The MarteS Museum showcases Ceruti's three Sorlini canvases and his only autograph document known to date

Until July 30, 2023, the Sorlini Art Museum in Calvagese della Riviera (Brescia) is hosting the exhibition PerDiana! Giacomo Ceruti, masterpieces between Lombardy and Veneto, curated by Stefano Lusardi. The exhibition revolves around three works by Giacomo Ceruti already included in the Sorlini Collection: The Old Peasant Woman, The Bravo, and the large canvas Diana and the Nymphs Surprised by Actaeon, publicly exhibited at MarteS. For this occasion, the Sorlini canvases are placed side by side with some exceptional loans, in order to deepen and contextualize the evolution of the style of the artist who, after the “pitocchi season” of the Brescian period, confronted the Venetian, Venetian and international figurative culture of the 18th century, coming to elaborate compositions with mythological subjects.

The exhibition is proposed as a chronological and thematic itinerary: on the one hand, the empathetic attention to the people of the people and the poor attributable above all to the Brescian debut (of this phase is testimony to The Old Peasant Woman, 1730-1733), on the other hand, the results following his stay in Veneto, witnessed by the large canvas commissioned by the Calderara family for the Milanese palace of the same name, between 1740 and 1743, and dedicated to Diana and the Nymphs Surprised by Actaeon.

The review also offers the only autograph document of Giacomo Ceruti that has come down to us, dated January 9, 1733, which clarifies the reasons for his departure from Brescia and defines the certain date. The letter was drafted at the final moment of the painter’s Brescian period, when he was forced to leave the city due to the impossibility of meeting financial commitments, and is now kept in theBrescia State Archives. Having arrived in Veneto, Ceruti understood that the painting most in demand by wealthy patrons was that updated to the Venetian and international taste of Giovan Battista Pittoni, Tiepolo or the great international masters, such as the exponents of French Rococo painting. The geographic change in patronage was thus followed by a stylistic change, as evidenced by the great Sorlini property work, Diana and the Nymphs Surprised by Actaeon. Fundamental was the access to the Venetian Collection of the German-born Marshal Johann Mathias von der Schulemburg, a great collector in relationship with the major artists of his time, who gave Ceruti the opportunity to come into contact with works by contemporary artists such as Sebastiano Ricci, Gianantonio Guardi, Giambattista Pittoni, and Gianantonio Pellegrini. Within the Sorlini Collection, and in the exhibition, there is a painting described in the inventories of the Schulemburg Collection: it is the canvas with Saint Catherine of Alexandria, painted between 1730 and 1735 by Gian Antonio Pellegrini, of which “286,” a number that traces it back to the German marshal’s collection, can still be seen on the lower left. To the Schulemburg Collection Ceruti contributed several works, including some still lifes, now divided between public and private collections.

Acquired in 2007 by entrepreneur Luciano Sorlini, the three Sorlini canvases are considered fundamental within the painter’s catalog. They well testify to the results of the painter’s early Brescian production and his mature Milanese phase. The Old Peasant Woman (1730-1733), distinguished by a quality so high as to prevent effective pictorial comparisons, constitutes in itself a figurative document of impressive value, so much so that for its iconicity it has been called “one of the unforgettable works of the European eighteenth century.” It is matched by Il bravo: the dimensions and frames are identical, but the broader and less meticulous drafting than that which brings the Vecchia contadina to life seems almost to have been differentiated to allow the female figure to rise even higher to one of the unrepeatable heights of Pitocchetto’s production. The Vecchia contadina was found by Count Fausto Lechi of Brescia in 1953, as reported in the unpublished correspondence preserved at the Roberto Longhi Foundation in Florence, within the collections of Baron Alessandro Augusto Monti della Corte in Nigoline di Corte Franca (Brescia). The work was immediately sent to the major Milan exhibition that Roberto Longhi dedicated to the Painters of Reality at the Palazzo Reale. The exhibition sanctioned the importance of La vecchia contadina because it was extremely illustrative of the pauperist production of the painter and in an excellent state of preservation. If Il bravo and La Vecchia contad ina belong to the production of the Brescian period, the monumental composition with Diana and the Nymphs Surprised by Actaeon (1740-1743) testifies to Ceruti’s adherence to the great Venetian painting of the 18th century. The work is exceptional for its format and belongs to a cycle that has two other canvases dedicated to the stories of Diana, made for Palazzo Calderara in Milan. The one on display, over 12 square meters in size, is the only one visible to the public thanks to Sorlini’s will. Ceruti always remains true to himself and to reality, declining even Boucher’s French elegances into a genuine, real and concrete idiom as evidenced by the procacious nymphs, the naturalistic passages of rocks, vegetation, and dogs extrapolated from well-known engraving models and appropriately employed with ease and intelligence.

To contextualize the importance of Sorlini’s three works, the exhibition, accompanied by a scholarly catalog edited by Francesco Ceretti, makes use of important loans. To the years in which Ceruti completed La vecchia contadina dates what, to date, is Ceruti’s only autograph document: a letter drafted in the final moment of the Brescian period, written and signed by the painter. Thanks to collaboration with the Brescia State Archives, visitors will be able to see, read and hear the contents of what, to date, is Ceruti’s only autograph document: written and signed by the painter. A drawing made known in 1966 by Giovanni Testori and confirmed by Mina Gregori (1982) has been referred to this early phase. The exhibition allows us to see this sheet again, with the new correct attribution, after a silence of almost sixty years. A genuine novelty is the drawing Studio per Diana (1740-1743) rediscovered by scholar Francesco Frangi in 1989, never exhibited until now and granted by the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. This sanguine confirms that Ceruti drew the figure of Diana from an etching made by Michel Aubert, who in turn translated an invention by François Boucher. The fact highlights the painter’s attention to international Rococo painting. Sharing this climate is an absolute masterpiece by the Venetian Giambattista Pittoni (Venice, 1687-1767) Diana and the Nymphs (1723-1725) owned by the Civic Collections of Vicenza and coming from Palazzo Chiericati. The work represents the same subject as Sorlini’s canvas and establishes an immediate iconographic comparison with Ceruti’s work. This Pittoni canvas is an example of the kind of contemporary and perfectly up-to-date production to which Ceruti aspired and tended in an effort to win over and please the most demanding patrons.

The exhibition’s graphic concept intends to synthesize the painter’s two souls, with the image of the Old Peasant Woman superimposed on that of the goddess Diana. For Diana! is an unusual exclamation (and here also ironic in its meaning addressed to the astonishment and wonder aroused by the seductive image of the goddess): it condenses the author’s path, which from the Brescian pitocchi evolves in the direction of the iconographic models observed during his stay in Veneto, toward that Diana portrayed in the large canvas in the exhibition.

PerDiana! is the first exhibition project entirely produced by the MarteS. In the Salone di Diana on the piano nobile of Palazzo Sorlini, the exhibition highlights the evolution of the painter’s artistic parabola, also in relation to the collecting affair of Brescian entrepreneur Luciano Sorlini. The latter began purchasing antique paintings for residences in the late 1960s. In 1968 he acquired the allegories of Autumn and Winter, believed to be autographs by Roberto Longhi and Stefano Bottari, and still on display in the MarteS Museum. The scenic and engaging installation seeks suggestion through voices and sounds, chosen to set the production and events of Giacomo Ceruti. The exhibition features a short 1953 RAI film dedicated to the Milan exhibition held at the Royal Palace, which closes emblematically on the “industrious hands” of the old peasant woman, now Sorlini.

For info: www.museomartes.com

Hours: Wednesday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The MarteS Museum showcases Ceruti's three Sorlini canvases and his only autograph document known to date

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