Presentation of Irene Parenti Duclos A Work Restored, An Artist Revealed

Article first printed in the Corriere Fiorentino

Year 4 – Issue 278, October 25, 2011

By Sonia Muraca Florence’s Accademia spotlights native Florentine painter Irene Parenti Duclos.

Giving new visibility to Florentine artists who have fallen into the oblivion of the past: this is the dream that guides the Advancing Women Artists Foundation, an American association that has brought ‘ancient’ color to a painting by Irene Parenti Duclos. The restored work is a canvas copy of Andrea del Sarto’s fresco and, it has just been newly returned to the Accademia Galleria’s Gipsoteca, where it arrived from Palazzo Pitti on November 29, 1983. “Rather than being just a simple copy, we’re talking about a visual encyclopedia spotlighting our cultural tradition. Our interest in this work of art is renewed, from a female perspective,” emphasizes Accademia director Franca Falletti. A series of studies and comparisons between the copy (restored by Rossella Lari) and the original allowed experts to establish that Duclos—an eighteenth century poet and artist— climbed up the scaffolding in the Church of Santissima Annunziata to trace the design and reproduce Andrea del Sarto’s fresco, dated 1525. These details and other curious novelties regarding the Florentine artist’s highly skilled work were gathered in a publication called ‘Irene Parenti Duclos: a Work Restored, an Artist Revealed (The Florentine Press). “Once again,’ says Polo Museale Superintendent Cristina Acidini, ‘our friends from the American Foundation, guided by Jane Fortune, have brought our attention to an entirely female brand of creativity.”