Carrara, first monograph on Giovanni Antonio Cybei coming, a major exhibition in 2020

The city of Carrara is preparing to host the exhibition Giovanni Antonio Cybei and His Time. Distinguished Statuary for European Courts and “Primary Director” of the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara, the first monographic exhibition dedicated to the great 18th-century artist Giovanni Antonio Cybei (Carrara, 1706 - 1784), one of Europe’s leading 18th-century sculptors. The exhibition is being prepared for 2020 and will be the culmination of celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of theCarrara Academy of Fine Arts, which Cybei directed between 1769 (the year of its founding) and 1784.

The exhibition will be curated by Gerardo De Simone and will be the first major exhibition dedicated to the abbot sculptor, a leading figure in marble statuary in Europe in the late Baroque and protoneoclassical seasons, and the author of prestigious commissions for major Italian and European courts. The exhibition employs a prestigious international scientific committee composed of scholars of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art (Sergei Androsov, Andrea Bacchi, Liliana Barroero, Marco Ciampolini, Francesco Freddolini, Andrea Fusani, Volker Krahn, Stella Rudolph, Daniele Sanguineti, Cinzia Maria Sicca, Alison Yarrington) and will have its venues in the two cities of Carrara and Massa, thus reviving, twenty-four years later, the virtuous cooperation of the two capital municipalities that made possible the historic exhibition The Marbles of the Tsars in 1996.

The exhibition will display, for the first time, many of Cybei’s masterpieces in comparison with significant works by artists contemporary to him, thanks to exceptional loans from important museums and collections both Italian and foreign. There will be a special in-depth study devoted to portrait busts, the genre in which Cybei’s excellence was most recognized, and to patrons, from the enlightened Duchess Maria Teresa Cybo Malaspina, founder of the Academy of Carrara, to Tsarina Catherine of Russia, from Grand Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine to the distinguished historian Ludovico Antonio Muratori. Alongside marble works, there will be plaster, stucco and terracotta models, drawings, prints, volumes, and paintings, and lost (such as the Equestrian Monument of Francesco III d’Este formerly in Modena) or immovable works will also be documented.

The exhibition, which is the result of a collaboration between the Academy and the Department of Civilization and Forms of Knowledge of the University of Pisa (a major international conference curated by Professor Cinzia Sicca of the Tuscan university is also planned), has the patronage of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and is made possible by the collaboration between the Municipality of Carrara, the Municipality of Massa, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Carrara, Touring Club Italiano and various public and private sponsors. The catalog will be published in the series Studi e fonti per la storia della scultura of Pisa University Press.

Pictured: Giovanni Antonio Cybei, Immaculate Conception, detail (1840s; marble; Carrara, Ex Ospedale Civico)

Carrara, first monograph on Giovanni Antonio Cybei coming, a major exhibition in 2020

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