The Bel Mondo at the emergence of modernity. The protagonists are fashionable women. M for modernity, fashion, charm. On the stage of the beautiful world between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, women became the protagonists and, to immortalise this magical moment of theirs, those artists were called in who knew how to transpose onto canvas the perfume, the charm, the eroticism of a truly unique era. In the sumptuous “Fashion and modernity between the 19th and 20th centuries” exhibition, promoted by the Municipality of Treviso, directed by Fabrizio Malachin and set up from 13 April to 28 July at the Bailo Museum, hosts conferences for celebrities, from Eleonora Duse to Wally Toscanini to Lydia Borelli to Toti Dal Monte, alongside elegant exponents of the bourgeoisie and nobility of Treviso, Veneto and nationally.

To pay homage to them, artists often specialized in large female portraits, famous, admired and disputed at the time. Today – not all – ended up in the limbo of art history. The subtitle of the exhibition mentions two of them: Giulio Ettore Erler and Lino Selvatico, "the Venetian Boldini", the latter. Giovanni Boldini from Ferrara is also, naturally, among the protagonists of the exhibition with an ad hoc room - a true point of reference and therefore included in the subtitle - together with Cesare Laurenti, Ettore Tito, Cesare Tallone, Vittorio Corcos, Giacomo Grosso, then the team of the great Venetians of the moment: Giacomo Favretto, Pietro Pajetta, Eleuterio Pagliaro.

Together with Alberto and Artuto Martini. But also foreign masters working in Italy: the Englishman John Lovery, the German Franz S. von Lenboch, with others. A flood of great paintings, often absolute masterpieces, donated to the exhibition by more than 50 museums and public and private collections, together to drawings, posters (granted by the National Museum of the Salce Collection in Treviso), engravings, sculptures, as well as dresses, fans and hats. All gathered at the Bailo to rediscover, and relive, the charm of an era, better than a minority and privileged component of a society, certainly decadent but also sensually romantic. A sumptuous exhibition that will make many dream and will fascinate everyone. Which takes the visitor back to a world of intense socializing, of great worldliness, of Joie de vivre. But it is not limited to being a catwalk of beautiful women and extraordinary paintings.