Il volto e l'allegoria
Sculture di Lorenzo Bartolini
The exhibition “Faces and Allegories. Sculptures by Lorenzo Bartolini” curated by Carlo Sisi brings together a selection of works focusing on portraits and allegories: subjects and themes pursued by the Tuscan artist - first a pupil of Jacques-Louis David, then official sculptor to the Bonapartes - at a time when the aesthetics of Purism with its “relative beauty” was imposing itself on abstract neoclassical forms, introducing into art the elements of a Nature observed without mediation.
The first section of the exhibition, dedicated to the “Faces”, presents a series of female portraits “in conversation”: snapshots of those salons that in the first half of the 19th century represented the militant and often dissenting core of the intellectual elite of the time. Bartolini’s studio in Borgo San Frediano, Florence, was a mundane meeting place, so much so that the posing sessions were animated by cordial dialogues with which the artist “entertained people, young or old, authoritative or not, making them participate, while he painted the portrait, in the ideas and motions with the intention of capturing the soul, the special beauty that he strove to restore by availing himself of the conquered spiritual harmony”.
The second section of the exhibition examines one of the cornerstones of Bartolini’s formal poetics, through the union of natural beauty, based on the study of the 15th-century masters, and concepts adhering to the ethical and political aspirations of the Restoration. With the group of the Carità educatrice, the apex of the Romantic allegory depicting the spiritual and intellectual education of children and alluding to the paternalistic care of the Grand Ducal government, plaster models are displayed to help reconstruct its compositional history, as well as a selection of works that outline its context and fortune.
The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition consists of an introduction and an in-depth text on the ideological and cultural climate in which Bartolini moved, and an illustrated section dedicated to the works on display.
The first section of the exhibition, dedicated to the “Faces”, presents a series of female portraits “in conversation”: snapshots of those salons that in the first half of the 19th century represented the militant and often dissenting core of the intellectual elite of the time. Bartolini’s studio in Borgo San Frediano, Florence, was a mundane meeting place, so much so that the posing sessions were animated by cordial dialogues with which the artist “entertained people, young or old, authoritative or not, making them participate, while he painted the portrait, in the ideas and motions with the intention of capturing the soul, the special beauty that he strove to restore by availing himself of the conquered spiritual harmony”.
The second section of the exhibition examines one of the cornerstones of Bartolini’s formal poetics, through the union of natural beauty, based on the study of the 15th-century masters, and concepts adhering to the ethical and political aspirations of the Restoration. With the group of the Carità educatrice, the apex of the Romantic allegory depicting the spiritual and intellectual education of children and alluding to the paternalistic care of the Grand Ducal government, plaster models are displayed to help reconstruct its compositional history, as well as a selection of works that outline its context and fortune.
The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition consists of an introduction and an in-depth text on the ideological and cultural climate in which Bartolini moved, and an illustrated section dedicated to the works on display.
Il volto e l'allegoria