I CAMUCCINI: TRA NEOCLASSICISMO E SENTIMENTO ROMANTICO

The exhibition includes a selection of over fifty works through which the artistic story of the two Camuccini will be narrated. Starting with Vincenzo’s long and glorious career, which led him to become one of the greatest exponents of European Neoclassicism, as well as a witness to one of the most intense periods in the history of Rome. In fact, his work was deeply influenced by the political milieu of the capital, in which he was actively engaged.

Vincenzo’s pictorial style changed when he found a clear role for himself, that of an interpreter and witness of the Empire and the Restoration, when he also came to a realization and to believe less in the belief that the Athens of Pericles and the Rome of the virtuous times could survive in the Republic.

And so an overall appraisal of who Camuccini really was becomes compelling. An appraisal which this exhibition will attempt to afford through the works on display, including an extraordinary series of unpublished drawings dating back to the artist’s formative period which saw the young Vincenzo first practise on the works of the great masters of the past and later improve his own inventiveness by attending the Accademia dei Pensieri, founded in the capital by Felice Giani in the early 1790s.

In the exhibition, the Roman history paintings enjoy pride of place – it was thanks to these that Camuccini won international acclaim, and in the capital was rapidly considered their most modern interpreter in comparison with the conventional late-eighteenth-century interpretation used hitherto. Among these works stands out Appius Claudius, a sketch for the monumental Death of Virginia (Naples, Capodimonte Museum) commissioned by Frederick August Hervey, Bishop of Derry and 4^th Earl of Bristol, and the Departure of Atilius Regulus painted for the Duke of Blacas. The exhibition is rounded off by a series of religious studies related to ecclesiastical commissions, such as the Saints Simon and Jude for an altar of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

The exhibition is also entrusted with telling the story of Giovanni Battista Camuccini’s landscape vocation – whose historical-artistic relevance reached beyond national borders, to the point that many of his works are kept in leading foreign museums, including the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan of New York and the Toledo Art Museum – through a series of captivating views of the Lazio countryside. A vocation developed in the wake of the specialist Giambattista Bassi (1784-1852), who in Rome revived the tradition of the classic seventeenth-century landscape, soon becoming one of the leading interpreters of painting inspired by nature. Under his guidance, Camuccini began painting en plein air, becoming acquainted with the circle of painters influenced by the precepts of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819), such as Gilles-François Closson (1796-1842), Achille-Etna Michallon (1796-1822) and George Augustus Wallis (1770-1847). Giovanni Battista mainly depicted the countryside around Rome and the areas near Lake Albano, where he routinely went on holiday with his family.

Like many other painters dedicated to the plein air technique, Giovanni Battista was fascinated by the effects of light on lakescapes and by the warm-hued views typical of the Lazio countryside and, in strict adherence to Valenciennes’ precepts, he also devoted time to studying such naturalistic details as individual trees and plants, as documented by some of the paintings in the exhibition.
His activity as a landscape artist continued until the early 1850s, when he decided to abandon it and devote himself exclusively to taking care of his family affairs.

CATALOGUE

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published by SAGEP - Genoa. Essay by Dr. Stefano Bosi, art historian and specialist of the period.

Number of pages: 96 pages. All the works exhibited are reproduced. Price 25 euros.