Bari, restoration of Cifariello sculpture starts...competition winner

A sculpture in Bari’s Pinacoteca Giaquinto by Filippo Cifariello (Molfetta, 1864 - Naples, 1936) will be restored ... as a competition winner. It is theAnnunciation of Love, a plaster sculpture by the Molfettese artist, which won the Apulian stage of Opera Tua, a proproject promoted by Coop Alleanza 3.0, also sponsored by the Italian Touring Club, aimed at supporting culture through the enhancement and recovery of works of art expressing different territories and created by artists linked to various regions of Italy.

The works to be restored were chosen by Fondaco Italia, a company active in the enhancement of cultural heritage, in collaboration with the Italian UNESCO World Heritage Association and local institutions and then voted online on the Coop Alleanza 3.0 website. Cifariello’s sculpture was chosen by 71 percent of the voters who took part in the contest (from August 1 to 31) and received 22,294 votes, getting the better of the medieval capital of the Francesco Ribezzo Provincial Archaeological Museum in Brindisi (in fact, the contest stipulates that for each region the challenge takes place between two works: the one most voted by the public gets the restoration).

TheAnnunciation of Love dates from the late 19th century and was presented at the 1899 Venice Biennale. It is a fountain group whose marble version is in a Boston museum, while the bronze was purchased by Felice Spera, who placed it in the garden of his private villa in Naples. The opulent female nude is a portrait of Maria Brown, the artist’s first wife, the protagonist and victim of their stormy union, which ended in tragedy (the artist, in 1905, shot the woman to death: Cifariello was later acquitted on grounds of insanity). The same soft, fleshy features reappear in the bust of the Sphinx, another image of Brown, also exhibited at the 1899 Venice Biennale. The basin is totally covered with a frieze of roses in which Marangoni wanted to see “pleonastic ornamental exuberances.” The sculptural group is part of a collection of forty-three plaster casts, almost all original models, that the sculptor donated to the then Provincial Art Gallery of Bari in 1934.

The 2020 edition of the Opera Tua competition has already seen five restorations start: a Holy Family by Cavalier d’Arpino (1627) from the Cathedral Museum in Ferrara, a Madonna and Child with Saints by Vito Antonio Conversi (c. 1750) from the Church of San Giovanni Battista in Matera, a portable Fortepiano (1786) from the Carlo Schmidl Civic Theater Museum in Trieste, the bed textiles of Beatrice d’Este (1810) from the Ducal Palace in Mantua, and a Crepuscolo (1929) by Carlo Prada from the Civic Museum in Feltre. Winning the competition, and thus awaiting departure, are a 1st-century B.C. funerary stele from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale d’Abruzzo in Chieti, 17th-century marble decorative motifs from the rock church of Sant’Antonio da Padova in Milazzo, and the Camerino della Vittoria from Palazzetto Baviera in Senigallia. For each work, it is possible to follow the progress of the work on the Coop Alleanza 3.0 website.

Pictured: theAnnunciation of Love by Filippo Cifariello

Bari, restoration of Cifariello sculpture starts...competition winner

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