The event, organized jointly with the Municipality of Novara and the Castello Foundation, will be dedicated to some of the most well-known and loved Italian artists by the general public, known internationally as Les italiens de Paris, first and foremost Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931) from Ferrara. and the Barletta native Giuseppe de Nittis (1846-1884).

This year too, the curatorship of the exhibition was entrusted to Elisabetta Chiodini, independent art historian, scholar of figurative arts and history of costume and fashion, expert in Italian art between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century .

The exhibition itinerary, divided into eight sections, follows as usual the progression of the evocative rooms of the Castle and aims to illustrate, through comparisons at a fast and stimulating pace, the work of the most successful Italian painters active in Paris in the late nineteenth century and of the early twentieth century. There will be around ninety works on display, coming from public and private collections.

Why Paris and why Italians in Paris?

As is known, since the early 1820s France had attracted numerous Italian artists eager to engage with the figurative culture beyond the Alps on the one hand and to expand their market beyond the border on the other. Among these the Veronese Giuseppe Canella (1788-1847), one of the first to choose France as his homeland and among the very first to immerse himself in painting from life in the dense forest of Fontainebleau and to propose his works at the Salon of 1827. Four of the eight paintings exhibited on that occasion were purchased by Duke Louis-Philippe of Orleans, the future sovereign, and are today in the collections of the Musée Carnavalet.

A few years later, just to name a few, it will be the turn of Gabriele Smargiassi (1798-1882), of Consalvo Carelli (1818-1900), considered the most à la page landscape painter of the aristocratic society of the reign of Louis Philippe, of Giuseppe Palizzi (1812-1888). Palizzi will establish himself as one of the greatest animal painters, in 1859 he will be awarded the prestigious Légion d'honneur and throughout the 1960s he will be the point of reference for many of the Italian artists who arrive in Paris.

With the birth of the first Universal Exhibitions, cities such as London (Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, 1851) and Paris (Exposition universelle des produits de l'agriculture, de l'industrie et des beaux-arts, 1855) attracted millions of visitors from all over Europe and become the nerve center of the international contemporary art market.