After completing his laurea thesis in Law at the University of Pisa in 1910 on the problems of the protection of the artistic heritage in Italy, Salmi specialized in art history at the University of Rome under Adolfo Venturi. He was appointed professor of art history first at the University of Pisa, where he established the Istituto di Storia dell'Arte, which opened in 1929,[1] then at the University of Florence, where he founded the Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento in 1937.[2] From 1950 to 1964, he was professor of art history at the University of Rome, where he primarily taught Renaissance and Medieval art but also, for some years, modern art.
Salmi's work was mainly focused on Romanesque art and Renaissance art, with a particular fondness for the work of Piero della Francesca. However, apart from these main areas of interest, he ranged over a much wider field of art historical studies, from early Christian art to Baroque art, even managing to focus his interest on areas and periods hitherto neglected or undervalued by most other critics, such as Coptic art. In 1952, he founded the "Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo". Always critical in his approach, he also put his attention to the so-called minor arts.
In 1949, Salmi established the art review journal Commentari. He was also supervisor of the 15-volume Enciclopedia Universale dell'Arte, published from 1958 to 1967, which was soon translated into English as The Encyclopedia of World Art.
(with Charles de Tolnay), Michelangelo: artista, pensatore, scrittore, 2 vols. (1965)
(with Charles de Tolnay) Drawings of Michelangelo: 103 Drawings in Facsimile (1965)
(with Raffaello De Ruggieri), Le chiese rupestri di Matera (1966)
Michelangelo (1966)
The Complete Work of Michelangelo, 2 vols. (1966)
Civiltà fiorentina del primo Rinascimento (1967)
Enrico Barfucci (1968)
Mito e realtà di Leonardo (1968)
Civiltà artistica della terra aretina (1971)
Grimani Breviary (1974)
La pittura di Piero della Francesca (1979)
Parvae Favillae. Scritti di storia dell'arte dal Tardo Antico al Barocco. Edited by Maria Cristina Castelli and Maria Grazia Ciardi-Dupré Dal Poggetto (1989)
Storie di Bizzoche: tra Umbria e Marche (1995)
(with Luisa Becherucci, Alessandro Marabottini and Anna Forlani Tempesti), Raffaello (Raphael) (1999)
^Cavarocchi, Francesca (2020-01-13). "Mirella Levi D'Ancona" [Intellectuals Displaced from Fascist Italy]. Intellettuali in Fuga Dall'Italia Fascista. Intellettuali in fuga dall'Italia fascista. Firenze University Press.
