The exhibition project, curated by Antonella Mampieri and Angelo Mazza, is entitled Leggiadro Barocco. L’attività giovanile di Giuseppe Marchesi detto il Sansone and will be open to the public from 1 April to 2 September 2023, with inauguration on Friday 31 March at 5.30 pm.
The exhibition in the Sala Urbana of the Collezioni Comunali d’Arte focuses on the artist’s happiest period, his youthful, elegant and graceful period. Around two unpublished pendants in a private collection, Moses and the Daughters of Jethro and Solomon Incenses the Idols (c. 1725), whose success is demonstrated by the presence of copies in the Museo Diocesano in Imola, some works of profane subject are exhibited that best document the artist’s youthful style: the Four Seasons from the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna and the Drunkenness of Noah, now in a private collection. The exhibition is completed by a miniature portrait of a young girl, kept at the Davia Bargellini Museum, and two lively drawings, the Rape of the Sabine Women and the Rape of Helen from the Art and History Collections of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna, preparatory projects for a large painting to be painted in the hall of honour of the house that later belonged to the Buratti merchants, promoters of the arts and various Bolognese artists. Only the second, dated 1725, was executed by the painter and opens his documented career.
The figure of Giuseppe Marchesi was forgotten following the changes in the history of taste that condemned the 18th century as a superficial and empty century. Only since the 1970s has art historian Renato Roli brilliantly reconstructed his catalogue.
Municipal Art Collections – Palazzo d’Accursio – Piazza Maggiore, 6 – Bologna
