Rocchetta Mattei's Flamingo Fireplace stars at Bologna's Davia Bargellini

Celebrations for the first centenary of the Museo Civico d’Arte Industriale e Galleria Davia Bargellini in Bologna, founded on May 30, 1920, kick off with the exhibition Il Camino dei Fenicotteri. The Casanova Drawings from the Æmilia Ars to the Rocchetta Mattei, curated by Paolo Cova, Mark Gregory D’Apuzzo and Ilaria Negretti, in collaboration with Renzo Zagnoni and Gruppo di Studi Alta Valle del Reno, and promoted by Istituzione Bologna Musei | Musei Civici d’Arte Antica, under the patronage of Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna, Comune di Grizzana Morandi, Unione dei Comuni dell’Appennino Bolognese, and Città Metropolitana di Bologna.

The exhibition is open to the public from May 22 to September 6, 2020, and was conceived with a view to protecting and enhancing the heritage belonging to theBologna Musei Institution and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Bologna. It aims to stimulate a critical reconsideration and an update of studies, highlighting the role that design played by combining modern functionality with refined decoration, in close connection with famous local artisan workshops.

Seventeen valuable and rarely seen drawings by brothers Achille and Giulio Casanova and Giuseppe De Col, and eleven wrought irons produced by the workshops of Pietro Maccaferri and Sante Mingazzi, belonging to the permanent collection of the Davia Bargellini Museum, will be on display. All the graphic documents, except one piece from a private collection visible here for the first time to the public, belong to the fund of more than five hundred drawings executed in pencil, India ink and watercolor, on white or tracing paper, coming from the Æmilia Ars Society and acquired by the Municipality of Bologna in 1936.

The fulcrum of the entire exhibition is one of the finest artifacts: the Fireplace of the Flamingos, a majolica-tiled terracotta fireplace decorating a small room in the Rocchetta Mattei. This constitutes a significant case study, as it can be fully reconstructed in its design authority, thanks to the presence of documents. For the first time, the artifact will be presented in a contemporary photographic reproduction side by side with the preparatory drawing signed by Giulio Casanova himself and executed in pen and ink and finished in watercolor between 1898 and 1900.

Rocchetta Mattei's Flamingo Fireplace stars at Bologna's Davia Bargellini

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