From Pannini to Boucher and Goya, the great painting of the 18th century on display in Carrara

An exhibition of great Italian and international artists of the eighteenth century to reconstruct the cultural climate in which one of the greatest artists of the eighteenth century, Giovanni Antonio Cybei (Carrara 1706 - 1784), worked, to whom the city of Carrara will dedicate a major exhibition across multiple venues this summer. It is the exhibition Goya Boucher Ricci Batoni and the masters of the 18th century in the cities of Cybei, scheduled from June 11 to October 10, 2021 at the CARMI Museum in the city of marble, curated by Marco Ciampolini. Moreover, there are many unpublished paintings, which the public will be able to admire for the first time at the Carrara exhibition.

Giovanni Antonio Cybei, who was a sculptor, an abbot, a practitioner of painting and the first director of the Academyof Fine Arts in Carrara (whose 250th anniversary of its founding falls in 2019), treasured the pictorial suggestions he had on his travels, which the exhibition aims to recreate. Cybei is among the lesser-known figures of eighteenth-century Italian art, but he is also one of the most interesting personalities, as evidenced by his works destined for the most important art venues in Europe: from St. Peter’s Basilica to the Reggia di Venaria, from theErmitage in St. Petersburg with the portrait of Catherine II of Russia, to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London with that of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Peter Leopold of Lorraine. The exhibition thus explores the artist’s universe of relationships and influences over the course of his not so short life. More than fifty paintings, brought together to give a comprehensive representation of the artistic genres of painting in the 18th century, from historical to religious episodes, from allegory to mythology, from portraiture to genre scene, from veduta to capriccio. These are works that are often unknown, forgotten or difficult to access: 16 unpublished, 7 never studied scientifically, 10 exhibited for the first time, and 4 from little-known public or museum institutions.

The exhibition, which, as anticipated, is being held simultaneously and contiguously with the major exhibition dedicated to Cybei’s sculptures, illustrates the artistic climate of a time when artists moved between the Duchy of Modena, of which the Principality of Carrara was part, and the rest of Italy, from Rome to Turin, from Pisa to Naples, all places frequented by the sculptor. Highlights of the exhibition include a Holy Family by Pompeo Batoni (Lucca, 1708 - Rome 1787), among the greatest portrait painters of his time, two important religious-themed canvases by Giovanni Battista Tempesti(Lot and His Daughters and San Ranieri at Prayer), an Allegorical Subject by Sebastiano Ricci (Belluno, 1659 - Venice, 1734), a Capriccio with Roman Ruins by the sought-after Vedutista Giovanni Paolo Pannini (Piacenza, 1691 - Rome, 1765) alongside a Rescue of a boy at the mercy of the waves, a previously unpublished painting that represents a unicum in his vast activity, the impressive cycle of the four seasons by Francesco Corneliani (Milan, 1740 - 1815), and again many other paintings by artists less known to the general public but of absolute talent, such as Giuseppe Cades, whose Conversion of St. Ignatius, a model for a forgotten Sicilian altarpiece, is on display, or the Bolognese Gaetano Gandolfi, whose St. Francis is exhibited.

Alongside the exponents of the Italian scene, there are also a number of international painters who, like the others, frequented Cybei’s courts and places, and who demonstrate the varied and often underestimated pictorial milieu of non-Continental Italy: two Arcadian landscapes by the Parisian François Boucher (Paris 1703 - 1770), a painter of the court of Louis XIV; two stupendous mythological paintings by Pietro Pedroni (Pontremoli 1744 - Florence 1803), a local artist who anticipated Neoclassicism; and two valuable self-portraits by Francisco Goya (Fuendetodos, 1746 - Bordeaux, 1828), which show us the artist’s evolving style in the same subject. These are all works that accompany the cultural breath that characterized Cybei’s production, which was destined for the great European courts. Knowledge of contemporary painting helps Cybei make his relationship with sculptural material more sensitive, suggesting to him theereal lightness in the groups, the smooth transparency in the epidermis, the atmospheric values in the treatment of surfaces.

The aim of the exhibition is also to tell the story of Carrara and the importance of its contacts in the eighteenth century, which if it was not great from the point of view of commissions, lacking a court, was instead for the city’s discovery of its artistic vocation. In the eighteenth century, in fact, Carrara went from being a mere center of marble excavation and trade to a center of sculpture production, but above all a hub for the training of artists, first with sculptors’ workshops, then with private schools and finally with the establishment of the Academy of Fine Arts, which was and still is, the best school for teaching sculpture. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog edited by Marco Ciampolini and published by Silvana Editoriale, with essays and contributions by leading scholars of the Italian and European 18th century. The volume will offer an important scientific insight to the work of knowledge and appreciation of a century, the 18th century, some of its peculiar authors and territories still unjustly little considered.

The exhibition is organized by the Municipality of Carrara, in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara and under the patronage of the Region of Tuscany. The Province of Siena, the Municipality of Siena, the Municipality of Colle Val dElsa, IArciconfraternita di Misericordia e Istituzioni Riunite di Siena, the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara, the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the provinces of Lucca and Massa Carrara, and the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the provinces of Siena, Grosseto and Arezzo have collaborated.

Below is a selection of images of works in the exhibition.

Sebastiano Ricci, Impresa di Alessandro Farnese (act of surrender of a city?) (oil on canvas, 47.5 x 63.5 cm; Pienza, private collection)

Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Capriccio with Roman Ruins and the Trajan Column (oil on canvas, 102 x 141.5 cm; Monte Carlo di Monaco, Private Collection)

Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Rescuing a boy at the mercy of the waves (oil on canvas, 44 x 70.5 cm; Monte Carlo de Monaco, Private Collection)

François Boucher, Arcadian Landscape (oil on canvas, 50 x 66 cm; Siena, Museo Civico)

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni, Sacrifice of Iphigenia (oil on canvas, 43.3 x 57.5 cm; Private Collection)

Violante Beatrice Siries, Three Ladies in the Garden (oil on canvas, 148 x 110 cm; Florence, Chiara Esposito)

Domenico Corvi, Holy Family (oil on canvas, 46 x 40 cm; Rome, Amata Collection)

Laurent Pe?cheux, Achilles, Briseis and Agamemnon (oil on canvas, 110 x 135 cm; Turin, Guido Monero Collection)

Domenico De Angelis, Portrait of the Sculptor Giovanni Antonio Franzoni (oil on canvas, 76 x 62 cm; Carrara, Accademia di Belle Arti)

Francesco Corneliani, Summer (oil on canvas, 250 x 100 cm; Carrara, Accademia di Belle Arti)

Pietro Pedroni, Atalanta (oil on canvas, 150 x 200 cm; Siena, Palazzo del Governo)

Francisco Jose? de Goya y Lucientes, Self-Portrait at 25 (oil on canvas, 62 x 42 cm; Private Collection)

From Pannini to Boucher and Goya, the great painting of the 18th century on display in Carrara

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