 D´Apres CanovaD´Apres Canova
D´Apres Canova
| The Academy and its Masters Anna Vittoria Laghi On 25 June 2011 “D’après Canova” will open in the fascinating setting of the restored Palazzo Binelli, the new headquarters of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio of Carrara. |
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By Anna Vittoria Laghi
The aim of the exhibition is to restore to rightful critical consideration a sculptural tradition which ideally stems from the work of Antonio Canova, but which developed in original ways through the teaching of Lorenzo Bartolini and Thorvaldsen.
Curated by the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, which also restored the works on display, and by the Fine Arts Department of Lucca and Massa Carrara, the exhibition will present twenty-six plaster casts, chosen on the basis of historical criteria and the importance of their preservation from among the numerous works owned by the Academy.
The result is a showcase of tastes and trends in Italian 19th-century sculpture, which also retraces the Institute’s illustrious history through significant episodes.
Traces of this history appear in the classical plaster casts in the great hall and the bas-reliefs of the competitions which decorate the Palazzo del Principe and a series of free-standing works executed in the 19th century and down to the 1930s by the school’s most illustrious masters, representing the neoclassical culture of the turn of the century, as well as by the school’s most gifted students.
It is primarily on that heritage of excellence established by the students’ collection of models and casts that the exhibition aims to focus attention, thanks also to the installation and relocation of selected works.
With the presence of the sculpture of Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte as Agrippina, donated by Antonio Canova to the Academy in 1810, at the height of the period of Elisa Bonaparte’s rule, the exhibition seeks to show the Possagno master was the ideal model for sculptors in Carrara, where his work was mediated through the examples of Lorenzo Bartolini and Bertel Thorvaldsen.
The works on display by Benedetto Cacciatori, Carlo Finelli and Pietro Tenerani are further emblems of Carrara’s excellence in sculpture.
Cacciatori was not particularly responsive to those who trained after him in Carrara, but Pietro Tenerani took the student winners of scholarships into his studio in Rome’s and contributed to the unmistakable style of the "school of Carrara", in which Luigi Bienaimè and his eternal rival and fellow student Bernardo Tacca were among the early protagonists.
In this rich exhibition, which traverses the 19th century and seeks to restore rightful prominence to the artists from Carrara, Carlo Finelli emerges as providing yet another important frame of reference.
At his studio in Rome he conveyed all that was most original of his studies under Canova to the pupils Giovanni Tacca, Leopoldo Bozzoni and Carlo Chelli.
Ferdinando Pelliccia also completed his studies in Tenerani’s studio in Rome.
On becoming professor of sculpture at the Academy in 1835 and then director from 1864 to 1892, he undertook to transfer the fruits of his own studies of ancient sculpture to the many younger students.
With different accents, Giovanni Fontana and Ferdinando Andrei varied the neoclassical style between Bartolini’s naturalism and Tenerani’s purism.
Then in the 1870s there appeared the first signs of a cautious receptiveness to the new art.
Gradually the neoclassical universe, whose model had been idealized Greek classicism, was replaced by the imitation of life, as can be seen in the works of Pietro Lazzerini and Carlo Nicoli.
This was followed by the depiction of social reality, while the predilection for beauty was replaced in the interests of the younger artists, such as Achille de Cori, Abramo Ghigli and Fidardo Landi, by a disquieting sense of tactile modulation.
Hence this is a complex and fascinating exhibition, with works that take the viewer on an evocative and unique journey of discovery of the social currents that shaped sculpture in the 19th century.
It also focuses new and closer attention on the collection of plaster casts held by the Academy of Fine Arts, and will hopefully favor its permanent installation in those rooms where it was created from its foundation and where for many centuries it bore active testimony to the importance of the Institute, the city and its very distinctive culture of marble.
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