Eleven 19th-century works enter the Pitti Palace, including five by Giuseppe Bezzuoli

The Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti is enriched with eleven new works from the 19th century: these are three paintings and two drawings by Giuseppe Bezzuoli, five monochromes by Luigi Ademollo and a sculpture by Pasquale Romanelli. After the success of the first monographic exhibition dedicated to Giuseppe Bezzuoli, held at Palazzo Pitti last year, a series of masterpieces by the painter, the greatest representative of Romanticism in Tuscany and beyond, is now added to the Uffizi collections. The Madonna and Child Sleeping, Love Wins the Force and two drawings (Ballerina “seen at the Pergola,” Episode of the Flood with Various Studies for Figures) all come from an important private collection of a great scholar of the artist. Added to these is the painting Mary Magdalene Tempted by the Beauties of Past Life, which emerged from oblivion precisely thanks to the Florentine exhibition and was acquired from a private Spanish collection, the ideal pendant of another Penitent Magdalene by the same Bezzuoli, preserved in the Pinacoteca Foresiana in Portoferraio.

Purchasing Ademollo’s drawings and Romanelli’s sculpture, destined for the Gallery of Modern Art, was instead the Italian state itself, which, after blocking their export, chose Palazzo Pitti as the most suitable context to receive them.

“Other museums have chosen to relegate their 19th-century collections to storage to make room for contemporary art: the Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, on the contrary, continues to invigorate itself with new masterpieces from that century,” commented Uffizi Galleries director Eike Schmidt. “They allow visitors to trace the history of Tuscany and all of Italy from the first national sentiments to the Risorgimento and Italian Unification. We are particularly proud to be able to add five more works by the Florentine Giuseppe Bezzuoli, of European and indeed world renown, continuing the commitment that has already seen the recent purchase of four more of his masterpieces (Eve Tempted by the Serpent and The Repudiation of Agar in 2018, Thearmata di Giovanni delle Bande Nere al passaggio dell’Adda in 2019, The Sorcerer and the Lovers in 2021), and the organization of his first monographic exhibition, at Palazzo Pitti, last summer.”

Image: Giuseppe Bezzuoli, Mary Magdalene Tempted by the Beauties of Past Life (1841; oil on canvas, 130 x 101.5 cm)

Eleven 19th-century works enter the Pitti Palace, including five by Giuseppe Bezzuoli

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