The exhibition, entitled From Hayez to Boldini. Souls and faces of XNUMXth-century Italian painting, curated by Davide Dotti, organized by the Friends of Palazzo Martinengo Association in collaboration with the Province of Brescia, will recount the extraordinary season that Italy experienced during the XNUMXth century, illustrating the currents and pictorial movements that flourished there, making the national creative panorama one of the most dynamic in Europe.
The exhibition itinerary will open with Cupid and Psyche, a masterpiece by Antonio Canova, which embodies the canons of neoclassical aesthetics. Around the sculpture will revolve some of the most representative canvases of neoclassical authors, such as Andrea Appiani, Napoleon's favorite painter, capable of evoking Raphaelesque sublime grace.
Then, the section dedicated to romanticism will see Francesco Hayez as the absolute protagonist of which will be presented Maria Stuarda salt to the scaffold, a masterpiece of three meters by two, which arrives exceptionally in Brescia. Alongside other works by Hayez will be exhibited paintings by the main romantic authors such as Piccio, whose painting anticipated the results of the masters of the Scapigliatura to which the third room will be dedicated, where the canvases of Tranquillo Cremona will stand out.
While the Scapigliati established themselves in Milan, in Florence, in the same years, a group of young and aggressive artists made their way who, to react to the tired painting taught in the academies, gave life to the Macchiaioli movement led by Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega and Telemaco Signorini, present here with some of their most famous works.
Continuing along the route, the visitor will first be seduced by the paintings with orientalist subjects, and then by the touching scenes of daily life immortalized by Induno, Ciardi, Favretto, Palizzi, Irolli, Milesi and by Angelo Inganni from Brescia, present here with various works including two splendid views of Piazza della Loggia.
Updated on the novelties of French impressionism, the divisionists instead developed an innovative pictorial technique characterized by interweaving of short brushstrokes full of color, which finds its maximum expression in the canvases full of symbolic meanings by Segantini, Pellizza da Volpedo and Morbelli.
The exhibition closes with the evocation of the Parisian cultural climate of the Belle Époque, where masters such as Zandomeneghi, De Nittis and Boldini lived and worked. Of the latter, a brilliant forerunner of twentieth-century modernity, the sensual portraits in which he exalted female beauty, revealing its most mysterious soul, will be exhibited.
