The exhibition entitled “Canaletto, van Wittel, Bellotto. The great theater of the city. Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Ancient Art” curated by Paola Nicita and Yuri Primarosa will open on November 30th in the monumental complex of San Francesco in Cuneo, in via Santa Maria. It will remain open until March 30th 2025.
The exhibition consolidates for the third year the collaboration between Fondazione CRC, which has always been active in supporting and promoting cultural activities aimed at increasing the role and recognizability of the Cuneo area as a center of artistic production, and Intesa SanPaolo which, with the Culture project, expresses its commitment to the promotion of art in our country, following up with what was achieved jointly with the exhibitions “The colors of faith in Venice, Tiziano, Tintoretto and Veronese” in 2022 and “Lorenzo Lotto and Pellegrino Tibaldi. Masterpieces of the Holy House of Loreto” in 2023, visited by over 54 thousand people in total.
The exhibition, curated by Paola Nicita and Yuri Primarosa, of the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica is part of the museum's project entitled "The national galleries in the world" and offers an unprecedented insight into the representation of the urban scenarios of Rome and Venice in the eighteenth century through the works of three undisputed masters of the Veduta, Giovanni Antonio Canaletto, Gaspar Van Wittel and Bernardo Bellotto, joined by the painter from Piacenza Giovanni Paolo Pannini.
The exhibition project, specifically conceived for the Cuneo space, brings together twelve masterpieces from the National Galleries of Ancient Art in Rome, which explore and reinvent the image of the city in the era of the Grand Tour and enlightened cultural environments, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the first stop on every cultural itinerary through Italy was Rome and the final destination coincided with Venice. The grandeur of Rome and the lagoon charm of Venice are the protagonists of the scenes captured by the masters in the exhibition, who immortalize moments of celebration, ceremonies, social events, with the aim of giving a vivid and lasting memory to the travellers who had experienced them.
The art of Canaletto, van Wittel and Bellotto stages the ancient city next to the modern one, ranging from theatre painting to archaeological capriccio up to the topographical view. In the journey across the peninsula it is the passion for the ancient that ignites the creativity of the painters, capable of transforming the city into the stage of a magnificent open-air theatre, captured with a photographic gaze and poetic involvement. The paintings of the four vedutisti in the exhibition reveal portraits of cities, made of solemn architecture and popular urban views, from ancient Rome, between myth and nature, to the modern Rome of the Popes, scenographic and contradictory, from the city of Venice, proud and cosmopolitan, to the austere atmospheres of Dresden. The exhibition opens with the five Roman views of the Dutchman Gaspar Van Wittel, active between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and not for his scrupulous technique and for the wise use of optical science. After training in his homeland in the workshop of a landscape and view painter, van Wittel moved to Rome in 1675, where he quickly became the painter of modern Rome. He created large bird's-eye compositions, animated by moving figures and pervaded by a vital atmosphere, evoked in the exhibition by works such as "View of Rome from the Piazza del Quirinale" (1684) and "View of the Tiber at Castel Sant'Angelo" (1683). His visual methods and realistic rendering of the urban landscape would help transform the genre of the View, paving the way for generations of artists.
Rome is also the protagonist of the two works on display by Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691-1765) from Piacenza, one of the greatest interpreters of architectural capriccio, in which existing and fictitious architectures are transformed into 'conceived' views. A painting like “Capriccio with the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius” reveals Pannini's refined mastery of perspective and his ability to combine real and imaginary elements in a scenographic balance. Another significant example is “Ruderi con terme”, in which the ruins of ancient baths are integrated with an idealized landscape, communicating a sense of nostalgia for the classical world.
The exhibition itinerary through the masterpieces of the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica continues with the Venetian views by Giovanni Antonio Canaletto who was able to capture the essence of his hometown thanks to the masterful use of light and colors. The four paintings on display that bear his signature are “View of Venice with Piazza San Marco and the Procuratie” and View of Venice with the Piazzetta, revealing his way of representing cities as dynamic scenarios that reflect the beauty and complexity of urban life, expanding the formal possibilities of eighteenth-century vedutism. Canaletto returns an image of Venice full of details and characterized by great descriptive clarity, combined with a strong luminous and atmospheric sensitivity.
The exhibition concludes with the work of Canaletto's pupil and nephew, Bellotto, whose legacy he inherited and extended beyond the borders of the Italian peninsula.
His views, realistic portraits of the urban centers that he discovers during his stays, differ from those of his predecessors and contemporaries for a colder use of colors and a severe and melancholic chiaroscuro. It is especially during his travels between Italy, Germany and Poland that Bellotto develops a personal and distinctive style as demonstrated by “The Market Square of the New Town of Dresden”, a masterpiece of his maturity, an image of a European city not only as a theater of beauty, but also as a living and complex space.
“Following the success achieved here in Cuneo in recent years – explains the President of Intesa Sanpaolo Gian Maria Gros-Pietro – the exhibition presented today and created together with the CRC Foundation confirms how art can contribute to consolidating the presence of Intesa Sanpaolo in the Cuneo area, one of its chosen territories, and strengthen the bond with stable shareholders such as the Foundations”.
