Pontremoli, spectacular reception for Uffizi Diffusi: town salutes Hayez

Such a reception was perhaps not expected by anyone. Pontremoli, the town that has always constituted the gateway to Tuscany for those arriving from the north, the historic capital of Lunigiana, reserved an uncommon enthusiasm for the exhibition, part of the Uffizi Diffusi project, that the Uffizi has built around Conte Arese Lucini in Prison, the painting by Francesco Hayez (Venice, 1791 - Milan, 1882) that the Florence museum acquired at the end of 2022, announcing the acquisition on New Year’s Eve. Just enough time to show it on the premises, and the painting, in May, left for Pontremoli where it has been featured since May in an exhibition that has been an unexpected success with the public, so much so that it has been extended (it was in fact supposed to close on August 31 and has been extended until tomorrow, Sunday, October 8).

Nearly five thousand admissions for five months of public exhibition at the Palazzo Comunale, in the heart of the historic center. The Uffizi Diffusi have fully achieved their goal: to bring art even to territories far from Florence but united by a cultural vocation. And in Pontremoli, a splendid Baroque town with a millennial past (it will suffice to mention the Stele Statues: the local Museo delle Statue Stele at the Museo del Piagnaro preserves the largest collection of them), which is rediscovering its cultural vocation (witness, for example, the growing success of Pontremoli Barocca , which opens the town’s most beautiful palaces for a weekend every year) it is hoped that the closing of the exhibition will not be a farewell, but a goodbye. So much so that to bid farewell to the incarcerated Count Arese Lucini , a special event was planned today to thank him for the work of these months in which he has been able to keep all the people of Pontremoli and beyond company.

In fact, when the exhibition was opened, the very young students of the tourism course of thePacinotti Belmesseri Institute, who participated in the opening of the exhibition, were wearing a red handkerchief, the same garment worn by the protagonist of Francesco Hayez’s work exhibited since that day inside the Hall of Mayors of the Municipality of Pontremoli. A coincidence, of course, but a cue that kicked off what was then the farewell ceremony organized by the Administration, to the work that has been lodged inside the town hall for more than five months and has attracted thousands of tourists and visitors to it. Thus, this morning, there were many who greeted the painting wearing the same red handkerchief, at the end of the exhibition on which the Municipality of Pontremoli enriched the tourist offer of the season and which was also able to capture visitors of ’exceptional, who were very impressed and fascinated by the work, by the venue, which was chosen by the director of the Uffizi, Eike Schmidt, by the layout and by everything that has revolved around Count Arese in recent months.

Those who strongly wanted the presence of the Uffizi in Pontremoli were above all the former mayor Lucia Baracchini and in general all those who worked to make the exhibition, which is imagined to be only the first, happen, starting with the current mayor Jacopo Ferri. It was a choral effort that culminated this morning with the city’s greeting: so many students, the many volunteers who have spent these months doing security duty at the work, a flood of red handkerchiefs waving in the shadow of the Campanone to give a fitting salute to the work of Francesco Hayez, who in Pontremoli, it seems, really got along well.

“The great success of our first Uffizi Diffusi exhibition in Pontremoli is really pleasing,” commented Director Eike Schmidt. “Among other things, this exhibition was flanked in an exemplary way by so many events. And not only citizens, but also students, tourists and authorities came to visit from various parts of the peninsula to admire Francesco Hayez’s masterpiece. So this exhibition has confirmed itself as a concrete model of the Uffizi Diffusi concept, which should be repeated, and will surely find other followings in Pontremoli.”

“We are really satisfied,” Mayor Jacopo Ferri commented enthusiastically. "These have been intense months, both those preceding the inauguration and these last few months. We invested a lot of effort in this project and believed in it even more. Today we can say we are really happy and proud of what has been Uffizi diffuse. Francesco Hayez in Pontremoli. I thank Director Schmidt so much for the opportunity he granted us and for the great willingness, humility and esteem he has always shown us. Needless to say, we hope that all this will be a goodbye and the beginning of a path in which Pontremoli and art will continue to go hand in hand."

A project, that of Uffizi Diffusi, which after three years can certainly be considered in a positive way. And so the next steps are already awaited.

Pontremoli, spectacular reception for Uffizi Diffusi: town salutes Hayez

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