Il tenace filo magico di Paolo Rossi: 1957-2006

This article examines the development of Paolo Rossi’s studies regarding magic, from his monograph on Bacon in the 1950s until his last volume, Il Tempo dei Maghi. His unpublished letters, with Antonio Banfi and Eugenio Garin, reflect the interests that characterized Rossi’s work -- not only historiographic, studying Renaissance magical thinking in its relation to the scientific revolution, but also frankly theoretical in nature. Studying all those moments of crisis and transition that present in renewed form the old antithesis between reason and magism, Rossi shows the extreme vitality of magical thinking and its ever-present challenge to the way of thinking that emerged at the beginning of the modern age.