Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
wanting 'Grand Tour' souvenirs. The best-known painters of this school are Francesco
Guardi (1712-93) and Giovanni Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768).
Despite the slow movement towards unity, the 19th-century Italian cities remained as
they had been for centuries - highly individual centres of culture with sharply contrasting
ways of life. Music was the supreme art of this period and the overwhelming theme in the
visual arts was one of chaste refinement.
Italy's major contemporary art event is the world-famous Venice Biennale, held every odd-
numbered year. It's the most important survey show on the international art circuit.
The major artistic movement of the day was neoclassicism and its greatest Italian expo-
nent was the sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822). Canova renounced movement in fa-
vour of stillness, emotion in favour of restraint and illusion in favour of simplicity. His
most famous work is a daring sculpture of Paolina Bonaparte Borghese as a reclining
Venere vincitrice
(Conquering Venus), in Rome's Museo e Galleria Borghese.
Canova was the last Italian artist to win overwhelming international fame. Italian archi-
tecture, sculpture and painting had played a dominant role in the cultural life of Europe
for some 400 years, but with Canova's death in 1822, this supremacy came to an end.
Modern Movements
The two main developments in Italian art at the outbreak of WWI could not have been
more different. Futurism, led by poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) and painter
Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), sought new ways to express the dynamism of the ma-
chine age. Metaphysical painting
(Pittura metafisica),
in contrast, looked inwards and
produced mysterious images from the subconscious world.
Futurism demanded a new art for a new world and denounced every attachment to art
of the past. It started with the publication of Marinetti's
Manifesto del futurismo
(Futurist
Manifesto, 1909) and was reinforced by the publication of a 1910 futurist painting mani-
festo by Boccioni, Giacomo Balla (1871-1958), Luigi Russolo (1885-1947) and Gino
Severini (1883-1966). The manifesto declared that 'Everything is in movement,
everything rushes forward, everything is in constant swift change.' An excellent example
of this theory put into practice is Boccioni's
Rissa in galleria
(Brawl in the Arcade, 1910)
in the collection of Milan's Pinacoteca di Brera. This was painted shortly after the mani-
festo was published and clearly demonstrates the movement's fascination with frantic
