Piccio in Carrara

The exhibition is curated by the director M. Cristina Rodeschini, who invites the public to embark on a fascinating journey to discover the artist, together with works that illustrate the museum’s collections, its history and the Bergamo area.

The three works on loan, which are of exceptional quality and rarely shown to the public, are his Portrait of Gina Caccia (The Green Necklace) from a private collection, Landscape in Brembate Sotto from the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Ricci Oddi in Piacenza, and Portrait of Vittore Tasca from the Bettino Craxi Foundation – ETS.

With this exhibition, Carrara invites the public to examine a painter who left a significant mark on the history of nineteenth-century art.

Extraordinarily talented from his adolescence onwards, Giovanni Carnovali’s life was closely bound to the history of the Bergamo museum and its school of painting, which he attended for five years, under Giuseppe Diotti.

Since its recent restoration, Diotti’s artistic testament, the monumental Death of Antigone, has been on display on the first floor in the Vitali Wing, illustrating the close bond between the museum and the school.

Guglielmo Lochis, a great collector and one of the most important patrons of the Carrara, immediately appreciated Piccio’s skills, and had himself portrayed by the painter in 1835 (Gallery 3).

The museum collection includes about fifteen paintings by Piccio. Gallery 26 contains a broad selection, alongside some works by his contemporaries, from Giacomo Trecourt to Francesco Coghetti, who were with Piccio during his years of apprenticeship and who, from their separate points of view, witnessed the great changes that swept through painting in the nineteenth century.

The three paintings on show –The Green Necklace, the Portrait of Vittore Tasca, and the Landscape in Brembate Sotto – are fine examples of the evolution of his works from 1860 to 1870, a period when united Italy was taking its first steps and during which Carnovali achieved excellent, and very original results, adopting an experimental approach to painting that was much appreciated in the world of open-minded collectors.