From 28 October 2017 to 28 January 2018, Casalmaggiore (CR) celebrates the genius loci Giuseppe Diotti (1779-1846), protagonist of late neoclassical painting, sensitive to the demands of Purism and original interpreter of historical Romanticism.
The exhibition, set up in the Diotti Museum, a XNUMXth-century building that was the artist's residence and studio, presents around a hundred works mostly from the most important museums in Lombardy, such as the Pinacoteca di Brera, the Ala Ponzone Civic Museum in Cremona, the Carrara Academy of Bergamo, the Civic Museums of Brescia, the Civic Museums of Pavia, the Civic Museum of Lodi, as well as the Panizzi Library of Reggio Emilia and private collections.
The initiative, curated by Valter Rosa, is promoted by the Municipality of Casalmaggiore (CR), with the patronage of the Lombardy Region and the contribution of the Cremona Chamber of Commerce.
A leading figure in XNUMXth century Italian art, Giuseppe Diotti taught for over thirty years at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, forming a school of painting which, in the first decades of the XNUMXth century, constituted, in terms of teaching method and as a breeding ground for talents, a valid alternative to the more renowned Brera Academy. His fame spread rapidly in the cultural environment of the time, to the point that Defendente Sacchi, one of the most authoritative critics, called him "the first Lombard painter", recognizing in him an objective primacy in the revival of the ancient fresco technique and in the field of sacred painting.
The exhibition itinerary, divided into thematic areas, will lead the visitor through some fundamental stages of Diotti's career: from the period of his training, in which he studied sixteenth-seventeenth-century luminism through copies from the masters, to the completion of his studies in the years of the Roman pensioner, remotely guided by Giuseppe Bossi and under the protection of Antonio Canova, to that of maturity which includes important decorative cycles or paintings related to sacred and historical painting, up to the final production, with the large, unfinished canvas of the Oath of Pontida, now kept in the council chamber of the Town Hall of Casalmaggiore, and the rediscovered Petrobelli altarpiece, exhibited for the first time on this occasion, with other unpublished paintings and drawings.
At the heart of the exhibition, a specific section will explore Dante's theme of Ugolino in the tower, in a comparison between the different versions of Diotti and those of contemporary artists, such as Palagi, Sabatelli, Massacra, on the ridge between Neoclassism and Romanticism.
A still little-known aspect of Diotti's activity, that of the art collector, will then be the object of an ideal reconstruction of his collection of prints, set up on this occasion in the largest room of Palazzo Diotti which the painter had destined to house the collection of paintings and art objects built up in the decades spent in Bergamo, later dispersed by the heirs.
The itinerary will ideally close with a documentary section on the fortune of the artist in his time, with translation prints, books and periodicals.
For the entire opening period of the exhibition, diottesque itineraries will be organized in the city and in Lombardy which will allow you to appreciate the works in the context for which they were created.
The itinerary in Casalmaggiore will lead inside the Municipal Palace, in the church of Santo Stefano, in the Favagrossa Palace and in the Diotti villa in Rivarolo del Re; the Lombard one, will touch the places where Diotti worked during his life, along the Casalmaggiore-Cremona-Bergamo axis, with appendices in Lodi, in the Bergamo valleys, on Lake Iseo and in Brescia.
The initiative avails itself of the collaboration and patronage of: Municipality and Province of Brescia, Municipality and Province of Cremona, Province of Bergamo, Municipality of Soresina, Municipality of Iseo, Municipality of Lovere, Province of Lodi, and with the collaboration of the Diocese of Cremona – Diocesan Cultural Heritage Office of Cremona, Parish of Iseo (BS), Parish of Stezzano (BG), San Martino Museum of Sacred Art of Alzano Lombardo (BG), Tadini Academy of Lovere (BG), IRCCS Institute of Pharmacological Research Mario Negri – Villa Camozzi, Ranica (BG).
Image: Giuseppe Diotti, Rebecca, 1810, oil on canvas, 46×38 cm (Private collection)
