The Times of Beauty. Between the Classical World, Guido Reni and Magritte. The Precious Exhibition at the Civic Museums of Domodossola – Carlo Franza’s Blog

The Times of Beauty. Between the Classical World, Guido Reni and Magritte is the title of the new major exhibition hosted by the “Gian Giacomo Galletti” Civic Museums in Palazzo San Francesco in Domodossola. With Rubens, Carracci and Guido Reni, passing through Pompeo Batoni and Canova, up to the contemporaries Funi, Sironi, De Chirico and Magritte, the works on display highlight the constant reference, through the centuries, to the models and formal and spiritual values ​​of classicism. The focal point of reference, in fact, is the classical statuary from the Roman era of the National Roman Museum and the Baths of Diocletian, which will be exhibited for the first time in the capital of Ossola. The Times of Beauty. Between the Classical World, Guido Reni and Magritte is the title of the exhibition that the Civic Museums “Gian Giacomo Galletti” at the Museum of Palazzo San Francesco in Domodossola, conceived and curated by Antonio D’Amico, Stefano Papetti and Federico Troletti and created by the Municipality of Domodossola in partnership with the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum of Milan and the Angela Paola Ruminelli Foundation, with the patronage of the Piedmont Region and with the fundamental support of Morgran Italia Srl, Findomo Srl, Ultravox Srl, Punta Est Srl.

Leopardi identifies the “Tempo de Bello” in Greece in the 5th century BC, when artists such as Phidias, Myron and Polykleitos interpreted the concept of beauty as the result of a balance of aesthetic and ethical values, expressed by the term kalokagathìto. Within the evocative setting of Palazzo San Francesco, the over forty works, including paintings and sculptures in marble and bronze, from important Italian museums and prestigious private collections, tell the story of the various “Tempi del Bello”, or the search, based on classical models, for a combination of formal beauty and spiritual values, which runs through the history of art, adapting to the cultural needs of each era.

Among the great protagonists of the Domodossola exhibition, which returns to produce and propose to the general public a path of research and study across the centuries, one can admire the “divine” Guido Reniwho in the European art of the seventeenth century represents the champion of classicism, in contrast to the theatricality of Baroque art and the naturalism of Caravaggio. For this occasion, theAnnunciation of the Civic Art Gallery of Ascoli Piceno, one of the masterpieces of the great Bolognese master, and the Saint Sebastian from a private collection. The formal elegance of the Virgin and of the angel in the imposing altarpiece, and the sculptural torsion of the bust in the young saint, testify how in seventeenth-century Bologna the knowledge of classical statuary and the myth of Raphael, who had revived ancient beauty, found a perfect declination in line with the culture of the time. This is a legacy that Guido Reni collected from the Carraccis. In fact, in the exhibition it will be possible to admire exceptionally the extraordinary masterpiece from the Pinacoteca of the Ettore Pomarici Santomasi Foundation of Gravina di Puglia, which Ludovico Carracci painted at the end of the sixteenth century, showing the image of the Saint Sebastian like a modern Apollo, a dancer who moves gracefully in the full vigor of his physical beauty.

No artist is insensitive to the charm of classicism, as demonstrated by the attention with which Rubenswho arrived in Rome from Mantua at the dawn of the seventeenth century, adapted the sculptural models studied in the Roman princely collections to the iconographic needs imposed by the clients. In laying out the grandiose Our Lady of the Rosarydocumented in the exhibition by a rare sketch in a private collection, the Flemish artist updates in a Baroque style attitudes and gestures that can be traced back to classical models.

Following the sensation caused between 1730 and 1740 by the unexpected discovery of the remains of Herculaneum and Pompeii, the theorists of neoclassical art recovered the concept of Kalokagathìa returning once again to associate the principles of order, harmony, composure and “quiet grandeur”, as Winckelmann states, with the highest moral values. Leopardi himself recognizes in Antonio Canova the artist who best embodies this union in his worksbeauty and noble feelings that aim to achieve the ideal of beauty. The Portrait of Pauline Bonapartewhich comes to the exhibition from the Napoleonic Museum in Rome, depicts the perfect face of Napoleon’s sister as Venus Victrix, an example of how the celebration of the past and the use of themes from classical mythology are placed, in this case, at the service of power, taking on celebratory and educational purposes.

The eclectic imprint that characterizes Italian art in the post-unification period does not exclude, either in the architectural or figurative fields, episodes of marked reference to the Greco-Roman tradition: this is demonstrated by the Genoese sculptor Demetrius Paerniusauthor of numerous funerary monuments in the cemetery of Staglieno, who celebrates Alexandrian art by modelling one of the most precious figures of classicism, such as the Sleeping CherubThe subject changes but not the formulation of the image inspired in the Genoese’s canvas Domenico Piola which depicts Baby Jesus asleep on the Cross. Various small-format Renaissance sculptures are also on display, documenting the taste for collecting and the passion for the Ancient that developed in particular after the discoveries archaeological sites from the early sixteenth century.

After the revolutionary experience of the Avant-garde which had decreed the end of classicism, in the first two decades of the twentieth century, following the traumas caused by the First World War, in 1924 the French critic Maurice Rejnal hoped for a rethinking of the anti-classical positions, supporting the need for a “Return to Order” which can be seen in the works of Ropes, Campigli, Sironi, De Chirico And Magritte who express the desire to reaffirm the perennial value of classicism on the basis of the theoretical approach of Margherita Sarfatti. The exhibition offers significant examples of these artists juxtaposed with each other and in dialogue with Renaissance and classical works. Among all of them, it will be possible to admire exceptionally the fascinating masterpiece of Rene Magritte, Sand at the window from 1937, from a private collection.
Every era has its own time of Beauty and the Domodossola exhibition also attempts to present, with an educational intent, particularly suitable for schools, some eloquent examples that make classical beauty immortal, from the late Renaissance to the twentieth century, highlighting models that artists make their own, but adapting them to the cultural needs in vogue in different historical moments.

The exhibition layout was designed by Studio Lys with the coordination of Matteo Fiorini, the lighting project is by LightScene Studio with Riccardo Rocco and Luca Moreni, while the lighting was updated and created in collaboration with Viabizzuno. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Sagep Editori d’Arte.

Carlo Franza