Bologna dedicates an exhibition to wax sculptural portraiture in vogue during the 18th century in the city

From November 19, 2022 to March 12, 2023, with opening on Friday, November 18 at 5:30 p.m., the Davia Bargellini Museum and the Museo di Palazzo Poggi in Bologna present the exhibition Truth and Illusion. Figures in wax from the eighteenth century in Bologna, curated by Massimo Medica, Mark Gregory D’Apuzzo, Ilaria Bianchi, Irene Graziani, in collaboration with Museo di Palazzo Poggi | Sistema Museale di Ateneo | Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna. An artistic form scarcely investigated by the academic circuit due to the ancient prejudice towards a metamorphic material considered devoid of aesthetic value and a technique hovering between art and craftsmanship, precisely in Bologna, during the 18th century, wax sculptural portraiture played a role of primary importance, covering a triple function: the treatment of scientific disciplines initiated in the University’s renowned school of human anatomy, the depiction of power and religious devotion.

The exhibition aims to acquaint the public with and reevaluate in a proper perspective the undoubted quality of what still survives of a production that, according to documentary sources, was very rich and saw skilled sculptors engaged. Bringing this heritage back into the climate of the glorious figurative civilization of eighteenth-century Bologna was the art historian Andrea Emiliani, to whose memory the initiative is significantly dedicated.

In the city and beyond, the fashion of making wax portraits spread: busts, compositions, hyper-realistic profiles that portrayed nobles and saints, prelates and ladies.

Starting from the nucleus of works conserved at the Museo Civico d’Arte Industriale and Galleria Davia Bargellini, the exhibition project traces a broad panorama of theceroplastic workshop in Bologna, bringing together for the first time eighteen works, including sixteen wax figures and two terracottas, found in museum collections and city houses of worship. The exhibits also belong to private collections and are therefore rarely seen.

The exhibition itinerary extends into the second venue of the Palazzo Poggi Museum where the"Camera della Notomia" of theInstitute of Sciences is located, with the series of eight wax statues executed by painter, sculptor and architect Ercole Lelli and the wax preparations of the famous husband and wife Giovanni Manzolini and Anna Morandi, who made a fundamental contribution to the advancement of knowledge of anatomy and physiology through the representation of human body parts of extraordinary refinement and technical minuteness for the time.

The project has a scientific committee composed of Massimo Medica, Mark Gregory D’Apuzzo, Roberto Balzani, Ilaria Bianchi, Lucia Corrain, Irene Graziani and Antonella Mampieri. The catalog, edited by Mark Gregory D’Apuzzo and Massimo Medica, is published by Silvana Editoriale.

For info: http://www.museibologna.it/

Image: Nicola Toselli, Portrait of Count Senator Paolo Patrizio Zambeccari (post 1756; Private collection)

Bologna dedicates an exhibition to wax sculptural portraiture in vogue during the 18th century in the city

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