Ottocento. RomeReview by: Simonetta FraquelliThe Burlington Magazine, Vol. 150, No. 1264, American Art and Architecture (Jul., 2008), pp.491-493Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40479816 .

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EXHIBITION REVIEWS

Stelline, Milan (closed 22 June),5 was the latest reappraisal of his work.6 This well- focused selection of forty-eight paintings from private and public collections in Italy examined Sironi's output during his years in the wilderness, that is from the collapse of the Fascist regime, which he had supported, until his death in 1961, a period also of personal tragedy because of the suicide of his daughter in 1948. The dramatic reversal in the artist's fortunes meant that his output, after a decade in which his activities had been divided between art (especially commissions for large mural paintings), politics, architecture and illustration, was reduced largely to easel paint- ings.7 This period saw the reappearance of the desolate urban landscapes which were such a notable component of his output in the 1920s (Urban landscape; Fig. 69) and also of the man- nequins of his earlier metaphysical period. Sironi also painted compositions (which he called 'moltiplicazioni') which are divided into compartments; to a certain extent, these have the same structure as his earlier mural paintings although, shorn of their Fascist rhetoric, their figures appear to be isolated and as if they are immured in stone or placed in alien and threat- ening surroundings. Finally, biblical and alle- gorical subjects also appear during these years; they are imbued with the same spirituality and gravitas as the religious works of Rouault.

1 Catalogue: Baila: la tnodemità futurista. Edited by Giovanni Lista, Paolo Baldacci and Livia Velani. 343 pp. incl. 222 col. + 193 b. & w. ills. (Skira, Milan, 2008), €60. ISBN 978-88-6130-525-0. This richly illustrated volume includes long, lucidly written introductory essays by Lista before each of the five sections of the exhibition, and an essay examining the origin, develop- ment and chronological sequence of the 'speed of an automobile' series (19 12- 14). 2 Turin and Rome have both had monographic exhibitions: Giacomo Balla, Turin (Galleria Cívica d'Arte Moderna) 1963; Giacomo Baila, Rome (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna) 1971^72; and Casa Balla e il Futurismo a Roma, Rome (Accademia di Francia) 1989. 3 Notable omissions included Street-light (1910-11; Museum of Modern Art, New York); Hand of the violinist (19 1 2; Estorick Collection, London); and Dynamism of a dog on a leash (1912; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buflalo NY). 4 The first Casa Balla was on the corner between via Parioli (now Paisiello) and via Porpora, near Villa Borghese; it was demolished in 1926 to make way for the new Parioli district. Balla moved to via Oslavia where he created, with the help of his daughters, a new Futurist interior. Views of this interior featured in Jack Clemente's telefilm Balk e i Futuristi (1971), a video of which was shown at the exhibition and which also included interviews with Luce and Elica Balla. 5 Catalogue: Sironi, gli anni '40 e '$0. Dal crollo dell' ideologia agit anni dell'Apocalisse. Edited by Claudia Gian Ferrari and Elena Pontiggia. 184 pp. incl. 56 col. + 53 b. & w. ills. (Mondadori Electa, Milan, 2008), €35. ISBN 978-88-370-6236-1. 6 Other major Sironi exhibitions in Milan (all at Palazzo Reale) have been: Mario Sironi (1973); Sironi, 1885-IÇ61 (1985); and Mario Sironi, Constant Permeke. I luoghi e V anima (2005). 7 During this period Sironi continued to provide stage designs for opera productions, notably for the Maggio musicale fiorentino: Busoni's Doktor Faust (1942) and Verdi's ILombardi alla prima crodata (1948) and Don Carlo (1950), and for La Scala Tristan und holde (1947).

Ottocento Rome

by SIMONETTA FRAQUELLI

the organisers of Ottocento: Da Canova al Quarto Stato,1 recently at the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome (closed 10th June), set themselves the challenge of representing Italian art of an entire century in a single exhibition. This was particularly audacious as the century in question, the nineteenth, is not renowned for Italian great masters. Apart from a handful of well-known names - Canova, Boldini and Segantini perhaps - it represents a period which has for the most part been ignored in favour of earlier or later, more illustrious eras of Italian art. As the subtide suggests, the exhibi- tion was framed by two key artistic moments, both of which can be considered revolutionary and modern. The severity and ideal purity of Antonio Canova's marble sculptures, exem- plified by the pugilists Creugas and Damoxenos (cat. no.i; Vatican Museums, Rome) and dating from the first years of the century, led many of his contemporaries to prefer his works to the universally admired antique statues. This, together with the Canova's international reputation and influence, greatly increased the prestige of 'modern' sculpture. At the other extreme, the exhibition ended with the cele- brated painting by Pellizza da Volpedo, The Fourth Estate (1898-1901; Galleria d'Arte Mod- erna, Milan; no. 126), which represents the advancing proletariat and signals Italy's entry into the twentieth century and the arrival of the modern age. A synoptic exhibition which included 130 paintings and sculptures, Otto- cento aimed to demonstrate that some seventy artists, working in Rome and Milan, Florence and Naples, strove in difficult social and polit- ical times to produce works of art that could stand alongside Italy's great art of the past.

Culture held a central place in the intel- lectual life of the Italian elite in the early

ottocento. Although each region of the peninsula, from Sicily and Naples to Lom- bardy, from Tuscany to the Veneto and Piedmont, maintained separate political and economic interests and artistic traditions, for the most part formed around their respec- tive local academies, they were united by cultural ties. Their common culture, from the Latin classics to Dante and the poets who came after Jiim, to three centuries of celebrated art and music, formed the basis of Italian identity and informed much of the art produced in the nineteenth century.

The organisers chose to express this com- mon culture against the backdrop of the history of Italy in the century of the Risorg- imento. Napoleon's domination of northern Italy (1796-18 14) coincided with the final flowering of Neo-classicism in Italian art. The opening of the exhibition acknowledged the revolutionary spirit of the end of the eight- eenth century, heralding the new century. A series of macabre portrait panels by Vincenzo Bonomini (no.2) in which (recognisable) indi- viduals, including the artist, are represented in skeletal form, contributes a sense of irony and foreboding. Alongside these, the first decade was represented by sensual celebratory por- traits by the Neo-classical painter Andrea Appiani - among them one of Napoleon himself (no.6) - and history paintings by Vin- cenzo Camuccini (no. 10) and Giuseppe Bossi (no. 11) who, as secretary to the Accademia di Brera from 1801, was instrumental in the restructuring of the Milanese academy. He provided it with new statues after the Antique and a library, as well as founding the art gallery, now known as the Pinacoteca di Brera. Following the demise of the Napoleonic regime and the ensuing Restoration period, painting in Italy, as in the rest of Europe, witnessed a transition from Neo-classicism to the newer Romantic ideals, which emphasised individualism and introspection, a yearning for the past and a passion for nature. A great

70. In vedetta, by Giovanni Fatton. 1872. Canvas, 34.5 by 54.4 cm. (Private collection; exh. Scudene del Quirinale, Rome).

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EXHIBITION REVIEWS

71. The tow path, by Telemaco Signorini. 1864. Canvas, 58.4 by 173.2 cm. (Private collection, courtesy Jean Luc Baroni Ltd; exh. Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome).

patriotic painter, Francesco Hayez is best known for Romantic history paintings such as the Conspiracy of the Latnpugnani (1826-29; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; no. 14) with its covert references to Italy's plight. He is also revered for his highly evocative portraits, such as the melancholy and haunting Portrait ofCon- tessa Teresa Zutnali Marsili with her son Giuseppe (Museo Civico, Lodi; no. 3 8), painted in 1833, two years after the child's death. In his later career Hayez embarked on allegorical subjects with strong political connotations; among them is his best-known work, The kiss (1859; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; no. 51), an image of a young couple in a sensuous embrace that came to symbolise the new political climate in the 1 850s. The Neapolitan Domenico Morelli was also an exponent of Roman- ticism. In such works as The iconoclasts (1855; Museo di Capodimonte, Naples; no.49) his declared aim was historical realism; however the scene of the persecution of eighth-century Christian radicals alludes to contemporary victims of political persecution in Italy.

With the struggle for national independ- ence, many painters became more overtly political. Instead of historical events, artists began to portray episodes from contemporary life, such as in the sentimental and anecdotal painting of Domenico Induno entitled The Bulletin of 14 July 183c which announced peace at Villafranca (1862; Museo del Risorgimento, Milan; no. 56). A reaction against the con- straints of Neo-classicism can also be seen in the Neapolitan Scuola di Posillipo as repre- sented by the landscapes of Giacinto Gigante and Anton Sminck Pitloo, the only non- Italian artist to be included in the exhibition. They rejected the classical style and revived the eighteenth-century veduta genre, painting lyrical and romantic views in the manner of Turner or Corot.

By the time of the unification, the Roman- tic sensibility had been superseded by verismo. The Macchiaioli, based in Tuscany, was the first group of Italian painters to show an over- riding interest in the effects of natural light on form and to concentrate on contemporary subjects, whether political events or intimate interiors. United by common artistic and

political sentiments, they opposed the formal teaching of the Florentine Accademia di Belle Arti and supported Italian unification. The bourgeois interior in Odoardo Borrani's Seam- stresses of the red shirts (1863; private collection; no. 5 8), where a group of young women is absorbed in sewing red shirts in the service of the Risorgimento, belies the radical patriotism of the scene, even if their - and the artist's -

political engagement is reinforced by the portrait of Garibaldi on the wall. The elegance and seriousness of the upper-class women in Giovanni Fattori's The Palmieri pavilion (1866; Palazzo Pitti, Florence; no.76) contrasts with the more frivolous and leisurely portraits of women painted by contemporary French artists and indicates that the painters of the Macchiaioli group supported women's rights. Fattori also painted military scenes, many well after unification, including In vedetta (no.96; Fig. 70), which, in contrast to his ear- lier scenes glorifying military life, emphasises the isolation and tensions of a soldier's lot. In

his arresting painting The tow path (no.70; Fig.71), Telemaco Signorini treats the subject of social inequality with subtle irony; the workers, harnessed like animals, lead the eye to the stylish man, looking slightly absurd in his top hat, and a little girl in her frilly dress. Sig- norini uses an exaggerated horizontal format to emphasise the men's exertion in pulling au unseen boat along the banks of the Arno. Most touching of all is Silvestro Lega's portrait of Mazzini on his deathbed. Devoid of drama or sentimentality, The dying Mazzini' s last moments (1873; Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; no.97) captures the overriding humanity of the expiring patriot.

After 1870 the questioning of the Risorg- imento ideals of liberty and territorial unity coincided with a rejection of realism, which led to the reappearance of sentiment in works of art. In the 1860s and 1870s the Lombard literary and artistic movement Scapigliatura (literally translated as 'dishevelment') came to the fore, its members adopting a bohemian

72. The reader, or Clara, by Federico Farumni. 1864-65. Canvas, 40.5 by 59 cm. (Gallena d Arte Moderna, Milan; exh. Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome).

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EXHIBITION REVIEWS

lifestyle. The scapigliati painters Tranquillo Cremona and Daniele Ranzoni used quick, dense and cursive brushstrokes, inspired in part by Federico Faruffini - see his wonder- ful The reader, or Clara (no.93; Fig.72) ~ to produce images made up of tonal colours with soft contours, reflecting their interest in the effects of light. Another factor in the crisis of Italian painting around this time was the exodus to Paris of many artists, including Giuseppe De Nittis, Giovanni Boldini and Federico Zandomeneghi who in part emu- lated the French Impressionists.

Towards the end of the century Symbolism took hold in Italy in reaction to verismo, partly as a result of a renewed interest in the English Pre-Raphaelites and the evocative images of Arnold Böcklin, who lived for many years in Italy. Giovanni Costa, who fought in many of the military campaigns of the 1850s and 1 860s, painted lyrical landscapes directly from nature (no. 8 5) and advocated a revival of Italian painting free of bourgeois realism, the directness of verismo and the foreign influence of Impressionism. In 1886 he founded the movement In Arte Libertas, which took hold so well that it in turn became the new official art, exemplified in the mural paintings of Giulio Aristide Sartorio, represented in the exhibition by The siren (1893; Galleria d* Arte Moderna, Turin; no. 1 20). Edward Burne- Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Frederic Leighton were among the English artists who exhibited with In Arte Libertas in 1890.

By the 1890s, the birth of the socialist move- ment and the rise of the militant working classes saw the emergence of a small politicised avant-garde whose work was associated with the technique of Divisionism. A dissatisfaction with modern life led artists such as Giovanni Segantini, Gaetano Previati, Emilio Longoni and Pellizza to embrace Symbolism and a scientific approach in an attempt to make their art an instrument of social change. The exhibition ended with a handful of Divisonist paintings, among them Longoni's largest canvas, the striking Glacier (1905; private collection; no. 123), which belongs to a series of paintings executed during the art- ist's extended visits to the Italian Alps in the early 1900s. It is regrettable that two other Divisionist masterpieces, Previati's Motherhood (1891; Gruppo Banco Popolare, Novara; no. 125) and Pellizza's Fourth Estate, a veritable icon of Italian art, are so large that they did not fit within the context of the exhibition and were hung in the stairwell of the Scuderie, thus diminishing their impact in the show.

The quality of the works on display was not in doubt; the organisers brought together sev- eral undisputed masterpieces. There are many ways of telling the story of a century of art; the decision to create a historical framework worked well, and for the most part the paint- ings and sculptures were cleverly selected. However, regionalism in Italian art persisted throughout the ottocento, and the question of whether one can identify a national style is a moot point. In addition, the impact of the continuing presence of foreign artists in Italy,

from Ingres to Turner, from the medievalising Nazarenes to the visionary Böcklin, needed to be acknowledged - and perhaps the exhi- bition could have integrated works by some of these. Given the pre-eminence of Canova at the beginning of die century it was a pity that comparatively few sculptures were included. The addition of a work by the Danish Bertel Thorvaldsen, who lived nearly all his life in Rome and whose work was extremely influ- ential, would have been useful.

For an Italian audience this material was not new. Although an exhibition covering the whole nineteenth century in Italy had never been attempted before, there have been numerous exhibitions on various aspects of its art.2 It is a pity that this exhibition will not be shown outside Italy where, until rela- tively recently, an entrenched French bias has informed much of the scholarship and exhibitions of nineteenth-century art.3

1 Catalogue: Ottocento: Da Canova al Quarto Stato. Edited by Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli, Fernando Mazzocca and Carlo Sisi. 399 pp. inch 120 col. + 60 b. & w. ills. (Skira, Milan, 2008), €68. ISBN 978-88- 613-0623-3. 2 Among them are Ü Divisionismo Italiano, Trent (Museo delle Albere) 1990; 1Z Neo-dassidsmo in Italia, Milan (Palazzo Reale) 2002; and Romantici e Macchiaioli: Giuseppe Mazzini e la grande pittura europea, Genoa (Palazzo Ducale) 2006. 3 A notable exception was Ottocento: Romanticism and Revolution in îçth-Century Italian Painting, Baltimore (Walters Art Gallery) 1992-93.

Salvator Rosa Naples

by XAVIER F. SALOMON DuluHch Picture Gallery, London

the exhibition Salvator Rosa, tra mito e magia at the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (closed 29th June), was the largest mono- graphic display of Rosa's work ever mounted. It followed in the footsteps of the only other major exhibition on the artist held at the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1973.1 While forty-eight paintings by Rosa were shown in London, eighty-four works by (or attributed to) the artist were gathered in Naples, only nineteen of which were on view in 1973. Between 1650 and 1840 about 4,600 paintings attributed to Rosa appeared on the market in England and France alone, as calculated in the exhibition catalogue by Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée. The artist's first full - and highly romanticised - biography was written by Lady Morgan and published in London in 1824. Recognition of Rosa's great gifts developed in England and abroad significantly more than in Rosa's own country and it is therefore particularly appropriate that this exhibition should take place in Italy.

Many of the paintings displayed had rarely been seen in public. This was a unique opportunity to study works of high quality from private collections, such as the lyrical

73. Anon, by Salvator Rosa, c.1648. Canvas, 145 by 107 cm. (Private collection, Milan; exh. Museo di Capodimonte, Naples).

Arion (Fig.73), Moral philosophy (no. 19), Philosopher in meditation (no. 22), Phryne and Xenocrates (no. 2 8), Joseph explaining the dreams (no. 76) and the two small episodes from the life of Christ originally in the Chigi collection (nos. 8 1-82). Previously unpublished pictures by Rosa were presented for the first time, including Latona and the Lycian peasants from the collection of Cardinal Azzolino (no. 3 2), Cadmus killing the dragon (no. 3 4), a Scene of witchcraft painted on slate (no.40), the beautifully preserved Si Paul hermit (no.79) and two Seascapes (nos. 50 and 62). Two sets of pendants were also reunited: Philosophy (National Gallery, London; no. 2) and Poetry (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; no. 3) were seen together once again, while the splendid pairing of the so-called Men- zogna (Palazzo Pitti, Florence; no. 6) and the Poet (Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota; no. 7) left little doubt that the two paintings were originally conceived as pendants.

As Nicola Spinosa argues in his introduc- tion, Rosa 'remained eternally and profoundly' Neapolitan. Throughout his life, in his letters and in his poetry, the artist displayed an ambivalent attitude to his birthplace, often praising its beauty and on occasion vilifying it, but fundamentally he remained a man - and an artist - whose approach to life and art was deeply Neapolitan. Born in 161 5 in Arenella, a Neapolitan suburb, Rosa came from an artistic background: both his mater- nal grandfather, Vito Greco, and uncle, Domenico Antonio, were painters while his elder brother, Giuseppe, was a priest but is also documented as having worked as an artist, and his sister Giovanna married the painter Francesco Fracanzano in 1632. The young Rosa learned to paint in the Greco workshop in Largo Carita and his artistic

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