Fantasy Heads in 18th-century Venetian Painting

This exhibition on Fantasy Heads in 18th-century Venetian Painting brings together around thirty original works re-uniting a remarkable original collection. Throughout the 19th century the collections was part of the decorations in the castle of the Visconti di Modrone at Somma Lombardo (Varese), but subsequently dispersed. The works in this anthology of fantasy portraits or ‘character heads’ by various authors active in Venice, share the same format and frame design. The family commissioned the portraits for a programme ‘entitled fantasy heads’, and the artists involved were all contemporary but with very different styles and reputations.
The largest group of works was recently rediscovered, still together, in a private collection, while the others were patiently tracked down in various places, including museums. One emblematic case in the series is a work by Tiepolo, a Boy with a Book in the New Orleans Museum of Art, removed from the group at the beginning of the 20th-century and until recently the only known title.
Even a cursory look at the list of the artists, represented by one or more works, suggests the historical and aesthetic importance of the anthology: Pietro Bellotti, Sebastiano Ricci, Silvestro Manaigo, Bortolo Litterini, Antonio Pellegrini, Girolamo Brusaferro, Santo Piatti, Nicola Grassi, Francesco Polazzo, Giambattista Piazzetta, Egidio Dall’Oglio, Giuseppe Nogari, Giambattista Pittoni, Gaspare Diziani, Bartolomeo Nazzari, Giambattista Mariotti, Felicita Sartori, Nazario Nazzari, Mattia Bortoloni, Giambattista Tiepolo, Giacomo Ceruti, Pietro Longhi, Giambettino Cignaroli, Francesco Fontebasso, Jacopo Marieschi, Domenico Maggiotto, Giuseppe Angeli, Alessandro Longhi, Giambattista Mengardi, Francesco Maggiotto, Giuseppe De Gobbis, and Saverio Dalla Rosa.
Besides their intrinsic aesthetic and historical importance, the paintings on show provide an opportunity to survey a little-known chapter in 18th-century figurative painting. In fact when it comes to ‘character heads’, there are noticeably no studies giving an exhaustive account of their semantic range and historical development. The exhibition therefore may provide a new contribution to exploring what was considered a sub-class of so-called ‘genre painting’. Relegated to a minor status by the long-term effects of Aristotelian classification, this category is specifically focused on the human face, presenting an image of the sitters’ age and their physiognomic, affective, social and ethnic type. What we are saying here about the state of specific studies applies at least to the Veneto and bordering areas. Although it cannot claim to have given rise to this special artistic and iconographic category (which has a truly long-standing history), the Veneto area certainly saw some important examples in the early Baroque age, and played an initial role in re-qualifying and revitalising 18th century European art. While the typological premises must be sought mainly in 17th-century Holland and Flanders, we must remember how much Rembrandt, the master of light and unrivalled investigator of human nature, was esteemed in Venice in the Age of Enlightenment. There is a good deal of evidence for this, and significantly two leading figures in Venetian culture, Anton Maria Zanetti and Joseph Smith, were extremely proud of owning a whole series of etchings by the Dutch artist, including many studies of faces, illustrating emotions and reactions to light. The Venetian artists (first and foremost Piazzetta) could also rely on a large repertory of local 16th-century pictorial historie (by Paolo Veronese, Titian, Bassano, etc.) from which to extrapolate an emblematic head for a character or role.

Venice, Palazzo Cini at San Vio
9 September – 22 October 2006

Opening:
Daily 10.00 – 13.00 15.30 – 18.30, closed Mondays

Admission:
Full 6.50
Reduced 5.50 (Senior over 65 with ID, Students under 26 with ID, Residents of the City of Venice with ID and Venicecard holders)

Contacts
Institute of Art History
tel. +39 041 2710230 – fax +39 041 5205842
e-mail: arte@cini.it

Press office
tel. +39 041 5205558 – +39 041 2710280
fax +39 041 5238540
e-mail: stampa@cini.it