Brescia, Luigi Basiletti exhibition celebrates 200 years since the start of excavations at the Capitolium

On the bicentenary of the beginning of the excavation of the Capitolium of Brescia, Fondazione Brescia Musei and Ateneo di Brescia celebrate the event with the exhibition Luigi Basiletti and Antiquity, dedicated to the painter, archaeologist, creator of the enterprise that culminated in the discovery of the Winged Victory, which became one of the symbols of the city of Brescia, Luigi Basiletti (Brescia, 1780 - 1859). The exhibition, curated by Roberta D’Adda, Bernardo Falconi and Francesca Morandini, scheduled from Apr. 4 to Dec. 3, 2023, presents paintings, drawings, engravings, and medals in dialogue with the permanent collection in a symbolic place, the house-museum of Count Paolo Tosio now home to the Athenaeum, which Basiletti helped to enrich with neoclassical sensibility and from which the original nucleus of the Tosio Martinengo Picture Gallery was started: the palace opens to the public for the first time, on this occasion, hitherto unseen rooms.

Fondazione Brescia Musei and Ateneo di Brescia share the goal of enhancing the collections of the Pinacoteca, inside the home of its founder. The exhibition thus becomes a double opportunity to discover a key figure of an era and its context and values. An exciting story that started from a clue: a column emerging in a meadow.

Luigi Basiletti, a painter, connoisseur and profound connoisseur of Antiquity, archaeologist, protagonist of a cultural season and at the same time tireless promoter of neoclassical culture, aware of Romantic sentiments, close to Antonio Canova (his mentor in his Roman years), is a contemporary figure, a scientific popularizer, a fundraiser, moved by values of sharing and civic commitment, who saw in art the indispensable necessity of sharing toward all citizens.

The exhibition is housed in the house-museum of Count Paolo Tosio, where Basiletti worked as a painter and decorator as well as an expert on antiquities and, from 1811 to 1821, as superintendent of the palace’s renovation work, later continued by Rodolfo Vantini, given the artist’s commitments to the excavation campaign. Palazzo Tosio, now home to the Athenaeum, was destined to house the family’s art collection, established with Basiletti’s fundamental contribution, and which became, in 1851, the first public picture gallery in Brescia. The exhibition traces, through works by Luigi Basiletti and others, the artist’s training and a great archaeological adventure and is curated by Roberta D’Adda, Bernardo Falconi and Francesca Morandini, in the year of Bergamo Brescia Capital of Culture, juxtaposing loans from the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo collection with works belonging to Palazzo Tosio including furnishings and wall decorations. The discovery of the Capitolium was an extraordinary affair that began on April 4, 1823 and culminated with the discovery of the bronze Winged Victory on July 20, 1826. It was a feat made possible by Basiletti’s resourcefulness, his expertise, his connection with the Tosio counts, the enthusiasm and commitment of the Athenaeum’s coterie of intellectuals, of which Basiletti and Tosio were members, and the entire citizenry, who worked to support the work with one of the first cultural crowdfunding ventures in history.

A collaborative project between Fondazione Brescia Musei and Ateneo di Brescia is now in its third stage, following the exhibitions Raffaello. The Invention of the Divine Painter and Dante and Napoleon. Founding Myths in Early Nineteenth-Century Brescian Culture and is renewed with a new exhibition itinerary that merges with the place that hosts it, which, for the first time, includes the rooms, recently restored thanks to the contribution of the Municipality of Brescia, of the East Wing (Ala a Mattina), which the public will be able to see for the first time and which comes to life through the images, places and voices of the contemporaries, protagonists of this great event.

Luigi Basiletti and the Ancient is intended to be concrete evidence of the artistic ability as well as the vast knowledge of the archaeological painter, acquired in Rome under the aegis of Antonio Canova, between 1803 and 1809, coming into contact with the most up-to-date currents of neoclassicism, thanks to his studies of architecture, antiquarianism, and his cult of archaeology, while at the same time approaching landscape painting, thanks to his frequentation of northern vedutists won over by the fascination of the Eternal City and its territory strewn with ruins. In keeping with tradition, Basiletti, who started out as a figure painter, got to know and reproduce archaeological remains from life in Rome, recreating, at the same time, imaginary landscapes populated by myths and legends. Thus took shape the canvases featuring Pericles and Aspasia (1811) and Amore in the act of burning a butterfly, (1819) an allegorical portrait of the contessina Ippolita Cigola at the age of six, views of the Roman countryside, in Tivoli, at the foot of the Aventine. According to the custom of the time, he visited some of the places on the Grand Tour: particularly rich in detail are the excursions to the Kingdom of Naples; to Cuma, Pozzuoli, Capua, where he produced numerous watercolors, and finally to Pompeii, which in those same years was being enriched by new discoveries, becoming a mandatory stop on trips, thanks to the incentives for excavations and the numerous publications promoted by the Queen Consort of the Kingdom of Naples, Caroline Bonaparte. An enthusiasm and a wealth of knowledge that Basiletti would bring to Brescia, in the great enterprise of excavations, which saw him the main promoter and dispositor of everything, initiating archaeological investigations born from the intuition around the discovery, in a meadow, of a fluted column with capital.

A campaign that, thanks to the rigorous scientific approach and wise organization, will bring to light the Capitoline temple, the halls, the stone furnishings and the bronze deposit, with the extraordinary discovery of the Winged Victory. In the full spirit of sharing culture, Basiletti’s project did not stop with the finds, but culminated in the creation of the city museum, the Museo Patrio, inaugurated in 1830 within the three cells of the Capitolium and destined to collect not only the finds of Roman Brixia, but also late antique and Lombard artifacts, with a cutting-edge vision that anticipated the museographic discipline in the modern sense.

Among Luigi Basiletti’s major projects was the monumental publishing enterprise of Museo Bresciano Illustrato: a valuable collection of texts and plates in which buildings and finds were documented. A vast work, the estimated cost of which almost matched that envisaged for the reconstruction of the Capitolium, and one of the most significant publishing enterprises of nineteenth-century Brescia, which would see the light of day some twenty years after its conception.

Information and hours: April 4, 6 and 8 free visit from 3 to 5 p.m.; April 11 to Oct. 1 Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3 p.m., guided tours with reservations required at ateneo.brescia.it Saturdays and Sundays, guided tours at 3, 4 and 5 p.m. with reservations required at ateneo.brescia.it; August closed Oct. 3 to Dec. 3.

info: bresciamusei.com and ateneo.brescia.it

www.ateneo.brescia.it

www.bresciamusei.com

Image: Faustino Joli, Entrance to the Brescia museum.

Brescia, Luigi Basiletti exhibition celebrates 200 years since the start of excavations at the Capitolium

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