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closed Artsupp card The painter friends of Cesare Guasti in the municipal collections

The show

On Saturday 17 December at the Museum of Palazzo Pretorio the exhibition entitled "Cesare Guasti's painter friends in the municipal collections" opened to the public, curated by Lia Brunori, Claudio Cerretelli and Rita Iacopino, which will be open until 10 April 2023 .

On the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth of Cesare Guasti, the Museum of Palazzo Pretorio wants to commemorate the bonds of friendship between the illustrious archivist, philologist, scholar and poet from Prato and some of his contemporary artists through the works conserved in the municipal collections: an insight into art of the nineteenth century in Prato, where the figure of Guasti played a very important role, determining the affirmation of purist thought and favoring an aesthetic based on moral values.


Through forty-five paintings and drawings - by artists among which Antonio Marini, Luigi Mussini and Alessandro Franchi stand out - the exhibition "The painter friends of Cesare Guasti in the municipal collections" tells in detail precisely this very fervent climate, which develops around the Scuola in Prato Municipal Design.

The works on display, some exceptionally also coming from deposits, are all linked to the figure of Cesare Guasti, in turn portrayed by Egisto Sarri in one of the paintings on display. Like the drawings by Giuseppe Ciardi, a refined engraver and drawing master, to whom an eighteen-year-old Cesare Guasti went to take lessons: with him he learned to handle pencils and colors, and was educated in that particular artistic sensibility that can only derive from experience .

Guasti was then always close to the painter Antonio Marini - author of various works on display, including the Madonna of the kiss and Mercury delivering the child Bacchus to the nymphs - of whom he wrote the biography. Guasti himself recalls that «in me my love for the fine arts awoke at the sight of the ancient paintings that Antonio Marini, when I was a child, restored in the common homeland» recognizing in the older painter the one who had educated him in the Beauty and who had convinced him that art should look to the artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to free the expressive modalities from any influence derived from classicism; the reference goes to the restoration work on the frescoes by Filippo Lippi in the Cathedral of Prato, carried out by Marini in 1835.


Instead, adherence to the same aesthetic ideals that considered external beauty to be the bearer of high moral values served as a cement for friendship with Luigi Mussini, whose beautiful self-portrait appears among the works on display. Deeply connected, the two friends maintained fraternal and respectful relationships throughout their lives: numerous writings, portraits and a dense correspondence are the testimony of their partnership.

Together, Guasti and Mussini were those who directed the artistic vocation of Alessandro Franchi, another artist remembered by the exhibition with his works (including a portrait of Luisa Mussini, daughter of Luigi, whom he married in 1893) and allowed him to attend the 'Accademia di Belle Arti di Siena, with a scholarship granted by the Municipality; while living in Siena, Franchi kept alive the bond with Prato, where he was entrusted with numerous commissions, including the fresco decoration of the Vinacces Chapel in the Cathedral, of which Guasti published an accurate description.


An exhibition that therefore provides an in-depth insight into the artistic and cultural life of Prato in the mid-nineteenth century, but also of its social ties: from a very young age, Cesare Guasti established himself as a central figure in the intellectual world of Prato and indulged the desire of community to proudly reclaim their identity. Against the background of this civil and political sentiment, the idea of establishing the Municipal Gallery increasingly took shape, which was born in 1858, curated by his brother Gaetano, but strongly desired by Cesare, in a room of the Town Hall mayor), decorated in 1870 by Pietro Pezzati.

The exhibition, set up on the ground floor, and which can be visited with a regular museum access ticket, was created by the Municipality of Prato and the Palazzo Pretorio Museum, in collaboration with the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the metropolitan city of Florence and the provinces of Pistoia and Prato, and with the contribution of the Tuscany Region.

Gallery

Works on display

Timetable and tickets

Address

Piazza del Comune
59100 Prato

Contacts


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