Dilettanté

Dilettanté (pl. dilettanti, Ital.), in its original sense, is synonymous with an amateur, or lover of the fine arts. It is often used as a term of reproach, to signify an amateur whose taste lies in the direction of what is trivial and vulgar, or of a critic or connoisseur whose knowledge is mere affectation and pretence. It is sometimes assumed, in a spirit of self-depreciation, by those who are unwilling that their critical acquirements, or artistic productions, should be judged by the rules which would be applied to those of persons who had made a professional study of art. It was in this sense that it was assumed by the Dilettanti Society, a body of noblemen and gentlemen by whose exertions the study of antique art in England has been largely promoted. The society was founded in 1734, and thirty years later it sent out an expedition to make drawings of the most remarkable artistic monuments of antiquity, under Chandler, the editor of the Marmora Oxoniensia; Revett, joint-author with Stuart of a great work, Athenian Antiquities; and Pars, as artist. They returned in 1766; and four splendid folios on the Antiquities of Ionia appeared in 1769, 1797, 1840, 1881. Other publications were Specimens of Ancient Sculpture (1809-35), Bronzes of Siris (1836), and Athenian Architecture (1851; new ed. 1889). See Lionel Cust's History of the Society (1898).