“It was really good for me to see Paris, those immense artists enlightened my mind and showed me the right way. Florence felt like a town suburb”. This is how Giovanni Boldini , when he returned to Castiglioncello in 1867, commented his stay in Paris to the painter, and his friend, Cristiano Banti. Not wrongfully Boldini, coming from a small reality of the province of Ferrara, was astonished by the beaming Ville Lumière which was about to inaugurate the Belle Époque, that age of piece, well-being, lightheartedness and faith in progress which invested Europe in the second half of the 19th century. During that happy bracket called with a French name, Paris saw the blossoming of a true workshop of ideas, a literary and artistic laboratory in which very different artistic proposals and tendencies coexisted.
This is the purpose of the exhibition “Boldini and the Italians in Paris”, currently in course at the Chiostro del Bramante: to retrace that extraordinary period through the enchanted eyes, pardon the works, of the Italian artists who were lucky enough to stay in the dazzling French capital. The exhibition curated by Francesca Dini, which ends on 14th Match 2010, illustrates the “myth of Paris” through a priceless selection of about ninety works, mainly from private collections, offering therefore the chance to admire closely masterpieces which are not easily accessible to the public, together with pieces from important museums like the Musée d’Orsay, the Galleria degli Uffizi, and the Galleria d’Arte Moderna of Palazzo Pitti.
The great French capital in the late nineteenth century, with its forms of entertainment, its theatres, its liberal and laic middle-class model, its freedom of thought and in particular its periodical Universal Exhibitions, represented for many countries a fascinating temple of modern culture and civilisation, an ideal prototype to confront oneself with, a basin of resources to draw on full-handed. Obviously not even Italy was an exception and its painters drew new lymph from the confrontation with the artistic verve from beyond the Alps in that period: we just have to think of the case of the Macchiaioli – the main Italian pictorial phenomenon of the century – originated and developed from the confrontation with French painting, in particular with Corot, Barbizon’s school and Courbet’s realism.
For Giovanni Boldini it was decisive to meet the great painters, who are nowadays celebrated all over the world, Manet, Sisley and Degas, but for this ambitious artist from Ferrara Paris was mainly the dream of a lifetime, a stepping stone, a dazzling and seducing prospect of wealth, all that he could not have aspired to if he had been limited to provincial painting. So in 1871, Boldini moved to the golden world of the beautiful capital, cultivating his painting talent and his flair for business, emerging as an appreciated worldly artist. His well-chosen portraits of the middle class, his frivolous, sensual and capricious themes, represented with a lightning and spectacular brushstroke and with refined colours, made him in little time a very successful and sought-after artist. But Boldini, the most worldly of Italian painters, was not the only one to try out the French adventure.
Indeed, this Roman exhibition narrates “the exploits” of the three main “Italiens” – De Nittis, Boldini, Zandomeneghi – next to more humble and bohemian artists such as Vittorio Corcos, Antonio Mancini, Paul Helleu, Leon Bonnat, Telemaco Signorini and Serafino De Tivoli; all following the lights of the cafés and the boulevards, the smiles and the luxury in front of theatres, the ateliers of artists and their favourite meeting points.
Giuseppe de Nittis, which at the exhibition is placed next to his friend Boldini, arrived in the city in 1867 and was the only Italian invited to take part in the first impressionist exhibition in 1874, held in the studio of the photographer Nadar. The artist from Puglia sang “la joie de vivre” of the middle class, with a sweetness and sensitivity unknown to others. Zandomeneghi arrived in the Ville Lumiére when he was already thirty-five – and stayed there until he died in 1917 – taking with him a background of convictions and certainties, and a strong personality, which made him more reluctant, compared to his compatriots, towards the glories and seductions of the wealthy world. His female portraits, which are more intimate and meditative than those of his colleagues, make use of a tone and technical choice learned next to his friends Renoir, Degas and Gauguin.
The glittery Paris represented the pole of attraction even for Telemaco Signorini, prominent figure of the Macchiaiolo movement, Serafino De Tivoli, charmed by the painting of Courbet and by the landscapes of the Barbizonniers, the sophisticated Vittorio Corcos, who refined his talent there, in a constant research for perfection which made him famous in Italy. On the other hand, the bustling Paris represented a relation of love and hate for the precocious talent of the Roman Antonio Mancini who, conquered by a tempting access to innovation and modernity, was then forced to return home due to a serious nervous breakdown. So Paris is evoked among the rooms of the Chiostro del Bramante, beautiful and damned, dream and reality of Italian artists.
DART Chiostro del Bramante
Via della Pace – 00186 Rome
- TUESDAY – SUNDAY 10.00 am-8.00 pm
(The ticket office closes an hour before)
- Closed on MONDAYS
Website: http://www.chiostrodelbramante.it
Email: info@chiostrodelbramante.it
tel. 06.68809035- 06.68809018
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