Baskins, Cristelle and Silvia Bottinelli, “La casa va con la città: The ‘Lorenzo il Magnifico e le Arti’ Exhibition of 1949” California Italian Studies 7.1 (2017): 1-30 (original) (raw)
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La casa va con la città': The 'Lorenzo il Magnifico e le Arti' Exhibition of 1949
There has been a marked increase in the exhibition of Renaissance domestic painting in recent years. 1 Yet "Lorenzo il Magnifico e le Arti" ["Lorenzo the Magnificent and the Arts"], an exhibition held in the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence from 21 May to 31 October 1949, is still the most impressive to date for the sheer number of cassoni, deschi, and spalliere displayed. A stunning fifty examples constituted roughly one quarter of the objects installed in twelve galleries on the main floor of the palace. 2 The show opened with early-fifteenth-century anonymous Florentine cassoni and ended with early-sixteenth-century spalliere by Piero di Cosimo and his contemporaries. In between, the galleries alternated with named masters and canonical examples of Florentine portraiture, sculpture, and religious painting. In the words of Lorenzo de' Medici, "La casa va con la città"-the fate of the house (or family) depends on the fate of the city. 3 Lorenzo's insight about the relationship of the public and private spheres guides our analysis of the exhibition of Renaissance domestic painting in post-World War II Florence. The following essay examines the political, institutional, and scholarly frameworks of the "Lorenzo il Magnifico e Le Arti" show and considers the ways in which postwar reconstruction, as well as the changing role of women in the late 1940s, brought new critical attention to domestic painting. The Cultural Capital of Renaissance Florence A close look at the Palazzo Strozzi exhibition of 1949 reveals the intersection of politics, scholarship, the art market, tourism, and education. We might expect such a nexus of concerns for any exhibition, but the specific emphasis on domestic furniture painting in the aftermath of World War II makes the 1949 show worthy of further investigation. 4 The Palazzo Strozzi exhibit was part of a state funded program of 'onoranze' celebrating the quincentenary of the birth of
La casa va con la città": Lorenzo the Magnificent and the Arts, 1949
2017
Author(s): Baskins, Cristelle; Bottinelli, Silvia | Abstract: In this article, a Modernist and a Renaissance art historian analyze the 1949 exhibition of Renaissance domestic painting at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. Based on unpublished documents at the Ragghianti foundation in Lucca, we trace the genesis, development, and installation of the show, as well as responses to it on the part of the scholarly community and in the popular press. We look at a variety of interests that drove the planners, ranging from postwar politics, historic reconstruction, museology, local economy and tourism, to changing definitions of the family and women’s roles in the home. Finally, we uncover a link between the 1949 show and the establishment of the Palazzo Davanzati museum.
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Romeo Toninelli was a key figure in the organization of Twentieth-Century Italian Art, and given the official title of Executive Secretary for the Exhibition in Italy. An Italian art dealer, editor, and collector with an early career as a textile industrialist, Toninelli was not part of the artistic and cultural establishment during the Fascist ventennio. This was an asset in the eyes of the James Thrall Soby and Alfred H. Barr, Jr., who wanted the exhibition to signal the rebirth of Italian art after the presumed break represented by the Fascist regime. Whether Toninelli agreed with this approach we do not know, but he played a major part in the tortuous transatlantic organization of the show. He acted as the intermediary between MoMA curators and Italian dealers, collectors, and artists, securing loans and paying for the shipping of the artworks. He
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The Mostra della Pittura Italiana del Seicento e Settecento held in 1922 at the then Pitti Royal Palace (Florence) was the first in a series of exhibitions defining an art historical chronology, schools and the hierarchies of Baroque art, most of which are still valid to date. This exhibition was also the first to showcase a re-discovered Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) then presented akin to a revelation. The exhibition undoubtedly dealt with new readings of art history at face value but was also motivated by explicitly political overtones informed by the politics and international ambitions of the Kingdom of Italy. This paper explores the duality of the exhibitions’ complex narrative bridging politics and art history. It also reviews the genesis of 20th century Caravaggio studies and the ways and means how this was acknowledged within the Anglo-Saxon world of academia over time.
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