For years engaged in research aimed at the Catalogue Raisonné of Gianfranco Baruchello, the Fondazione Baruchello wanted to turn this complex work of research into an opportunity for dialogue with scholars, curators, and art historians on some issues that never cease to interest and involve researchers from all over the world. The Conference was created under the sponsorship of the SARAS Department, Faculty of Letters and Philosophy (Sapienza University of Rome), and with the support of the Ministry of Culture.

The Conference, perhaps one of the first Italian opportunities for discussion on this topic, will be divided into two sections: 1-The Catalogue Raisonné. A Research Tool, 2-The Catalogue Raisonné. Questions to history of art. In the course of the two sections, neuralgic aspects of research aimed at the Catalogue Raisonné of an artist will become the nodal points of interventions and confrontation: what are the objectives; microhistory and macrohistory of art that is detailed information and overall reconstructions of history; the contradiction between analysis and synthesis in history of art; how the Catalogue Raisonné can be considered a tool for history of art; paper or digital publication?; new theoretical horizons; the relationship between archive, sources, and final project structure; including or excluding a work of art that has not been considered a work of art: classifying, selecting; determining the (finished or unfinished) state of an object; redefining dates and chronologies of cycles of works of art; changing parameters and paradigms: how to deal with the different types of objects that the artist made; the final selection: problems, doubts, and uncertainties; the design of the Catalogue Raisonné: form or concept?; history of art or market?

Starting from these points, considered as some of the main questions before which the curator of a Catalogue Raisonné is very often forced to make decisions, the Conference attempts not to find definitive answers but to build a further opportunity to contribute to the opening of the confrontation between scholars who have already made a Catalogue Raisonné, who are involved in the realization of a Catalogue Raisonné, and who are interested in the problems that history of art does not cease to encounter before projects such as the Catalogue Raisonné of an artist’s ouvre.