The myth of Venice on display in Novara: exhibition with works from Hayez to Ciardi

From October 30, 2021 to March 13, 2022, the Castello Visconteo Sforzesco in Novara will host the exhibition The Myth of Venice. From Hayez to the Biennale, an exhibition set up to celebrate the 1,600th anniversary of the city of Venice, the founding of which has traditionally been set at March 25 in the year 421. The exhibition is curated by Elisabetta Chiodini with a scientific committee headed by Fernando Mazzocca that includes Elena Di Raddo, Anna Mazzanti, Paul Nicholls, Paolo Serafini and Alessandra Tiddia, and is organized by Mets Percorsi d’arte, Fondazione Castello and the Municipality of Novara.

The starting point of the exhibition itinerary are the works of some of the greatest masters who worked in the lagoon city during the first decades of the 19th century, significantly influencing with their teaching and works the unfolding of Venetian painting in the second half of the century, the real protagonist of the review. The exhibition consists of eighty works, divided into eight rooms to narrate the myth of the lagoon city. Starting with the great Hayez through a rich selection of the most important (and often never seen because they come from prestigious private collections) works by the best-known Italian artists of the second half of the 19th century. The first room is thus devoted to history painting, considered the noblest “genre” of painting: there are five important works by Francesco Hayez (1791-1882), including the splendid Venus Joking with Two Doves (1830), the Portrait of a Gentildonna (1835), and the imposing Prete Orlando da Parma sent by Arrigo IV of Germany and defended by Gregory VII against the righteous indignation of the Roman synod (1857); alongside them are works by Ludovico Lipparini (1800-1856) and Michelangelo Grigoletti (1801-1870), prominent artists as well as key figures in the formation of the next generation of authors of depth, who are also present in the exhibition, such as Marino Pompeo Molmenti (1819-1894) and Antonio Zona (1814-1892).

The second room displays those authors, Venetian and otherwise, who more than others gradually contributed to the transformation of the genre of the view into that of the landscape: among them the great painter Ippolito Caffi (1809-1866) with two splendid Venetian views: Festa notturna a San Pietro di Castello (c. 1841) and Venezia Palazzo Ducale (1858), Giuseppe Canella (1788-1847), Federico Moja (1802-1885) and Domenico Bresolin (1813-1899), the latter among the very first to also take an interest in photography and already listed among the Academy’s members in 1854 as a “landscape painter and photographer.” Holder since 1864 of the chair of Landscape, Bresolin was the first to lead his young students to paint outdoors, in the lagoon as well as inland, so that they could study the effects of light and compare themselves on the rendering of the real in a new and stimulating environment, different from the one they were used to, moreover, codified by the great vedutisti of the past. Among them are Gugliemo Ciardi (1842-1917), Giacomo Favretto (1849-1887), Luigi Nono (1850-1918), Alessandro Milesi (1856-1945) and Ettore Tito (1859-1941), who are the protagonists of the exhibition.

The third room is dedicated to one of the Veneto’s most talented and beloved landscape painters, Guglielmo Ciardi, whose twelve works are displayed, as in a sort of small monographic exhibition, starting from the 1860s and documenting the evolution of his painting up to the early 1990s. His is the magnificent Veduta della laguna veneziana (1882), the image of the exhibition, and other splendid canvases set in the environs of Venice or glimpses of the city, such as the beautiful oil painting Mercato a Badoere (circa 1873). In the rooms that follow, it is possible to admire works that have as their theme daily life, affections and family dedicated to the “painting of the real”: such as Il bagno (1884) by Giacomo Favretto; Alle Zattere (1888) by Pietro Fragiacomo; Mattino della domenica (circa 1893) and La signorina Pegolo (1881) by Luigi Nono; and Girotondo (1886) by Ettore Tito. On the world of labor flow other lively and richly detailed works featuring peasants, washerwomen, rice-pickers, animal vendors, festivals and markets, such as La raccolta del riso nelle terre del basso veronese (1878) and Il mercato di Campo San Polo a Venezia in giorno di sabato (1882-1883) by Giacomo Favretto; Luigi Nono’s melancholy landscape Verso sera presso Polcenigo (Friuli ) (1873); Lavandaie sul Garda (1888) and Raggi di sole (1892) by Ettore Tito. And to close this threefold section of daily life, some canvases dedicated to amorous idylls, a subject somewhere between genre and real that was much loved and frequented by painters of the second half of the 19th century: Luigi Nono’sIdyll (1884) is joined by canvases with figures of young betrothed and married couples by Favretto, Tito, and Alessando Milesi with another Idyll (c. 1882) and Courtship at the Market (c. 1887).

The seventh room is entirely dedicated to Luigi Nono and offers a focus on one of the painter’s most famous works, Refugium peccatorum. In addition to the 1881 and 1883 draftings, large canvases conducted in oil, studies, drawings and other significant comparison works, such as The Two Mothers (1886), are on display. The eighth and final room of the exhibition, on the other hand, is devoted to works created by the same artists between the late 1890s and the early 1900s, large canvases that reflect the renewal and change of taste induced in Venetian painting by direct confrontation with the figurative culture of the many foreign painters who participated in the International Art Biennials. Prominent are Il Bucintoro (c. 1902-1903) by Guglielmo Ciardi; Visione antica (1901) by Cesare Laurenti; Piazza San Marco (c. 1900) by Pietro Fragiacomo; Luglio (1894) and Biancheria al vento (c. 1901) by Ettore Tito.

The exhibition opens Tuesday through Sunday with hours 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Box office closes at 6 p.m. Special openings: Monday, Nov. 1, Wednesday, Dec. 8 and Sunday, Dec. 26, Saturday, Jan. 1, Thursday, Jan. 6 and Saturday, Jan. 22. Closed: Friday, December 24, Saturday, December 25 and Friday, December 31. Tickets: Full € 12.00, Reduced € 10.00 ( Visitors aged 20 to 26 and over 65, Groups of at least 10 people, TCI Touring Club and FAI members, Journalists with ODG card with current year sticker not accredited by the press office, Members of other affiliated institutions with card, Primary and secondary school teachers, Family Promotion- Accompanying -maximum 2- of children from 6 to 19 years old), Reduced for children € 6.00 ( Children from 6 to 19 years old), Free for Minors under 6 years old, Disabled persons with certification, Qualified tour guides with identification card, Journalists accredited by the Press Office, Accompanying teachers of groups consisting of at least 9 students, Members of “Abbonamento Musei Piemonte Valle d’Aosta”, “Abbonamento Musei Lombardia Valle d’Aosta”, “Abbonamento Musei Formula Extra”.

Image: Guglielmo Ciardi, View of the Venetian Lagoon (1882; oil on canvas, 62 x 102 cm)

The myth of Venice on display in Novara: exhibition with works from Hayez to Ciardi

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