This article analyses a text written by Roberto Longhi in about 1922. On returning to Italy after an extensive journey through Europe, Longhi changed his method of study and developed into an outstanding art connoisseur. This complex, multifaceted, decade-long process (1912-1922), which had the Grand Tour Longhi made with the collector Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi at its core, allowed Longhi to present himself as the 'heir' to the scholarly tradition begun by Luigi Lanzi. As Longhi himself wrote in the preface to his Scritti Giovanili (1961), he included texts which he considered representative of his youthful years. Among them is a pastiche. In a text conceived as a letter to Luigi Lanzi from the castle of Weißenstein, in Pommersfelden (near Munich), the author presents an overview of the pictures in the gallery and in many cases corrects their attribution. The most striking element here is Longhi's mimetic and imitative style, which reveals his profound knowledge of 17th-century writers like Baglione, Bellori, Della Valle, Malvasia, etc. The “ignoto corrispondente” is an 18th-century connoisseur interested in the attributions, style and formal aspects of works of art. Longhi, who always stated that the Letter from Pommersfelden had been written immediately after the European trip (therefore in 1922), decided to publish it only in 1950, in a volume of the journal 'Proporzioni' dedicated to Pietro Toesca. This provides an opportunity to analyse both the scholar's youth as well as his mature activity. Considering Longhi's text in various contexts – in the 1920s and the 1950s; the different ways the scholar might have considered it over the years; its relationship with other texts Longhi wrote during the 1920s and 1950s – makes it possible to better understand his work at two different and very crucial moments of his life and career.
Further in-depth study, drawing on unpublished sources, has also made possible a thorough reconstruction of the European trip the scholar made between the late spring of 1920 and late 1921.