Director of the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo and professor of painting at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, Cesare Tallone (1853 – 1919), a highly successful artist, portraitist of Queen Margherita and founder of one of the first female painting schools, is the protagonist of the exhibition Woman, Muse, Artist. Portraits of Caesar
Heel between the 19th and 20th centuriescurated by Raffaele Campion, Silvia Capponi, Elena Lissoni and Barbara Maria Savy, hosted in the rooms of Villa Bassi Rathgeb in Abano Terme (PD) from September 14, 2024 to January 12, 2025. The exhibition – the first entirely produced, organised and promoted by the Municipality of Abano Terme, through the Villa Bassi Rathgeb Museum – was born from a study and in-depth analysis of the Museum’s permanent collection and in particular of the core of works by Cesare Tallonegiving particular emphasis to the artist’s female portraiture production, which tells the story of the role of women in Italian society between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
“Woman, Muse, Artist” presents some of the portraits of the Tallone familyincluding that of the artist’s wife, the poet Eleonora Tango, and of his children Guido and Irene, depicted from life in the guise of shepherds, Ciociare, housewives, and sometimes in images with an intimate and dreamy flavour.
Among the artist’s paintings present in the permanent collection of Villa Bassi Rathgeb there is the Portrait of Sister Linda Mariapainted in 1887 on the occasion of her engagement to the engineer Guglielmo Davoglio, who was also portrayed on that occasion: the different exhibition and collection histories of the two paintings, conceived as pendants, kept them separated for a long time. The portrait of Linda Maria arrived in Abano Terme with the Bassi Rathgeb Collection in 1980, while that of Guglielmo Davoglio, sent in 1887 to the National Exhibition of Venice, entered a private collection and is now part of that of the Civic Museums of Pavia. This recent rediscovery has allowed, on the occasion of the exhibition, to finally reunite the two works, among the most intense portraits executed by Tallone between 1885 and 1899, at the time a painting teacher at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo.
The investigation conducted by the curatorial team on the artist’s family images, including paintings genre, portraits and photographshas also made it possible to start a reflection on the representation and self-representation of women in Italian society between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. poet Eleonora Tango, wife of the painterand his sister Virginia Tango Piattisculptor, pianist, translator, prolific journalist and translator, were both in close contact with Sibilla Aleramo, writer and a journalist known for her attention to the condition of women in Italy between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and an entire section of the exhibition is dedicated to the important relationships and intellectual work of these cultured women of the Tallone family. In relation to artists and intellectuals, such as the poetess Ada Negrithe critic Margherita Sarfatti, Gabriele D’Annunzio and Filippo Tommaso Marinettiin 1897 Tallone founded a private art school for women only in Bergamoand; some of these students, who were barred from accessing the Academy, are on display, such as two splendid Still lifes with flowers created in 1888 by Clara Müller and the Portrait of Sister Valeria (around 1906) by Emma Nessi, his student when he taught painting at the Brera Academy.
In this free and open context, some of the artist’s female portraits come to life, giving back a kaleidoscope of emblematic images of a society in transformation, from Double female portrait (1887) to that of the actress Lina Cavalieri (around 1905), a style icon who also appears on the Campari poster on display together with others from the Salce Collection of Treviso, up to the “scandalous” Female Nude (around 1913). In a special section dedicated to modern femininity in the theatre and entertainment environment, in dialogue with the pictorial work of Cesare Tallone, the Portrait of Emma Gramatica (1911) by Lino Selvatico from the Galleria Ricci Oddi in Piacenza. The exhibition also recalls the figure of the actress Lyda Borelli, through period photographs and evocative objects.
They also enrich the exhibition fashion objects and applied arts of the nearby Civic Museums of Padua which provide a complete picture of society and women’s customs, between the needs of representation, new fashion trends and a dress code that reflected precise social norms.
In the context of a broader study started in recent years on the permanent collection, “Woman, Muse, Artist” represents the opportunity of investigate the relationship between Tallone and the Bassi Rathgebas witnessed by the plaque on the facade of the family palace in Bergamo, which informs us of the painter’s passage in those rooms. It is significant that there are no portraits executed by Tallone for the Bassi Rathgeb family. Instead, those of the painters Rinaldo and Ermenegildo Agazzi, to whom Roberto Bassi Rathgeb dedicated a study in the 1940s, are displayed in the exhibition.
A large group of works on canvas and paper with female subjects, performed by the Agazzi brothers, enriches the exhibition itinerary which, broadening the view to a more international context, finally concludes with the work “Portrait of a lady with flowers” by Giovanni Boldini – ““Illustrious Guest” which will be given an in-depth look – which tells the public about that different vision of the female world characteristic of the Belle Époque. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Dario Cimorelli Editore in which the results of the studies are reported.
Carlo Franza