Signs of art

Organised by the Giorgio Cini Foundation Institute of Art History in collaboration with the Francesco Francia Association and the Cassa di Risparmio Foundation, Bologna, the exhibition features a selection of works from the Certani Collection at the Giorgio Cini Foundation. This collection consists of figure and landscape drawings, architectural and decorative studies, stage designs, and drawings associated with the minor arts. Together with a collection in the Uffizi, it is considered to be the most varied, richest and most representative graphic collection of 17th- and 18th-century Bolognese artists. The exhibition Signs of art. Figure drawings in the Certani Collection at the Giorgio Cini Foundation (1500-1750), by Giuseppe Pavanello, presents a selection of figure drawings from the collection covering a period from the early 16th century up to the mid-18th century.
The exhibition is divided into six sections. The first consists of as many as sixty-nine drawings by major Emilian artists, while the second brings together a selection of sixteen graphic works by artists chosen to represent significantly different schools of painting in Italy – from the Veneto to Rome.
The most interesting works include an early St Sebastian attributed to the 15th-century master Nicoletto da Modena, two drawings by the Bolognese artist Passerotti and a work by Bertoja, a leading exponent of 16th-century art. Representing the following century – a truly golden age – are a drawing by Ludovico Carracci, a study by Guido Reni, some red-chalk masterpieces by Guercino, including the celebrated Woman Feeding a Child for the fresco of Venus Feeding Love on a bedroom mantelpiece in the Palazzo Pannini, Cento, and an extraordinarily freshly rendered Head of Boy with Hat. Less well known but no less representative of 18th-century Emilian figurative art are the artists from that century present in the selection: in addition to a remarkable thirteen drawings by Donato Creti, there are works by Schedoni, Cantarini, Rolli, Stringa, Dal Sole, Crespi, and Gionima. Visitors can also explore works by artists outside Bolognese and Emilian circles, such as Marc’Antonio Bassetti from Verona, the Lombard Luini, the Venetian Franco, and Central Italian artists of the calibre of Pollini, Balducci and Diamantini. To these we must add the rare item of a drawing attributed to the sculptor of Flemish origin Giusto Le Court, represented in the exhibition by a study for a figure in the Pesaro Monument in the church of the Frari, Venice.

Bologna, Palazzo Saraceni
20 April – 17 June 2007
open daily including holidays 10.00 – 19.00

Free admission

Press Office
Annalisa Bellocchi
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna
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