The Museo Ottocento Bologna turns the spotlight on the figure of Carlotta Gargalli (Bologna, 1788 - Rome, 1840), the first woman to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna at the end of the "century of Enlightenment".

The exhibition Carlotta Gargalli (1788-1840). A Bolognese painter in Canova's Rome, edited by Ilaria Chia and Francesca Sinigaglia, inaugurates a series of monographs dedicated to Emilian women painters, and is designed to underline the modernity of this artist, who thanks to her talent and determination was able to establish herself in an artistic context at the time almost entirely dominated by men.

In it the pictorial corpus and the biographical profile of Gargalli are reconstructed, aiming to deepen the relationships between the sculptor Antonio Canova and the young people who studied at the Accademia del Regno Italico at Palazzo Venezia, presided over by him, an institution that was short-lived but who trained some of the most brilliant artists of the time, primarily Francisco Hayez and Tommaso Minardi. Canova's contribution was also fundamental for the start of Carlotta Gargalli's career. It was only thanks to the interest of the great sculptor from Possagno that she was able to realize herself in the artistic environment of the time, which however always maintained a rather hostile attitude towards her and her work.

Within the exhibition itinerary, around twenty works are presented, among the best of the painter from Bologna, and others by contemporary artists - some also unpublished and restored by the Museo Ottocento Bologna - coming from various institutions: Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, Municipal Library of Archiginnasio, International Museum and Library of Music of Bologna, MAMbo – Museum of Modern Art of Bologna, Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna, Uffizi Galleries, Florence and private collections. These are accompanied by a selection of period documents on loan from the Historical Archive of the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna. On the occasion of the exhibition, included within the exhibition itinerary, a new acquisition from the Museo Ottocento Bologna, the work by Giambattista Bassi, The Garden of the Lake at Villa Borghese, will also be presented to the public for the first time.