Antonio Cifrondi pittor fantastico exhibition opens at the Museo Arte Tempo in Clusone

In the year of “Bergamo Brescia Italian Capital of Culture 2023,” the City of Clusone celebrates one of its great exponents of pictorial art, Antonio Cifrondi (Clusone, 1656 - Brescia, 1730), with two special initiatives dedicated to him and part of the “Cifrondi ’23” project: the monographic exhibition Antonio Cifrondi “pittor fantastico” and the first online mapping of the artist’s works that can be visited in ValSeriana, Lovere, and the cities of Bergamo and Brescia.

Antonio Cifrondi "pittor fantastico" the monographic exhibition dedicated to Cifrondi curated by Enrico De Pascale with Luca Brignoli, presents about 30 works from museums, churches and private collections, representative of the different fields practiced by the artist: sacred painting, history painting, genre figures, portraits and self-portraits. Set up in Palazzo Marinoni Barca, home of MAT - Museo Arte Tempo di Clusone, the exhibition, with free admission, will be open from April 15 until September 3, 2023.

Cifrondi was a leading exponent of that Lombard artistic tradition, otherwise known as the “painting of reality” (whose exponents include Moretto, Moroni, Ceresa, Baschenis, Fra’ Galgario, and Ceruti), which has in its human and sincere adherence to the facts and people of daily life its distinctive feature. Remembered by the sources for his executive rapidity and technical virtuosity Cifrondi, who was a contemporary of Fra’ Galgario and slightly older than Giacomo Ceruti known as il Pitocchetto, produced over the course of half a century more than four hundred works (altarpieces, cycles of frescoes, genre figures, portraits, still lifes, scenes of everyday life) partly still preserved in churches and private homes in the Bergamo and Brescia area.

On the occasion of the exhibition, the two canvases with Stories of Cambises painted by the painter around 1690 return to Palazzo Marinoni Barca after exactly one century, by generous concession of Intesa Sanpaolo, the current owner. For the opening of the exhibition, on Friday, April 14 at 9 p.m., there will be a projection on the Fanzago Astronomical Clock Tower in Piazza Orologio, Clusone, of the new videomapping dedicated to the “Cifrondi ’23” project.

Antonio Cifrondi,

ifrondi,

Mapping the works of Cifrondi

The second project that the Municipality of Clusone dedicates to Antonio Cifrondi in 2023, with the aim of offering a widespread path of discovery and enhancement of a precious collective heritage, is the first online cataloguing of all the painter’s visitable works preserved in public places - churches, museums, institutional buildings - of the city of Clusone, the municipalities of ValSeriana, Lovere and the cities of Bergamo and Brescia.

An activity realized with the contribution of Regione Lombardia and the valuable support of Main Sponsors Bettineschi s.r.l. and CONAD Superstore Clusone, Galleria LUISA DELLE PIANE Milan and SINERGIA S.P.A. as Sponsors and supporters BCC Milano, Ciaccio broker, GENERALI Agenzia di Clusone, the Cifrondi ’23 project, avails itself of the collaboration of the Accademia di Belle Arti G. Carrara of Bergamo, particularly the students of the courses in Digital Applications for Visual Arts (lecturer Agustín Sanchéz) and Engraving Techniques and Special Graphics (lecturer Cinzia Benigni).

The exhibition Antonio Cifrondi "pittor fantastico" can be visited Friday 3:30-6:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m.-12 p.m. and 3:30-6:30 p.m. Accompanying the exhibition is a catalog published by Lubrina Bramani editore, with essays and entries by Enrico De Pascale, Francesco Nezosi, Federica Nurchis, Luca Brignoli, and Angelo Loda.

For information: www.visitclusone.it/mostra-cifrondi

Statements

“Bergamo Brescia Italian Capital of Culture: an exciting challenge, which stimulated us to want to imagine and promote a project that would be able not only to highlight Clusone, but also to connect Bergamo and Brescia and the territory of the two provinces. This was the motion that drove the Administration in the search for an initiative capable of combining the totality of these aspects. Thanks to Enrico De Pascale, an art historian, the painter Antonio Cifrondi was identified as the figure that encapsulates the essence of the challenge we set ourselves: he is Baradello by birth, lived in Bergamo, worked and spent the last years of his life in Brescia, leaving a very rich and varied pictorial production. Through a conspicuous nucleus of carefully selected works-some of which have never been exhibited before-from museum institutions and private collections in Italy and abroad, it will be possible to discover the style and work of one of the greatest artists from Cluson. The ambition, however, was greater: to leave a mark of this initiative over time, something that would remain even after the exhibition was over. Parallel to the museum narrative, the City of Clusone has therefore shared and created a significant itinerary through the places, between the two provinces, where it is possible to admire the works of Antonio Cifrondi: an action that looks beyond borders, uniting more than twenty municipalities and intending to return to citizens the beauty and passion for culture, as an invitation to live and experience art, knowledge and the charm of the heritage that surrounds us,” declare Massimo Morstabilini, Mayor of the City of Cl usone and Alessandra Tonsi, Deputy Councillor for Culture, Youth Policies, Events and manifestations of the City of Clusone.

“The promotion of tourism in the territories and the emergence of local vocations,” explains Regional Councillor for Tourism, Territorial Marketing and Fashion, Barbara Mazzali, “is one of the main objectives of my councillorship. In this sense, I am really pleased that the OgniGiorno inLombardia call represents an opportunity to enhance the artistic tradition of Lombardy through an intervention that, by combining culture and tourism, fits fully into the concept of the great event ”Bergamo-Brescia capitale italiana della Cultura 2023."

“The exhibition Antonio Cifrondi ”pittor fantastico" (the definition is by an 18th-century historian) comes seventy years after the celebrated exhibition I pittori della realtà in Lombardy (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 1953) that revealed Cifrondi to the general public, and forty from the last anthological exhibition held in Clusone (1983) in the rooms of Palazzo Marinoni Barca (now home to MAT). It is an initiative that puts to good use the results of the most recent research on the painter-conducted for the most part by brilliant young scholars-which has helped to clarify many aspects (not all) of the artist’s boundless catalog and his biographical story. The different sections of the exhibition and the catalog restore, albeit in samples, his multifaceted production in the areas of sacred and history painting, genre scenes and portraiture, over a sufficiently broad chronological span - from about 1690 to 1730 - to grasp his important advances on a stylistic and technical level," comments Enrico De Pascale, curator of the exhibition.

Antonio Cifrondi pittor fantastico exhibition opens at the Museo Arte Tempo in Clusone

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