At the Gallerie d'Italia in Piazza Scala in Milan the Romanticism. The Galleries, the museum headquarters of Intesa Sanpaolo in Milan, and the Poldi Pezzoli Museum present from 26 October 2018 to 17 March 2019 “Romanticismo”, the first exhibition dedicated to the Italian contribution to the movement that changed the sensitivity and imagination of the Western world during the first half of the XNUMXth century.
The exhibition is curated by Fernando Mazzocca e it consists of 200 works which fit harmoniously into the cultural debate in England, France and the northern countries, especially in Germany and the Austrian Empire, in the years ranging from the Congress of Vienna to the revolutions that shook the old continent in 1848.
The review it will also take into consideration the previous pre-romantic ferments and the latest manifestations of a culture which, at least in our country, will end with the realization of the unification of Italy and the affirmation of Realism, which represents the antithesis of Romanticism. Without forgetting how much in those years the city of Milan was the one that more than all the others had the strongest European vocation, it was one of the centers of romantic civilization, both as regards the figurative arts and on the literary and musical side. Just think of the annual art exhibitions held in those years at the Brera Academy, its publishing ventures, its theatres, including La Scala and the Carcano, the protagonists who lived there, such as Ugo Foscolo, Alessandro Manzoni, Gioacchino Rossini, Francesco Hayez and Giuseppe Verdi.
John Bazoli, president emeritus of Intesa Sanpaolo commented: “The Gallerie d'Italia, our museum in the heart of Milan, has presented masterpieces from various eras over the years, attesting to Intesa Sanpaolo's commitment to promoting culture and knowledge of the extraordinary art heritage of the country. From Hayez, to Bellotto and Canaletto, to the Last Caravaggio, the major exhibitions hosted at the Gallerie d'Italia have stood out for their high scientific profile, uniqueness and international reach. Further confirmation of this is the new autumn exhibition, the first exhibition dedicated to the original contribution given by Italy to European Romanticism and of which Milan was the absolute protagonist”.
The sections into which the exhibition will be divided will be 12 at the Gallerie d'Italia and 5 at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, and intend to restore the decisive break that took place in the hierarchy of genres by which some of the areas previously considered "minor", such as the landscape, the portrait, the representation of the life of the people, assume the same interest and importance of sacred painting and history painting, traditionally placed in the first place and now completely renewed.
In some moments of particular scenographic impact, the itinerary of the exhibition will be characterized by dialogue between painting and sculpture. The latter, represented in the exhibition by various works including those of three extraordinary masters – the Tuscans Lorenzo Bartolini and Pietro Tenerani, the Ticino-born Vincenzo Vela - having abandoned the ideal beauty of mythology and ancient models, is now confronted not only with the real, but also with the unedited paths of literature and history.
Gian Giacomo Attolico Trivulzio, president of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, "Romanticism, of which Milan was the undisputed protagonist in Italy, finds an extraordinary "immersive" representation in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum: visitors will walk through the rooms of Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli's palace ( protagonist of nineteenth-century culture) to discover the paintings and sculptures of the exhibition, to finally reach the Wunderkammer dedicated to Dante, one of the most emblematic and fascinating surviving testimonies of Romanticism in our country. It will not only be an artistic exhibition, wanted and organized with extreme skill by the Gallerie d'Italia and by the curator Fernando Mazzocca, together with the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, but the fresco that portrays the cultural life and the daily atmosphere of the city in the central decades of the Nineteenth century".
