Un Etrusco Nel Novecento L'arte in Russia Negli Anni Che Sconvolsero

01 1 18-DEC-17 15:53:09

n° 383

Un etrusco nel Novecento

L’arte in Russia negli anni che sconvolsero il mondo

Al di là delle nuvole

Insolito senese

Hammershøi, il pittore di stanze tranquille n° 383 - gennaio 2018

© Diritti riservati Fondazione Internazionale Menarini - vietata la riproduzione anche parziale dei testi e delle fotografie - Direttore Responsabile Lorenzo Gualtieri Redazione, corrispondenza: «Minuti» Edificio L - Strada 6 - Centro Direzionale Milanofiori I-20089 Rozzano (Milan, Italy) www.fondazione-menarini.it NOTEBOOK

Galileo Returns to Padua Rivoluzione Galileo, at Pa- lazzo del Monte di Pietà of Padua until 18 March 2018, illustrates the complex figure of one of the absolute protagonists of the Italian and European Seicento, who taught for 18 years at the Venetian city’s university – years remembered by the great scientist as the happiest of his life due to the freedom accorded him to teach as he saw fit. The exhibition shows us the many facets of Galileo the man: from the scientist, father of the experimental method, to the music theorist and lute Guercino: Atlas Giandomenico Tiepolo: Hercules player; to his qualities as a draughtsman; from Galileo owners’ heirs to the Palladio The Dutch 17th Cen- the inventor – not only of Museum of Vicenza where tury in Shanghai an improved spyglass but they have been on show and Abu Dhabi also of the microscope and since November 2017. Until 25 February 2017, the compass – to the ‘eve- The frescoes were painted at the Long Museum of ryday’ Galileo, scholar of two decades after the Tie- Shanghai, Rembrandt, viticulture and compoun- polos, father and son, de- Vermeer and Hals in the der and merchant of me- corated Villa Valmarana Dutch Golden Age: Ma- dicines in pill form. To do- ai Nani, for their patron’s sterpieces from The Leiden cument the Galilean revo- son Gaetano Valmarana. Collection presents, a series lution, the exhibition pre- While in the suburban villa of masterpieces – including sents original documents the Tiepolos celebrated 11 paintings by Rembrandt and scientific instruments the natural simplicity of a – such emblematic works alongside an astonishing ‘moralised’ country life, as Minerva in Her Study corpus of works of art by the register of the works (belonging to a series now masters ranging from Guer- painted twenty years later broken up among the cino to Rubens and from in the city residence, a short Prado, the Metropolitan Giacomo Balla’s 20th cen- distance from the Teatro and the Hermitage mu- Rembrandt: Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a tury to the present, with Olimpico, was completely seums), and the Young White Bonnet Anish Kapoor. different: they conceived Girl in a Gold-Trimmed a ‘second edition’, in pain- Cloak – alongside Ver- The Rediscovery of ting, of the scenic structure meer’s Young Woman Sea- the Courtly Tiepolo of Palladio’s ancient theatre ted at a Virginal, the only Seven frescoes by Giando- and adopted a courtly lan- painting of the artist’s ma- menico Tiepolo (1727- guage in which mono- ture period not to belong 1804), conserved in the chrome figures of the to a public museum. For residences of their owners Olympian gods and my- the occasion, the Leiden who safeguarded them thical characters seem to Collection has also loaned from the ravages of war, converse with the Palladian works by Jan Lievens and have been donated by the architecture. by Rembrandt’s most ce- 2

Vincent Van Gogh: The Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital, Saint-Remy lebrated pupils such as Ca- 8 April 2018 – traces the rel Fabritius, Govaert Flinck stages in the Dutch pain- and Ferdinand Bol. Foun- ter’s short but intense career ded in 2003 by an Ameri- – lasting only a decade – can collector couple, the in 43 paintings and 86 dra- Leiden Collection is one wings. The works – most of the largest private col- of which are from Hol- lections of 17th-century land’s Kröller-Müller Mu- Dutch painting – but a seum – follow the path that very discreet one and until began in 1880, when Van stels from its own collec- Charles-Lucien Léandre: Sur champ d’or recently not widely known. Gogh preached in the Bo- tion, to offer a panorama To the point that until rinage mines in Belgium on the major currents in 2017, when the Louvre of and discovered his vocation art in the second half of Paris organised the exhi- as a draughtsman. the 1800s, from Impres- bition that marked its de- Although his first attempts sionism to Symbolism. An but, so to speak, on the are dominated by dark, al- exceptional occasion, since world stage, the Leiden most unvarying hues, the the majority of the works Collection had never pu- artist’s palette expanded on exhibit have never been blished a catalogue of its following his arrival in Paris shown before – and at the holdings. After Shanghai, – where he met Seurat – exhibition’s close will be the exhibition will travel and then exploded in the returned to controlled sto- to Moscow, Saint Peter- blinding light of Provence rage to best conserve the sburg and the Louvre Abu into the colours that shine fragile paper supports and Dhabi. in the works of his later ye- the deterioration caused ars until his death in July by exposure to light. Van Gogh of 1890. Following a period of di- and Light sinterest after the popularity At the Basilica Palladiana 19th-Century it had enjoyed in the 1700s, of Vicenza, now again open Pastels in the second half of the to the public following re- Until 8 April 2018, Paris’ 19th century the pastel en- storation, the exhibition Petit Palais is staging L’art joyed a notable revival – entitled Van Gogh. Tra il du pastel de Degas à Re- thanks to the Impressio- grano e il cielo – on until don, a selection of 130 pa- nists, who saw this medium 3

as an excellent tool for ‘sei- zing the moment’. The five sections show pastels by Edgar Degas, Berthe Mo- risot, Mary Cassatt, Au- guste Renoir and Paul Gau- guin before going on to the literary and allegorical subjects of the Symbolists, a star among whom is Odi- lon Redon with his dre- amlike imagery.

Aspects of the 20th Century in Rovereto Rovereto’s MART is con- tinuing its series of exhibitions devoted to 20th- century art in Italy with Realismo Magico. L’in- canto nella pittura italiana degli anni Venti e Trenta, Felice Casorati: Gli scolari (Schoolchildren) from 3 December 2017 to 2 April 2018. The exhibi- most creative and original of artists whose leading fi- tion, scheduled to travel heights in the Twenties gures included Felice Ca- to Helsinki and then to and Thirties. The style sorati, Antonio Donghi Essen in 2018, illustrates emerged in the period and Achille Funi. the history of Realism Ma- which, following that of ‘Realistic precision of ou- gico (Magic Realism) in the historic avant-gardes, tline, firmly-rooted solidity Italy with about seventy was marked by a recovery of form, surrounded by a works from premier public of tradition in the figurative magical atmosphere pre- and private collections. arts. In Italy, reality was gnant with an unsettling The term Realismo Magico ‘reworked’, transfigured intensity . . .’ is how writer describes a season in inter- by the imagination and a Massimo Bontempelli de- national art that rose to its sense of wonder, by a group fined the style. n° 383 - gennaio 2018

A 20th-Century Etruscan Marino Marini, a master of contemporary sculpture who meditated and expanded upon the lessons of past centuries

‘Essentially, my love for the horse comes from my inner research into a certain type of architecture that drew my interest. The form of the horse is the opposite of man’s: it is a horizontal form; man’s form is vertical. These two architectural concepts encouraged me to explore and to continue to work around this idea. Nevertheless, the idea changes: it was born calm and docile but over the years became extremely restless and expressionistic.’ The Cavaliere (Rider), present at every point along the artist’s creative parabola from the Thirties onward, is the best- known of the themes addressed by this artist who worked on a select, quite narrow array of subjects, rewor- king each based on meditations tou- ching each time on the creations of the masters of the past or of the most authoritative and incisive personalities in contemporary sculpture. Marino Marini: Popolo - Milan, Museo del Novecento The Cavaliere appeared for the first time in 1936. Here, horse and rider May 2018 will be hosting the second constitute a harmonious whole, calm stop for the exhibition entitled Marino and balanced, statically monumental Marini. Passioni visive after its debut in form. In the decade that followed, in Pistoia – the sculptor’s native city the forms became more thickset and – as one of the events organised to ce- archaistic, until by the late 1940s the lebrate Pistoia 2017, Italian Capital horse appears to be balking, planted of Culture. solidly on the ground with its neck The ample corpus of Marini’s works extended, ears down and back, and on show in Venice includes, alongside mouth open; representative of this the Cavalieri, a series of female statues, phase of his production, the Angelo the Pomone; in the artist’s words, della città that in the Peggy Guggen- ‘Pomona is of a solar world and lives heim Collection of Venice dominates by a solar poetry, by a true humanity, on the Marino Marini terrace over- by an enormous abundance and great looking Canal Grande: powerful, an- sensuality.’ The call of ancient sculpture cient and modern all together. – first of all Etruscan plastic art, tem- And it is Venice’s Guggenheim Col- pered by a reflection on the French lection that from 27 January until 1 masters active between the 19th and 2

20th century such as Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol – is as strong in these female nudes as it is in the Ca- valieri. Born with the 20th century, in Fe- bruary of 1901. Marini first studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence but soon discovered his true vocation for sculpture, with such a happy outcome that in 1929, when he was just 28, he was called to Milan by Arturo Martini – one of the highest exponents of Italian sculpture between the two wars – who tapped Marini as his successor to the chair of sculpture at Monza’s Scuola d'Arte di Villa Reale. The same year, Marini was downstage centre for criticism and the public with Popolo, his portrait of a farmer couple, a terracotta drawing heavily on the Etruscan Sarcophagus of the Spouses. A propos of this work, the artist wrote, ‘Here in Italy, the artistic past still penetrates every aspect of our existence because we live in the midst of its works . . . my archaism, my Etruscans . . . there’s not much to explain. I was born there, in that region; they are my ancestors.’ test sculpture-portraitist of his time. Cavaliere - Pistoia, Fondazione Marino Marini At the Venice exhibition, Marini’s In his portraits - of artists, politicians, early Busti (Busts) converse with works men of culture, in a gallery of the per- of sculpture along a timeline running sonalities that marked Marini’s era, from the Etruscan era to the Renais- from Marc Chagall to Igor Stravinsky sance, as though to underline the spi- – Marini always sought to capture ritual consonance of Marini’s works that which defined the inner ‘poetry’ with the great tradition. As Marini of his subjects, the poetry he investi- was wont to say, ‘I feel extremely close gated in their facial features, simplifying to my land, extremely close to the ci- them until distilling their essence, in vilisation of my land. This enormously his search for absolute values: ‘Each vital “popular” feeling, which we of my portraits represents the subject might call archaic, is in our blood – defined by name, but also a portrait and we cannot escape it.’ of today’s humankind; that is, a restless, The research carried on by Marini tormented humanity.’ through the four deciders of his career On occasion of the 1948 Venice Bien- as an artist, from the Twenties to the niale, Marini met Henry Moore, with Sixties, led him, in the post-war years, whom he formed a friendship that to the faceting of form that emerges was destined to significantly reflect in his dramatisation of his Cavalieri on his own production. His meeting theme: in this period, the synthetic, with American art dealer Curt Valentin immobile balance between man and was, for Marini, a window onto an horse breaks up into agitated forms; international public that opened with in these same years, Marini devoted the one-man show organised by Va- much time to portraiture, reprocessing lentin in New York; numerous other echoes of Cubist deconstruction, in exhibitions followed, mostly in nor- a language that appropriates the ex- thern Europe – Munich, Rotterdam, pressionistic deformations wrought Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, Hel- by art north of the Alps, and creating sinki – leading up to the great antho- the synergy that made of him the grea- logical exhibition at the Kunsthaus Nuotatore -Florence, Museo Marino Marini 3

Cavaliere - Private collection Nude - Pistoia, Fondazione Marino Marini

Zürich in 1962, the cap to an aspiration Palazzo Comunale, returned home the artist freely confessed: ‘I always recently after restoration, a necessary felt I should move north; north is the ‘break’ for a sculpture exposed to the positive point for me; since I am im- elements for thirty years. This Miracolo pregnated by the south, since I am is one in a nucleus of works (more impregnated with our Italic values, I than one hundred) donated by the need a contrast, which is the north; sculptor to the City of Pistoia which, the north gives you your value and in 1976, founded the Museo Marino your colour. by contrast.’ Marini’s Centro di Documentazione. In the Sixties, the theme of the Ca- The documentation centre is head- valiere became the stimulus for spatial quartered, together with the Fonda- research that wandered away from fi- zione Marino Marini – founded after guration, reaching its apex in the Mi- the artist’s death in 1980 – in the an- racoli (Miracles), tragic forms that cient former Tau Monastery complex, dramatically repudiate the static equi- the venue for the entire collection of librium of the Cavalieri created in the Marini’s graphics production. The previous decades. One exemplary centre also hosts a comprehensive pla- work in this sense is the Miracolo in- ster cast collection, a library, a new- stalled in the courtyard of Pistoia’s spaper and periodicals library and a pag. 4

Portrait of Fausto Melotti Florence, Museo Marino Marini photo gallery about the artist. In the beautiful Church of the Tau, 14th- century frescoes provide a unique backdrop for several bronze sculptures: among others, the Miracolo from 1953/54, the Cavaliere produced in 1956/57 and the Grande Grido (The Great Scream) from 1962; in the cloi- ster and the monastery rooms, a series of works including Pomone, Acrobati and Giocolieri. federico poletti

Miracolo (1947) - Pistoia, Palazzo comunale n° 383 - gennaio 2018

Art in Russia in the Years that Shook the World The October Revolution had lasting repercussions for social life and men’s consciences – and left deep impressions on culture and art as well

During the year just ended, Attems Petzenstein and is numerous events, both hi- entitled La Rivoluzione Russa. storical and artistic, recalled Da Djagilev all’astrattismo the hundredth anniversary (1898-1922). A reading of of the Russian Revolution, the events that brought lasting an event that marked the hi- change to earlier expressive story of the 20th century and canons in theatre (Stanislav- will continue, as do all great sky), music (Stravinsky), happenings in human history, ballet (Diaghilev), photogra- to mark a boundary between phy (Rodcenko) and of course a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. the figurative arts, with such The meaning of ‘revolution’, names as Kandinsky, Male- understood as rebellion, re- vich, Mashkov, Larionov, volt, struggle, destruction – Tatlin, Goncharova, Stepa- but also as utopia, renewal, nov, Ekster. change, progress and even The ambitious aim of this metaphor – was the theme project is to illustrate what of an exhibition entitled Right was a true ‘cultural explosion’: to the Future held in late the show presents an exube- 2017 at Saint Petersburg’s rant sequence of emblematic Museum of Art of the 20th- works which have not been 21st Century, at which many widely exhibited in Italy and Italian artists were represented. commemorates an historical The organisers’ intention was event that was the product to explore all the underlying of a complex dynamic that aspects of ‘revolution’; that in the years framing 1917 is, to not limit their enquiry caused a radical upset in cul- to the meaning of the word ture and the international as ‘violent revolt’ or ‘military art scene. The exhibition’s conflict’ but to compose an timeline stretches from 1898, image reflecting its many the year of the founding of complex nuances and unex- the Mir iskusstva (World of pected implications. In Italy, Art) group and the journal two separate exhibitions ce- of the same name directed lebrate the Russian Revolu- by Diaghilev, to 1922, the tion. year in which the Soviet The first is in Gorizia until Union was officially crea- Kazimir Malevich: Station without a Stop. Kunzevo 25 March 2018 at the Palazzo ted. Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery 2

The research that laid the foundations for the exhibition brought to light, first of all, the ‘revolutionary’ value and role of the arts in Russian society in those years, beginning with the subterranean and innovative literary matrix – represented by such authors as Blok, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Pasternak, Mayakovsky. It was a sweeping, international revolution that set itself high goals that proved capable of establishing paradigms that until then had remained unexplored in painting as in the graphic arts, in stage design as in music – and also applied to the origins of cinema, which some years later bore fruit in the works of Eisenstein and Vertov. The second, Revolutija: da Chagall a Malevič da Repin a Kandinsky is on at Bologna’s MAMbo museum of modern art until 13 May 2018. More than 70 works, absolute masterpieces from the State Russian Mu- seum of Saint Petersburg, recount the styles and the dynamics of such artists as Altman, Goncharova, Ma- levich, Kandinsky, Chagall, Rod- chenko and many others, bearing witness to the richness of the early 20th-century Russian cultural mo- vements, from Primitivism to Cubo- Futurism through to Suprematism and Constructivism and investigating the chronological parallel between figurative expressionism and pure abstraction. Ilya Mashkov: Portrait of the Student Natalia - Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery Artists, poets, intellectuals who had participated in the progressive/mid- victorious revolt of 1917 became a dle-class insurrection of 1905, which penetrating bass note, a call to action, had been brutally put down by the a point of reference. Yet while the Czarist regime. This event contributed process of elaborating on Russian to fracturing Russian culture’s un- culture began in circumstances that til-then prevailing roothold in realism were charged and powerful, it was and to the flowering of an intense also filled with contradictions. To- and controversial artistic life. French gether with artists trained in 19th- painters, from the Fauves to the Cu- century traditional realism were others bists, found fervent admirers and from every sort of formalist and avant- imitators in the Russians, who did garde orientation, men driven by in- not stop at taking in the new European quietude, exasperation, anxieties, but experiences but also set out to develop also by a new confidence, men who them in an original manner. The Rus- ‘saw in the fire of the Revolution the sian avant-gardes preceded the 1917 destruction of a past they rejected, a revolution, were involved in it, and past to be toppled, and the possibility for a decade shared and promoted of radically changing existence and its ideas. If the failure of the 1905 in- finding a new anchorage for huma- surrection had sown distrust among nity’s future’. the intellectuals and the artists, the In 1919, Tatlin designed the never- 3

from the top, clockwise Aleksandra Ekster: Composition - Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery

Mikhail Larionov: Triumphant Muse - Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery

Wassily Kandinsky: Composition #224 (On White) © State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

constructed tower intended to had proclaimed the supremacy of stand as the symbol of the Third pure sensibility over any form of International. realism. The square, the cross, the Two years earlier, Kazimir Malevich, circle became the new icons, the the most radical of the innovators, points of departure for going beyond pag. 4

above right Vladimir Tatlin: Design for the monu- ment to the Third International above right Natalia Gončarova: Cyclist ©State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg below Kazimir Malevič: Black Square ©State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg the Cubo-Futurist experience and arriving at a zero point, ‘at pure, absolute art that has nothing to do with life, with society, with politics’. What remained after the Revolution, and of the enthusiasm which had ac- companied it, were two factions that soon came to a standoff: on the one side, the artists who followed the two leaders Malevich and Tatlin, like film director Sergei Eisenstein and theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold; on the other, the supporters of a ‘return to order’, to accessible figurative language and to all that artistic production which for many years to come was to go down in history, almost always with a critical, if not derogatory, men- tion, as ‘Socialist Realism’. lorenzo gualtieri n° 383 - gennaio 2018

Beyond the Clouds Particles of water suspended in the atmosphere, changeable and variable, spark the imagination of man and inspire artists to capture their infinite forms

Giambattista Tiepolo: The Glory of St. Dominic Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia

‘Clouds do not always dim the sky; at and the spiritual, the matter from times they illuminate it.’ which all of creation takes form – and (Elsa Morante) in art, which has always translated hi- ghly complex meanings and symbols Hydrometeors composed or miniscule into images, clouds perform the same particles of water held suspended in task, to perfection. the air by upwelling air currents. Or The sky is the divine sphere par ex- more simply, clouds. We have always lost ourselves in their infinite and fickle forms or have attempted to read in them the weather’s mood; to in- terpret them as elements linking – or separating – earth and sky, the natural and the supernatural, since they seem to spontaneously charge with symbolic meaning. Clouds are the perfect expression of instable human existence: like a cloud, man arrives, changes in- cessantly and then is gone: ‘Our life will disappear like a passing cloud,’ wrote Monsignor de la Bouillerie, Bishop of Carcassonne, in his Études sur le symbolisme de la nature (1864). But clouds are also veils that hide the light from our eyes and as such acquire religious significance as the revelation of a God who both manifests and conceals Himself. As carriers of be- neficent water, in ancient Christian symbology clouds are likened to prophets called to alleviate terrestrial suffering. The cloud is water between heaven and earth, between the material John Constable: Study of Sky and Trees - London, The Victoria and Albert Museum 2

from the top, clockwise Correggio: The Assumption of the Virgin Parma, Cathedral dome

Andrea Mantegna: Saint Sebastian Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Andrea Mantegna: The Triumph of Virtue (det.) - Paris, Musée du Louvre

cellence. The high ground that hosts story altogether: they still reverberate the sacred places, the temples and with a shared feeling, but this time it sanctuaries; its clouds are called to follows on the decline of the optimism act as triumphal thrones. The maxi- that marked the Age of Reason and mum interpretative value of this its mood is once more uncertain and valence was perhaps reached in the desirous of a spiritual dimension. Ro- 1700s, when painting conceived asto- manticism’s clouds forebode storms nishing ‘cloud architectures’. Painters in the name of a pathos which sees such as Tiepolo created images capable them as an expression of the sublime: of drawing the spectator upwards, Friedrich’s figures, between the heroic into vortices of clouds and cherubs and the fantastic, observe the spectacle in the presence of God: stripped of of nature while the thousand faces of weight, we breathe the nebulous, lu- the sky are studied with a weatherman’s minous levity of a purely 18th-century eye by Constable and Turner. The mood. The palette is filled with light novelty lies not in the realism brought after the shadows of the Seicento, to cloud-painting but rather in the light that fills the heavens with fluffy, fact of considering clouds the prota- spun-sugar clouds, frothy, sparkling gonists of the canvas: dark masses compendia of the joyous optimism which, for Constable, announce the of a society that, in the name of the power of a divinised nature ready to new ‘enlightened’ thought, reacted explode, inscrutable and terrifying; to that obscurantism which would which, in Turner, are manifested as have hobbled progress with supersti- vortical, seething whorls of dust and tions and propagated ignorance. vapour that dematerialise and confound The later ‘Romantic’ clouds are another sky and earth. 3

Emil Nolde: Paesaggio nella sera - Seebüll, Nolde Stiftung Massimiliano Fuksas: La Nuvola - Roma EUR, Nuovo Centro Congressi

A warning transmitted through Cour- realism increased, the forms changed bet down to the Impressionists, whose and the outlines faded and in the unceasing efforts to grasp the instant 1500s, the change in sensibility that certainly could not ignore such a ma- came with the Renaissance revealed nifestation, the constancy of whose clouds’ true dimension thanks in part change exalts the fleetingness of the to works by such colourists as Gior- present, ever escaping a second glance. gione and Titian, whose skies and fo- Impressionist clouds, transient mo- regrounds engage in serried duets. ments. From this point onward, art embellishes A look at the history of art reveals an the ‘sky space’ in every possible manner; eternal procession of different ap- it reacquires allegorical meanings with proaches to clouds; one might trace ‘cloudy’ and mannered constructions the evolution of human consciousness until it is recast by Tiepolo as heaven. through a study of how man has re- ‘In the shape that chance and wind presented the sky – and the cloud- give the clouds, you are already intent wrapped sky in particular. The skies on recognizing figures: a sailing ship, of ancient Rome are the abstract places a hand, an elephant . . .’ Italo Calvino’s of the gods and, in painting, mere words open a respectful parenthesis undifferentiated backgrounds against on Andrea Mantegna, in his own way which the principals of the scenes a master of the clouds. This artist, strut and fret – and they maintained who in many manners, with his daring this role until the late Middle Ages, perspectives and materic pictorial when they lost any naturalistic con- style, manifests all his desire to expe- notation and veered toward the sym- riment, is also remembered as a ‘scul- bolic dimension as gilded backdrops ptor of clouds’, masses that conceal on which clouds are illusory meta- – or reveal – other images. His painting phorical citations. looks back to the ancients; his clouds The anthropocentric Renaissance, draw on historic statuary and play up while revolutionising every other field the role of the imagination that quic- of human endeavour, paid scant at- kens the aqueous masses, shaping tention to cirri and cumuli – which them into recognisable figures. This are generally so stylised as to be mi- manner, while born perhaps casually, staken, in certain works by Masolino, derives from an innate human capa- for example, for flying saucers. It was bility, pareidolia, to perceive familiar only later the ‘plausible’ clouds came patterns where none exist. Mantegna onto the scene: in Correggio, swollen, appropriated the concept and made dense masses support and elevate san- intentional use of it, as is clear in the ctity but with Leonardo da Vinci they ‘equestrian cloud’ in his Saint Sebastian acquire credibility in true skies, as de- of Vienna and every other time he re- licate as they are far-reaching in their peats the exercise , more or less expli- depth. Gradually, as attention to citly, honing his method to model pag. 4

ever more recognisable features scaled study to be enriched with painting by degrees of sacredness. to go beyond the shot. Once painting freed itself from mi- Clouds take on the appearance of mesis to privilege the artist’s personal known objects and, contrariwise, ob- and emotional sphere, clouds were jects take on the appearance of clouds: reinterpreted and interiorised, like this happened in architecture, which every other natural feature. The avant- raised its eyes to the sky for inspiration gardes transfigured clouds through and Massimiliano Fuksas enclosed expressionistic use of colour, as in an inhabitable cloud inside an enor- many canvases by Emil Nolde, who mous glass box. Clouds, therefore, avoids any and all objective observation can come down to us to become or and penetrates, with his enquiry, into fill our living spaces; they can turn ferments of hidden forces. With René into lamps or sofas or even virtual Magritte, instead, clouds transcend spaces in today’s cloud storage or tag reality to become white, frothy, phy- clouds. Art, through the most varied sical: supported by crystal goblets, of forms of expression and always in they vie in lightness with surreal stony search of marvels, insists on ‘harnessing’ masses or they part to make space for this natural expression of freedom: the strolling passage of hatted figures. Fuksas does so on a large scale, but At about the same time, another form Berndnaut Smilde also does it when of expression came into its own: pho- he creates and imprisons clouds in tography. Alfred Stieglitz, and later the spaces of the home, as does Chema Gerhard Richter, dedicate great space Madoz when he cages them in the in their works to clouds: Stieglitz felt true sense of the word, or as does Le- that each shot of the sky represented andro Erlich when he instead packs an equivalent of his mood at the time them in boxes. the picture was captured; Richter, a francesca bardi n° 383 - gennaio 2018

Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s path in art between Florence and Siena

Ambrogio Lorenzetti: Investiture of Saint Louis of Toulouse (detail) - Siena, Basilica of San Francesco

Although he is considered one of the graphic language of his era. The exhi- greatest artists of the 14th century, bition is the event crowning a large- Ambrogio Lorenzetti has never, until scale restoration campaign targeting now, enjoyed all the fame he merits. numerous of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s The vastness of his artistic production works, including the frescoes in the is generally little (if not un-) known churches of San Francesco and of and he is most often remembered only Sant’Agostino in Siena, which will for his Allegories and Effects of Good remain in place and viewable even and Bad Government in Siena’s Palazzo after the close of the exhibition. Lo- Pubblico. The many other works by renzetti produced almost all of his the Sienese master have generally fallen works for the city of Siena; he began under a shadow cast by the scarce at- with subjects from the religious sphere tention paid to them by scholars, but and then opened the way to the earliest a sweeping exhibition devoted entirely ‘civil’ art, expressions of his refined to the artist, at the Spedale di Santa and elevated intellectual acumen. Maria della Scala in Siena until 21 Ja- Skilful innovator that he was, Loren- nuary 2018, finally offers an occasion zetti’s depictions of figures became for the art public to improve its ac- more and more naturalistic, faces be- quaintance with one of the greatest came increasingly expressive – and he innovators of the stylistic and icono- made use of new colours, to the point 2

of being the first artist to depict nature work, Lorenzetti is closer than ever in a ‘modern manner’. He so far tran- to Giotto, farther from his Sienese scended the traditional iconographic origins, and he reproposes the warm canons of the sacred art of his time embrace of the Madonna, whose splay- that in not a few cases his patrons re- fingered hands provide strong, sure quested modifications to the most ‘re- support for the Child; she does not volutionary’ of his paintings to bring contemplate the viewer severely, as them more into keeping with the pre- in the earlier work, but instead regards vailing taste. her Son as if to reassure; the Infant, The younger Lorenzetti meditated on His mouth slightly open, responds to the works of his older brother Pietro his mother’s gaze; in short, the approach and those of the celebrated Simone to representation tends much more Martini, but he went beyond their toward the naturalistic. styles and rather approached the Flo- Also for the church of San Procolo, rentine language of Giotto and Arnolfo Lorenzetti painted several smaller di Cambio; he had, in fact, begun his panels that reveal his narrative pro- career in Florence and the Florentine clivities and his mastery of depiction territory. The artist’s earliest known of complex architecture: here, he does work is the Madonna and Child com- not use the expedient of cutaway to missioned for the church of San Mi- show what is happening inside the chele Arcangelo in Vico l’Abate and buildings, so demonstrating that it is today at the Museo Giuliano Ghelli possible to tell a story in painting while of San Casciano in Val di Pesa; this yet making reference only to observed Madonna, dated 1319, clearly shows reality. the influence of his Florentine training After his time in the Florentine milieu, and while it is the work of a novice in 1335 Ambrogio was back in his painter who had not yet come into native land, working alongside his Maestà (Madonna in Majesty) from the church of his own, it expresses all his great po- brother Pietro on the fresco decoration San Michele Arcangelo of Vico l’Abate - San Casciano Val di Pesa (Florence), Museo di Arte tential. The facial features are scarcely of Santa Maria della Scala. The com- Sacra ‘Giuliano Ghelli’ expressive, almost severe, and the mission was probably granted him figures, portrayed frontally in the By- thanks to a good word from his Pietro; zantine manner, are statuary in ap- however that may be, from that mo- pearance; the mantle of the Virgin is ment on the artist worked in and for compact and the wooden throne on his Siena – although he never forgot which she is seated is decorated with the lessons taught by Giotto. In the only a few simple geometric motifs. same period he painted an exceptional But despite the apparently ‘elementary’ work for the church of San Pietro al- nature of the work, we note the na- l’Orto in Massa Marittima: a panel turalness of the hands of Maria and in tempera and oils, the Maestà or the the body of the Child, who kicks under Madonna in Majesty enthroned with His swaddling just as a real infant the Child and surrounded by angels, would; and Maria holds the Child as prophets, saints and the patriarchs: a any mother would, in an embrace that host of figures, unusual in a Maestà, communicates an authentic sense of underlining the epochal importance affection and protection. Another of the birth of Christ. This is an alle- work from the Florentine period is gorical work with the three theological the Triptych of the church of San Pro- virtues before the throne of the Virgin: colo in Florence, dated to 1332. In the white-robed Faith, holding a re- the Madonna and Child in the centre presentation of the Trinity; Hope, panel, surmounted by Christ the Re- dressed in green, looking up to the deemer in the gable, the volumetric heavens and holding a model of a treatment is already more evolved tower, the Church; and at the centre than in the Vico d’Abate Madonna Charity, in a pink tunic holding the and we note a certain polish to the fi- heart, the fire of divine love, in one gures and more attention to chiaroscuro modulation. Simple geometric deco- Madonna with Child ration is replaced by a richer, much from the church of San Procolo more refined ornamentation; in this Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi 3

The Effects of Good Government – Siena, Palazzo Pubblico, Sala dei Nove

hand and an arrow in the other. Even Thanks to the rise to power of the it quite clear which part concerns good the arrangement of the characters has Nove (1287-1355), Siena experienced government and which bad. A glance allegorical meaning: Faith, the foun- a moment of great political and social is enough to note the serenity that co- dation of the ecclesiastical edifice, is splendour; the opening of many new mes with Good Government, shown seated at the foot of the throne; one worksites – such as those for construc- in a suffused light with no truly iden- riser above, Hope holds the model tion of the cathedral, the Palazzo Pub- tifiable source, and the sense of discord representing the elevation of the blico and a goodly portion of the city lent by the dreary buildings in the Church to heaven; at the centre and walls – created a positive mood in a portion devoted to Bad Government. above both is Charity, with the attri- busy city. In creating his ‘effects’, the artist butes of Venus, goddess of love, in- Ambrogio became the spokesman for frescoed urban and rural landscapes herited from classical art, symbol of the aesthetic research promoted by that for the first time are not mere God’s love and man’s love for his nei- the Nove and in Siena’s Palazzo Pub- backgrounds but in many senses the ghbour. blico, painted what was destined to true protagonists of the scenes. Am- In 1338, by this time settled perma- be his most famous work, Allegories brogio Lorenzetti not only represented nently in Siena and, favoured by Si- and Effects of Good and Bad Gover- reality but also idealised it, and his at- mone Martini’s departure for Avignon, nment. The frescoes occupied three tention to detail is his vehicle: he in- Ambrogio had monopolised com- whole walls of the Council Room for cludes, in his creations, a strongly al- missions from the city’s Governo dei a total of 35 linear meters of fresco legorical component, a complex sym- Nove (Council of the Nine) and be- work signed ‘Ambrosius Laurentii de bology and a profound sense of the come the official ‘city painter’. The Senis hic pinxit utrique’. The intent humanity of his subjects – and in this Council of the Republic of Siena was of the representation was clearly didactic he was one of the ultimate innovators composed of representatives of the and was meant to stand as an inspi- in the art of his time. In his large- middle class, a broad social stratum ration – and a warning – to the Nove format and small works alike, he de- comprising merchants and artisans when they met in the frescoed room monstrates an unusual mastery of te- who proved capable of governing the to decide the city’s course. For purposes chnique and, although he never ge- city and at the same time protecting of identification, the allegorical figures nerated a ‘school’, influenced the their own interests. They were possessed are endowed with the classical attributes artistic production of the succeeding of a keen entrepreneurial spirit; they but are also ‘captioned’. Without generations and contributed to the worked for the common good and to going into a detailed analysis of the birth of the ‘modern manner’. enhance the glory of their city, paying composition, we can say that the pain- great attention to the urban aesthetic. ter’s attentive, skilful use of light makes elena aiazzi n° 383 - gennaio 2018

Hammershøi, the Painter of Tranquil Rooms

The silence of this Danish artist falls between Vermeer and Hopper and stands against the clangour of the avant-gardes

Luminous, rarefied domestic atmospheres with rigidly geometric structures, few furnishings, paintings or objects; with white, open communicating doors and large white windows. virtually opaque and often closed, that shed a cloistral, morning lambency as frigid as moonlight and do not allow the view from the outside world to venture in. Melancholy, muffled, soundproofed milieus. At times, a woman intent on some activity, playing music, sewing, writing or thinking; often seen from behind, hiding her actions as she hides her feelings. Rarefaction, silence, solitude, flooded with a light that illuminates without warmth and conducts a placid duet with the shadows. These are the signature elements of Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi’s (1864- 1916) enigmatic canvases. His was the era in which the avant- gardes challenged established standards, overturning every rule, breaking up colours, forms, figures and recomposing of certain of his contemporaries more Sunshine in the Drawing Room III them in the name of personal percep- similar in terms of their choice of ‘do- Nationalmuseum, Stockholm tion and personal anguish. Hammershøi mestic’ themes and in their styles, Ni- countered with the serenity of his colaj Achen or Carl Vilhelm Holsøe, rooms and his women, a serenity which, for example, the parallel stops at out- however, does not conceal the flavour ward appearance; because differently of appearance. He does not allow him- from Hammershøi’s, their interiors self to be infected; he maintains his – just as light and luminous – are en- own style, shunning trends, accepting riched by a warmth that encompasses the risk of seeming antiquated. And the whole spectrum of light, the richness even if we compare his work with that of objects, drapery and flowers, to re- 2

Sunbeams or Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams The Four Rooms - Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst Charlottenlund, Ordrupgaard Museum create the glow of a comfortable inti- suggest large openings – are revealed macy and a more sincere serenity. as mere closures, since nothing is visible Hammershøi’s rooms are tranquil, to beyond the glass; the viewer is imme- be sure, but they emanate all the disquiet diately bounced back into the silent of a space that fills its emptiness with austerity of the room. immobility and absences. The artist The apartments of this period were drew his inspiration from the rooms filled with objects, furniture, paintings, of his own 17th-century apartment plants; what the Danish painter shows in Copenhagen at Strandgade 30, and us, instead, is purged of any element his model was more often than not which could disturb the bare luminous his wife Ida. Scenes of family life, but geometry. Hammershøi proceeds by scenes that present a feeling made of subtraction until he reaches the essence silences and shortcomings, spaces in of the space where the fundamental which voids assume concrete form element is a light definable, in turn, and the form dissolves back into em- in a bare minimum of colours. The ptiness. artist’s spectrum is very short and The light in Sunshine in the Drawing limited to the neutral hues, greys and Room III, a room without a human browns because, as he said, ‘a painting presence, is that of the northern sun, has the best effect in terms of its colour low on the horizon, that illuminates the fewer colours there are’. the few objects suspended in the play The essentiality of his visions approaches of shadows it traces. The Four Rooms the minimalist intimism of the 17th- shows us an enfilade of rooms seen century Dutch masters; His canvases through the open doors of each, all echo with Vermeer’s silences more similar territories whose uses we imagine than with the colourful voices of his as we glimpse significant objects. In contemporaries; his style falls in between Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams, a melancholy realism and Symbolism. the atmosphere is so immobile that Hammershøi is as worthy an heir of we perceive the vibrations of the dust Vermeer’s genius as he is a precursor motes illuminated by the sunlight of Hopper’s uneasy ambiences, even from the window. But Hammershøi’s though his figures are less alienated wide windows – which at first sight than the American’s. His intimism 3

above Rest - Paris, Musée d'Orsay right Interior with Young Woman Seen from the Back Randers, Randers Museum of Art and minimalism create a tension that does not snap back into forms and colours but that whispers mute cries in a gelid geometric perfection. Settings for plays by Ibsen: deserted, colourless domestic spaces that behind the ap- parent serenity portend the coming of something to be understood, of something enigmatic. Hammershøi was born in 1864 in Copenhagen to a cultured middle- class family. His leanings toward painting emerged early and he trained in art, following a regular course of aca- demic studies. He lived his whole life an inner world. What is certain is that in his native city; a tranquil existence the woman seen from behind becomes bordering on the monotonous with a sort of stylistic signature. Interior in his wife Ida. He nevertheless travelled Strandgade – Sunlight on the Floor, numerous times to Italy, France, Ger- Living Room with Piano and Woman many and England where he became Dressed in Black and Interior with acquainted with the new directions Young Woman Seen from the Back in art and made an informed stylistic are but a few examples. We find strictly choice. analogous atmospheres, with women His silent rooms often immure a wo- apparently waiting, intent on doing man – his wife – who is generally something unseen, which become turned away from the viewer, discreetly subtly disturbing with the sort of fa- observed by one who would seize so- scination that only not-fully-revealed mething concealed, not exhibited. In things can engender. Poses that express Rest, the artist’s focus is on the shoulders existential malaise or a wholly female of the woman, who is seated, indiffe- certainty – which the painter is unable rent. to entirely fathom? All, however, im- An emblem of solitude and incom- bued with a powerful silence, a sensation municability, or attention to an ana- of hermetic suspension that fills the tomic detail such as the nape of the space and would seem to indicate neck, the most indecent part of the access points to a hidden interior world. body to Oriental minds, in contrapo- Interesting, in this sense, is Double sition to the Puritan vision? A nape Portrait of the Artist and His Wife: that only hints at the complexity of here, the painter is visible, almost pag. 4

Double Portrait of the Artist and His Wife Private collection posing, while the woman’s is again a work for several scenes – after his death back portrait. And once again, the in 1916 the name of Hammershøi loudest voice is that of silence; here, was largely forgotten, perhaps beaten it is louder yet, with two figures in the down by the force of the avant-gardes scene. A couple that shares only the and the fury of the war. Only recently, canvas; for the rest, they are divided, in the 1990s, was he rediscovered and he in his world, she in hers. The viewer’s reassessed, when criticism saw in his eye falls on the face of the man and works analogies with the silences of then looks for the woman’s – but it is Giorgio Morandi’s painting and the hidden, disallowing any interaction: alienated solitude painted by Edward the only movement is the woman’s Hopper, and read in them Ibsen and exit from the scene – an escape? The snatches from Bergman. In another claustrophobic oval of the framing era of chaos and uproar, another ‘artist only further depresses the mood. of silence’ resurfaces, as though called Although he won fame and ackno- up to provide solace and comfort with wledgement during his life – Diaghilev his subdued, discreetly muted tones. admired his work, Rilke wrote of him, film director Carl Dreyer drew on his anna martinelli