OnSunday, October 22, 2023, the Un’opera al mese initiative returns to Forlì, a review designed to acquaint the public with the masterpieces of Forlì’s Civic Museums, promoted by Culture Councillor Valerio Melandri, curated by Culture Director Stefano Benetti and carried out by the Culture Service in collaboration with the Friends of Forlì Museums Association chaired by Raffaella Alessandrini. The appointment is at 6 p.m. in the Church of St. James with free admission.
The protagonist of the event on Sunday, October 22, will be the 17th-century painting Fiasca con fiori, made between 1625 and 1630 and belonging to the collections of the Museo Civico di San Domenico in Forlì. A masterpiece of seventeenth-century still life by an unknown author: the authorship is still an unsolved question. “It is a small-to-medium sized panel,” explains Gianfranco Brunelli, director of Great Exhibitions at the Civic Museum of San Domenico and a connoisseur of this work, which he has included on several occasions in exhibitions organized at the Forlì venue, “which came to the Forlì Pinacoteca with the bequest of Count Pietro Guarini in the mid-nineteenth century in which the painter depicted a triumph of flowers inside a flask with a broken neck transformed into a vase. Appearing with all evidence in this admirable work is the Caravaggesque lesson in the poverty of a broken, ordinary flask, clad in unmade and haphazard stuffing from which beautiful and colorful flowers spring to life. The flask rests on a tablet that in turn rests, at an angle, on what looks like a carpenter’s table. The masterful play of light and shadow harks back to a Caravaggesque setting and, according to Daniele Benati, to certain Tuscan painting. What appears is the work of an important author who wanted to practice overcoming, with brilliant results, an increase in formal difficulties.”
Brunelli himself will be the one to present the work in the Church of St. James.
"The review Un’opera al mese could not prescind," Stefano Benetti points out, “from this authentic masterpiece of infinite and stunning beauty that reminds us of the memorable lectio magistralis given by Professor Antonio Paolucci in 2008 at theAmbrosiana in Milan, in which the professor compared our Fiasca to Caravaggio’s Canestra di frutta (Basket of Fruit), celebrating the superb Forlì work as one of the absolute pinnacles of Caravaggio’s naturalism and an ’impressive stroke on Truth’.”
“With this new appointment,” points out Culture Councillor Valerio Melandri, “we continue our journey to discover the masterpieces that are part of our civic collections through a format that aims to reach everyone through a new, direct and essential way of telling about art.” Now in its twelfth year, the Un’Opera al Mese exhibition, through the narration of authoritative scholars, has been an opportunity to promote and introduce great artists and masterpieces belonging to the ancient and modern collections of the Forlì Civic Museums.
The public will therefore once again be accompanied to thedirect observation and narration of a single work, which will be exhibited for the occasion in a dedicated space.
For info and reservations write to biglietteria.musei@comune.forli.fc.it or call 0543 712627.
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Forlì, discovering the masterpieces of the Civic Museums. A Work of the Month is back |
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