contessanally: January 2024

“The re-presentation in the same venue of so many masterpieces of the most representative Venetian artists of the nineteenth century, re-discovered when lost, re-studied when already known, allows us to visualize the features of the

Venetian protagonists of an entire century, chosen in 1923 by Nino Barbantini

and, a century later, still capable of fascinating surprising the public of

Ca’ Pesaro.”

Elisabetta Barisoni and Roberto de Fero

Curators

Venezia - Ca' Pesaro - Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna

Venetian Portrait Painting of the Nineteenth Century

You could time travel back to 1923 and see the same exhibition, in the same venue - Venetian Portrait Painting of the Nineteenth Century - until April 1 - curated by Elisabetta Barisoni and Roberto De Feo - that now - one hundred years later - is re-presented at Ca' Pesaro, that the then first director - Nino Barbantini - of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna organised and staged. Even today, the 1920s show it is still considered a crucially important exhibition, which rediscovered an entire century of Venetian art, introduced many of its key artists and fostered appreciation for many of the masterpieces on display, and heralded a new direction for the Venetian gallery and Barbantini’s work, which turned to planning major exhibitions on specific periods or individual Italian artists.

Lattanzio Querena - 1768-1853

The catalogue compiled by Barbantini included 241 works by fifty artists, among them painters, sculptors and miniaturists, all of whom were active from the beginning to the penultimate decade of the nineteenth century, opening with Teodoro Matteini and closing with Giacomo Favretto. The list, organised in alphabetical order, not only presents brief biographies of the artists but also names the works’ respective owners at the time. This information was the initial source for the painstaking task for the curators in researching and identifying the works one hundred years on for their exhibition at Ca’ Pesaro. Partly due to the success of the 1923 show, many works entered public collections, while others have remained with heirs or, to a lesser extent, have been permanently lost.

Teodoro Matteini

Il Conte Lodovico Widemann -1799

The exhibition at Ca’ Pesaro is a unique occasion for reconstructing the 1923 review, and revisiting numerous prominent personalities from the world of art, culture and society in a wide geographical area that extends from the capital of Veneto to Friuli Venezia Giulia. Not only Venice, but also Treviso, Bassano, Padua, Trieste, Belluno, Udine, Pordenone, Caneva di Sacile were among the places where the brilliant director of Ca' Pesaro Nino Barbantini was the first to discover works that represented the artistic greatness of a century, which had been neglected in order to mythologise the previous one.

Odorico Politi

Self-portrait -1830 - Antonio Canova - 1823

The Painter Giuseppe Borsato - 1830 - Anna Borsato Orsi - 1830

Giovanni Carlo Bevilacqua

Anna Borsato Orsi - 1811

Odorico Politi

Nude of a woman: study for the figure of Campaspe - 1812-1816

The painter's model - 1837-1838

"... conceived as a philological review of an exhibition that made history and at the same time a tribute to its brilliant curator, whose historical-artistic lesson remains in the collections and whose voice resonates in the rooms of Ca' Pesaro. The re-presentation in the same venue of so many masterpieces of the most representative Venetian artists of the nineteenth century, rediscovered when lost, re-studied when already known, will also allow us to visualize the features of the Venetian protagonists of an entire century, chosen in 1923 by Barbantini by instinct and thanks to his pioneering knowledge of the time and, a century later, still capable of fascinating and surprising the public of Ca' Pesaro".

Elisabetta Barisoni and Roberto De Feo

curators

Lodovico Lipparini

La Contessa Elena Vendramin Calergi Valmarana - 1838c.

Il Conte Andrea Valmarana - 1838c.

Giuseppe Tominz

The Brucker Family - 1820-1830

Visitors had the opportunity in 1923 to to examine famous artists such as Hayez, Molmenti, Grigoletti, Schiavoni, Lipparini; artists discovered and rediscovered, who had lived and trained in Venice, leaving precious testimonies of the society, the spirit of the age, its protagonists and its great upheavals: a heritage of images of families, intellectuals, artists, patriots, women, some of whom themselves artists. All this comes to life again today thanks to meticulous and lengthy research work conducted by the curators to reconstruct the layout and catalogue of the historic exhibition: this enormous critical effort over two years has led to the tracing of no less than 166 works by 52 artists from the original exhibition, now preserved in museums and collections throughout Italy.

Giuseppe Tominz

Ciriaco Catraro - 1836