Curated by Giorgio Careddu

The exhibition, part of a project on watercolor in Piedmont promoted by the Albertina Academy of Turin, explores some moments of Bagetti's artistic journey and highlights the artist's creative ability and geographical competence in reproducing urban scenes and rural, presenting a selection of 39 works belonging to the graphic collections of the Royal Library and the Galleria Sabauda. The exhibition starts from the series of Views of Piedmont and Nice, engraved starting from 1793, which associate the need to faithfully document the places represented with a strong attention to meteorological aspects. A couple of landscapes by Pietro Giacomo Palmieri then pay homage to the master who directed Bagetti towards the technique of watercolor painting, a technique considered as a novelty, and towards the cultural updates that came from other European countries and from which the Turin painter learned to grasp important suggestions in the way of interpreting nature. Storm with storm and Landscape with ruins and city in the background well represent the art of the famous landscape painter, as they are both characterized by a taste for the picturesque which is one of the typical aspects of his figurative language. Some monochrome sketches date back to the years following the annexation of Piedmont to France in 1802, preliminary to the final drafting of the watercolors now preserved in the Versailles Museum, which portray the topography of the Piedmontese localities, scenery of the victorious Napoleonic campaigns. The activity of late maturity in which Bagetti dedicated himself, at the request of King Carlo Felice, to inventive painting is instead testified in the exhibition by four woodland landscapes in which nature is investigated in its various botanical, geological and physical aspects.