very few university professors to refuse to take the National Fascist Party membership card and was therefore forced to leave his university chair in Turin. Unable to teach, Lionello decided on a 15-year emigration during which he combined his studies with anti-fascist political activity in Giustizia e Libertà. In 1931, the year his voluntary exile began, Venturi first travelled to the United States, and then from 1932 settled in Paris for seven years. Here he worked on, amongst others, the catalogue raisonné of Paul Cézanne's work. In 1939, as the situation in Europe worsened, Venturi moved to the United States, where he spent the war years. Returning to Italy in 1945, after the Liberation, Lionello resumed his university teaching, choosing Rome's Sapienza University as his seat, where he raised an entire generation of art historians.

Venturi wrote extensively in the fields of medieval, modern and contemporary art history, criticism and theory; he organised exhibitions; practised the craft of connoisseurship; was a consultant for important collectors; published collections of documents; and was an extender of reasoned catalogues of artists.

The archive consists of three sections:

- "21 thematic groups" (Original Fund: 372 folders) relating to areas of specific interest to the author, his cultural, organisational, educational and political activities, plus documents relating to Adolfo Venturi;

- The "Correspondence Fund" (39 envelopes), contains letters from Lionello, Italian and foreign scholars and art historians with whom he was in contact, and family members;

- The "Cézanne Series" (17 Envelopes), contains the materials used for the drafting of Cézanne's catalogue raisonné (1936) and those collected with a view to a second edition.

To consult the inventory, go to Explore at the top right of the Home page. The user can search by keywords or by consulting the list for each individual section.

Also donated to the SARAS Department is the "Venturi Fund", consisting of books and journals that belonged to Lionello Venturi (often rare volumes), which is the responsibility of the Giulio Carlo Argan Library of the SARAS Department, Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the Sapienza University of Rome. The locations of the volumes and journals can be consulted from the Catalogue of the National Library System, and more specifically from the Catalogue and Services of the Sapienza Libraries.