Alle origini dell’ispanistica veneziana

Abstract

In 1885 Marco Antonio Canini was the first teacher of Spanish at the ‘Scuola Superiore di Commercio’ of Venice. He was a very well-known Risorgimento politician and a polyglot who taught Spanish for six years until his death in 1891. Between 1891 and 1910 there was no possibility to study Spanish at ‘Venice Business School’, the first name originally given to Ca’ Foscari University. Daniele Riccoboni taught Spanish for three years, long after Canini, even though he had no specialization in the Spanish language or literature. Antonio Ovio took over the courses of Spanish in 1914: Ovio was primarily a teacher of French (but also German) at two high schools in Padua. After Ovio’s death in 1919, a Spanish sculptor, Francisco Broch y Llop was appointed as new lecturer. At first, he had come to Italy to get in touch with the Italian artistic milieu but later on he decided to become a teacher of Spanish at several Italian universities (Venice, Bologna and Florence). He was a contentious personality but he served as a teacher of Spanish for over than thirty years.