MARIO PANARELLO is an architect, art historian and doctor in Conservation of Architectural and Environmental Heritage. He has also taught Art history at the University of Calabria in Cosenza, the Mediterranean University in Reggio Calabria and the Academy of Fine Arts in Bari. He is an external expert art historian at the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape in Cosenza. He is also editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Esperide. Cultura artistica in Calabria. His research focuses on late Mannerist and Baroque sculpture, on which he has written several essays and monographs, including Artisti della tarda maniera nel viceregno di Napoli. Mastri scultori, marmorari e architetti (Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2010) and Fanzago e fanzaghiani in Calabria. Il circuito artistico nel Seicento fra Roma, Napoli e la Sicilia (Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2012).

panarello1969@gmail.com

Aspects of Neapolitan sculpture in the first decades of the 17th century: the figure of Giovan Domenico Monterosso between the late mannerism and proto-baroque

Giovan Domenico Monterosso, son of the Vicentine stonecutter Cristoforo, worked as a sculptor between late Mannerism and the rising Baroque culture, which saw the emergence of important figures such as Cosimo Fanzago. The partnership established by Monterosso with some marble workers and sculptors of the time, including the Florentine Tommaso Montani, did not simplify the studies for a clear reconstruction of his catalogue, which has only begun to take shape in the last few decades, thanks also to a considerable amount of documents. The essay retraces some stages of the artist’s activity, proposing a series of new attributions. His artworks, although modest, reveal a certain interest in an introspective, sometimes marked, research of faces, with which he aligns himself with some naturalistic instances, later developed in the works of more skilled authors.

MATTEO SALOMONE graduated in History of Art at the University of Bologna in 2021, with a thesis on the sculptural decoration of the Basilica of Santa Maria Immacolata (1856-1904), in Genoa. He’s a PhD student in Art History at the Tor Vergata University of Rome, conducting research on the Nineteenth century sculpture in Genoa.

matteo.salomone01@gmail.com

Agostino Allegro sculptor (1846-1889): a first study

Agostino Allegro (1846-1889) was one of the most talented pupils of Santo Varni (1807-1885), the greatest Genoese sculptor of the nineteenth century. Allegro was capable of combining in his most complex sculptures different disciplines, from architecture to ornamentation, as evidenced by the Queirolo Tomb in the Staglieno cemetery and the sumptuous and hyper-decorative Saint Peter’s Chapel in the new Basilica of Santa Maria Immacolata, in Genoa. He also devoted himself to restoration activities and to protection of local heritage, following the example of his master Varni. Although he died quite young, and his corpus counts only about twenty sculptures, he was largely appreciated by the coeval critics both at a local and national level. Allegro was indeed an absolute original exponent of the Genoa realist scene, not only because of his vast interests, but also for having spent seven years in Rome, where he could directly study both the greatest artists of the past and new tendencies in the national art. This first study aims at analysing the plastic activity of Agostino Allegro, mostly following his significant critical reception, and compiling a catalogue of his works.

ANNE-LISE DESMAS is Senior Curator and Head of the Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She received her Diplôme de recherche from the École du Louvre and a Ph.D. in art history from the Sorbonne, and was a pensionnaire of the Villa Medici-Académie de France. Her research, upon which she has published extensively, focuses on Italian and French sculpture of the 17th-19th centuries (see her book, Le ciseau et la tiare, École française de Rome, 2013). At the Getty, she has worked on several exhibitions and catalogs, including Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture (2008) and Bouchardon: Royal Artist of the Enlightenment (2016). She is currently preparing a catalog raisonné of the Getty’s French sculpture collection and, with a colleague at the Art Institute of Chicago, an exhibition and catalog on the sculptor Camille Claudel (2023-24).

adesmas@getty.edu

Paolo Troubetzkoy in the United States

While the international career of the Italian sculptor, Paolo Troubetzkoy (1866–1938), is well known, his sojourns in the United States have received less scholarly attention. This article investigates, as thoroughly as possible, Troubetzkoy’s sojourns in America which lasted a few months in 1911 and again in 1912 and nearly seven years between 1914 and 1920. Through a systematic survey of contemporary newspapers, American bibliographies, and archival research at various institutions, this article offers a precise chronology of Troubetzkoy’s documented exhibitions and commissions while demonstrating how a network of artists and collectors aided his successful career. Providing new discoveries on his oeuvre, this study highlights the sculptor’s incredible ability to take full advantage of the time he spent in various American cities on the East Coast, Mid-West, and in California.

ALFONSO PANZETTA is Professor of History of Contemporary Art at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, where he also coordinates the Art Restoration School. He is a specialist in Italian sculpture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the author of Dizionario degli scultori italiani dell’Ottocento e del primo Novecento. Da Canova ad Arturo Martini. He has curated several exhibitions and their scientific catalogues, as well as numerous monographic studies and general catalogues. In parallel to his essayist career, his didactic activities focus on courses about the History of Sculpture, from the Ancient times to the contemporary. He has been the museum director of the Montevarchi Civic Museum “Il Cassero per la Scultura” for a decade. In 2004, he won a Prize for Culture of the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers thanks to his activities in the field of essay writing.

www.alfonsopanzetta.it

Out of the shadows. Tracing a first artistic biography of HRH Bona Sancipriano di Baviera di Savoia-Genova (1896-1971) by employing her personal writings and records

Since not much is known about the artistic activities of HRH Bona Sancipriano di Baviera di Savoia-Genova, her work has often been discussed with inaccuracies and lack of clarity. The recent discovery of various letters the Princess sent to her master sculptor Felice Tosalli (1883-1958) – as part of his private documents, today preserved in the State Archives of Turin – now makes it possible to “trace back” her artistic and productive efforts as well as to pinpoint some of the most significant fascist exhibitions and Venice Biennials she took part in. It also allows to further clarify her actual involvement with both the German porcelain factory Rosenthal and the Italian Turin-based pottery Lenci. Every recent scholarly investigation and public presentation about Lenci’s manufacturing history has somewhat overlooked Bona di Baviera’s contributions, commonly understated as a one-time-only model creation in 1929. On the contrary, her involvement was much broader: an extensive study of the letters has indeed revealed at least thirteen models supplied to the pottery between 1929 and 1932, and even more details about her complicated relationship with the factory owner, Enrico Scavini. Finally, it was by cross-referencing the newly discovered information in Bona di Baviera’s writings with the outcomes of a research conducted on several printed materials of the time that dozens of works in bronze, marble, wood and terracotta have all been documented and attributed to the Princess.

GUICCIARDO SASSOLI DE’ BIANCHI STROZZI specialised at the University of Bologna. His research interests are the history of art criticism in the 19th and 20th centuries. He co-curated the Margherita Sarfatti exhibitions at MART and the Casa d’Arte Futurista Depero (Rovereto 2018) and was one of the organisers of the 35th CIHA World Congress of Art History (Florence 2019) alongside Marzia Faietti (Department of Prints and Drawings of the Uffizi) and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institute. Recently, he published the essay Margherita Sarfatti, Novecento and Futurism (De Gruyter, 2020), the volume Raffaello 1920-1922 Percezione / Raphael 1920-1922 Perceptions  (Minerva, 2020) and curated the exhibitions and catalogues: Aroldo Bonzagni e il suo tempo (Bologna, Raccolta Lercaro, 13 November 2020 – 10 January 2021), Il Trittico del Centenario. Leonardo 1919 – Raffaello 1920 – Dante 1921 (Roma, Villa Farnesina, 16 June 2021 – 13 January 2022) and Omar Galliani Lorenzo Puglisi Tintoretto (Riga, The Art Museum Riga Bourse with Le Gallerie degli Uffizi, 21 August – 14 November 2021).

debianchi.sassoli@studio.unibo.it

Margherita Sarfatti and Modern Architecture. Origins of the Monumento alla Medaglia d’oro Roberto Sarfatti by Giuseppe Terragni

In January 1918 Roberto Sarfatti died at the front leading an assault against the Austrian trenches. He is the youngest Italian recipient of the Gold Medal of Military Valour from the Great War. Roberto was the son of the well-known and influential Margherita Grassini Sarfatti (1880-1961), journalist, art critic and biographer of Benito Mussolini. Roberto enlisted whilst still a teenager (he was born in 1900), against the will of his family. Like many other people of his age, he was driven by the desire to explore the unknown. His death provoked a strong reaction, both due to the relative prominence of his family but also due to his youth and the heroic manner of his death. Emotions ran particularly high in Milan, where a street was named after him on which Bocconi University now stands. Sarfatti’s body was only discovered in the 1930s. Margherita Sarfatti asked Giuseppe Terragni to plan and execute a small monument for her son in the highlands of Asiago where he died. This monument became one of the most significant symbols of Italian architecture of the interwar period.

GIOVANNI RUBINO born in 1978, he graduated in Modern Literature from the University of Roma Tre in 2003. From 2005 to 2008 he attended the School of Specialisation in Art History at the University of Udine. In 2012 he obtained his PhD with a project on the Italian presence at the exhibitions nove tendencije in Zagreb, at the University of Udine in cotutela with the University of Zagreb. In 2015 he was scientific advisor for the Munari politecnico exhibition at the Museo del Novecento in Milan and co-editor of the volume Munari Politecnico. From 2016 to 2017 he studied Lucio Fontana’s environments and wrote bibliographical entries for the catalogue exhibition Lucio Fontana. Ambiente/Environments, held at the Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan. In 2017 he won a research grant from the Fondazione Memofonte Onlus in Florence in collaboration with the Accademia della Crusca and the Scuola Superiore Normale di Pisa, for the lexical analysis and digitisation of futurism manifestos. From 2019 to 2022, he was recruited as a Research Fellow in History of Contemporary for the Department of Humanistic Studies at Roma Tre University.

giovannirubino78@gmail.com

Dino’s Ear, from the loss of sculpture to humanised nature, in the Forma Viva symposium. 1961-1965

At the Forma Viva symposium in 1965 Dino Basaldella presented a monumental sculpture hoisted over the industrial area of Ravne na Koroškem, Slovenia. This work linked Dino’s artistic achievements and those of Italian sculpture, according to the canons of the Informal movement. The symposium was also part of the relationship between Italy and former Yugoslavia, thanks to the art critic Umbro Apollonio, Italian member of Forma Viva. Aiming to highlight various sculptural research that contributed to the affirmation of iron welding, I would like to investigate the parallelisms between Dino and contemporary sculpture in the sphere of Informal. Furthermore, we can see how Dino drew creative lymph from the sense of disorientation of sculpture to bring his work into a humanised natural landscape. Ravne’s Ear, based on the relationship between artist and industry, belongs to a season that changed the status of sculpture and its very space of fruition.

PETRA RICHTER, Dr. phil., studied History of arts, Philosophy and German literature in Kiel, Bochum and Rome. Dissertation 1998: Mit, neben, gegen. Die Schüler von Joseph Beuys (With, Besides, Against. The Students of Joseph Beuys), Düsseldorf 2000. From 1992-2012 she worked as program-manager in the publishing house Richter-Verlag, Düsseldorf. 2018 member and since 2020 President of the jury “Joseph Beuys Research Prize”, Museum Schloss Moyland Foundation. Publications about art history of the 60s and 70s with main focus on Joseph Beuys as teacher and the reception of his art term, and Beuys’ relation to Italy. Recent publications: Joseph Beuys. Ein Erdbeben in den Köpfen der Menschen. Neapel Rom 1971-1985 (An Earthquake in People’s Mind), Düsseldorf 2017; Joseph Beuys in Wartime Southern Italy, 1943 (cat. Intuition, Kleve 2022). Lives in Düsseldorf.

mail@petra-richter.de

Palazzo Regale. The artistic testament of Joseph Beuys through his statements

For several decades, southern Italy was a source of inspiration for Joseph Beuys’ artistic activity. Despite his poor health, Beuys completed the four exhibition projects he had planned in 1971 with gallery owner Lucio Amelio in Naples in 1985. With the installation Terremoto in Palazzo (Earthquake in the Palace), conceived in the aftermath of the 1981 Irpinia earthquake, the artist turned his gaze to the socio-political contradictions of the time and the lost anthropological equilibrium, pointing to possible ways of restoring it. His closeness to the people of the earthquake-affected areas was also manifested in the vigorous text Alcune richieste e domande sul Palazzo nella testa umana (Some Requests and Questions about the Palace in the Human Head), in which he intended to convey to the people an awareness of their dignity and sovereignty. Since – according to Beuys – an over-emphasis of the catastrophe had prevailed in Terremoto in Palazzo, he wanted to create a counter-image with the Palazzo Regale (Royal Palace), to bring out the kingship of each human being. This last large installation became his autobiographical and artistic testament, and with it Beuys took leave of Naples in December 1985, a month before his death.

PAOLO PARMIGGIANI is an art historian specialised in Renaissance sculpture with a PhD from the University of Naples Federico II. He has published articles and essays on 15th-century Florentine sculptors and architects (Bernardo Rossellino, Giovanni di Bertino, Desiderio da Settignano, Antonio del Pollaiolo, Andrea del Verrocchio, Francesco and Andrea Ferrucci, Giuliano da Sangallo and Benedetto da Maiano) and he has taken part in international conferences and exhibitions (Fondazione Federico Zeri, Bologna; Biblioteca Laurenziana,  Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Palazzo Strozzi and Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence; Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Rhodes College, Memphis; Galleria Nazionale, Parma; Galleria Nazionale della Marche, Urbino; and CISA-Palladio Museum, Vicenza).

paoloparmiggiani@gmail.com

Porta Capuana and the Brothers Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano in Naples

This study reconstructs the works of Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano in Naples, with a special focus on the Porta Capuana, attributed in the sources to the elder brother, Giuliano. Although Giuliano’s role in the construction of the city gate has always seemed consistent with his documented activity for the Aragonese rulers, no direct documentary or convincing stylistic confirmation concerning the gate has been found. Attributing to Benedetto da Maiano the so-called St Gennaro on the frieze of the door, this paper confirms that the da Maiano brothers were involved and offers new insights for an understanding of the Porta Capuana. In particular, the study reopens the debate as to whether a group with the Coronation of Alfonso II of Aragon (now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence), originally belonged to the gate and whether Benedetto played a further role in the Porta Capuana project with this imposing work of figurative sculpture, also thought to have been for a vaguely identified Porta Reale.

VIVIANA COSTAGLIOLA is an art historian and currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Bibliotheca Hertziana Max-Planck Institute for Art History, with a project about the photographic documentation of the art-historical heritage of Naples and southern Italy (1861-1914). She graduated in art history from the University of Naples “Federico II” where she also received her Ph.D. in art history in May 2020. Her doctoral dissertation was focused on the Observant Franciscan church of Santa Maria la Nova in Naples. During the doctoral program, she was a fellow at the International Society of Franciscan Studies (Assisi) and the Italian Institute of Philosophical Studies (Naples). In 2022 she was also a research fellow at the Freie Univeristät Berlin, Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities,” with a project entitled “Agent of blindness: travel guides and photography of Southern Italy (1869-1927)”. Part of this work has been presented in the past year at the Kunsthistorisches Institut (Florence), the Center for Italian Modern Art (New York), and the Italienzentrum of the Freie Universität (Berlin).

viviana.costagliola@gmail.com

The Chapel of Crucifix in Santa Maria la Nova in Naples: clarifications on its late 16th century sculptural structure and transformations during the 17th century

The Chapel of the Crucifix is located in cornu Epistulae inside the franciscan church of Santa Maria la Nova in Naples. Dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin until the Eighties of the 16th century, the chapel was entitled to the Crucifix during the first half of the 17th century. A wooden crucifix sculpted by Giovanni da Nola (circa 1517-1519), previously located on the road-screen of the church, was placed upon the altar and unfortunately largely destroyed in 1979. Until today, the chapel has been studied only in its late fifteenth-century phase, when it belonged to Matteo Ferrillo count of Muro, tutor and chamberlain of Alfonso duke of Calabria, whose tomb and sediale can be seen today in the small cloister in Santa Maria la Nova. This paper aims to clarify the patronages subsequent to Ferrillo one and, thanks to the contribution of new data, the transformations of the chapel during the seventeenth century.

ADRIANA CONCONI, art historian, has diligently investigated and currently specializes in Nineteenth century and Twentieth century Italian sculpture in Lombardy. She is the author of the monograph volume Giovanni Battista Lombardi (2006), recipient of the G.P. Orsello – Città di S. Marinella Culture Award under the High Patronage of the President of the Republic, which she officially received at the Capitoline Hill in Rome. Co-author with Piero and Giovanni Lechi of the volume La Grande Collezione (2010), she dedicated a chapter on the sculptural section of the collection. She collaborated with the Certosa di Bologna writing essays and texts for its exhibitions. She has been in charge of the didactic texts for the catalog of the exhibition Montezuma, Fontana, Mirko – mosaic sculpture from its origins to the present, curated by Alfonso Panzetta and held at the MIUR, Art Museum of the city of Ravenna (2017). She has been the curator of several exhibitions and awards, as well as author of many catalogs. Currently, she is working on the monograph volume dedicated to the sculptor Giovanni Emanueli.

adrianaconconifedrigolli@gmail.com

Cecidere manus: the Monument to Emilia Filonardi Lombardi

The Monument to Emilia Filonardi Lombardi, produced by her husband Giovanni Battista Lombardi (1822-1880) between 1872 and 1875, and placed at the Verano cemetery in Rome, represents one of the artist’s highest achievements. Born in Rezzato, a small town near Brescia, after attending the Royal Academy of Brera for a few years and the study of Lorenzo Vela, brother of the renown Vincenzo, Lombardi moved to Rome, where he studied at the Academy of San Luca as a pupil of Pietro Tenerani. He obtained commissions for funeral monuments in his hometown, for the cemetery of the Certosa in Bologna and for the Verano in Rome, as well as for busts and female subjects, either biblical characters or inspired by a “charming” genre, executed in several versions and currently present mainly in the United States of America. Grieving the loss of his young wife, Lombardi approached poetic realism with a degree of caution, and portrayed one of his spouse’s last embraces to her six-year-old son.

STEFANO MOSCATELLI was born in Bari in 1997. He graduated in “Visual Arts” at the University of Bologna with a dissertation about Vincenzo Gemito. He is currently attending the School of Specialization at the University of Milan and he is also a PhD student at Sapienza University of Rome. Among his main fields of interest are the art of the second half of the nineteenth century, the relations between the Italian and French sculpture during that same period and the art criticism of the twentieth century.

stefanomoscatelli652@gmail.com

The Portrait of Jean Baptiste Faure: an unpublished bust by Vincenzo Gemito in the deposit of the Opéra Garnier in Paris

The following article is the first analysis of the Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Faure by Vincenzo Gemito, whose location and conservation status had not been known until now. This unprecedented analysis has been conducted and demonstrated thanks to pictures taken by the author and precise historiographical sources. The research includes the study of historical and social matters that are useful to retrace the history of the Potrait, as well as the relations that Gemito had in Paris with the artistic and social environments of the city. With the support of archivial and bibliography sources, the author aimed to focus on the period from 1877 and 1878, years within which the bust should be dated, as it was exposed at the Salon of 1878 with the Portrait of Giovanni Boldini.

MARIA GRAZIA GARGIULO is professor of History of Modern Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples and of History of Applied Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia. A scholar of Italian decorative arts, she is the editor of important publications. Author of two monographs dedicated to the master potter Sandro Vacchetti and the volume dedicated to Lenci graphics. She collaborates with Museums for Exhibitions and in the institutional activities of the superintendence; in 2010, he curated the Lenci Ceramics section for the Triennale di Milano Design Museum. In 2015, she conceived and curated the ceramics and decorative arts section at the Museo del Novecento in Naples. In 2018, he collaborated on the Lenci Ceramics exhibition at the Museo Internazionale della Ceramica in Faenza. From 2018 to the present, she is a member of the editorial secretariat of the scientific journal «Confronto». In 2020 she collaborated on the exhibition Liberty at the Gallerie d’Italia in Napoli. She has published articles in trade journals, essays and entries for exhibition catalogs and miscellaneous volumes, dealing with topics related to ancient and 20th-century Italian Decorative Arts, the history of ceramics, sculpture, and modern and contemporary art.

graziagalanterie@alice.it

When sculpture becomes research. Luigi Parisio and the unpublished bronze of Pulcinella and Colombina

A versatile artist who experimented with a variety of techniques, Luigi Parisio achieved considerable success in both hyalurgy and sculpture; a reputation that was also recognised in Paris, where he opened his own glassworks, the “Fabrique de verres artistiques”. Nevertheless, to investigate Parisio’s artistic universe, a significant rediscovery is needed in order to give a complete picture of his career and works. Many works are now lost on the market, while others survive thanks to evidence in exhibition catalogues or photographic archives. Pulcinella and Colombina is a new group of sculptures, which stands out for the quality of its execution and the peculiarity of the subjects represented; the masks of the Commedia dell’Arte recall, in fact, the eclectic Neapolitan reality and the artistic and cultural horizon with which the artist Luigi Parisio interacted.

MARCO COLLARETA was born in Merano (BZ) on 8 March 1952. He graduated in 1975 from the University of Pisa with a thesis on the history of art criticism. He was a researcher at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa from 1980 to 1993; associate professor at the University of Udine from 1993 to 1997 and at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa from 1997 to 2002; full professor at the University of Bergamo from 2002 to 2008. Since 2008 he has been teaching as full professor at the University of Pisa. His research interests focus on European art between the Late Middle Ages and the early modern era, with contributions relating to the history of the arts system, the birth of the artist’s biography, and the technical and stylistic aspects of the history of sculpture and goldsmith’s art.

marco.collareta@unipi.it

Donatello. The Renaissance

This short paper consists of a review of the exhibition Donatello. Il Rinascimento, held in Florence from March 19 to July 31 2022, and of its catalog. After a brief profile of the great sculptor’s critical fortune, the paper gives an account of the extensive essay that frames the exhibition and the publishing initiative, of the different sections of the exhibition and catalog, and of the files accompanying the objects on display. The excellent judgment expressed in this review is motivated by the soundness of the general project and by its ability to stimulate questions from the more or less educated user. In particular, the methodological approach exploited by the curator Francesco Caglioti and his collaborators Laura Cavazzini, Aldo Galli and Neville Rowley is emphasized.

DANIELA RUCCO holds a PhD and is currently an expert in contemporary art history, methodology of research and teaching at the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Salento. The main interests of the artistic research, started in 2009, are focused on the study of the southern art of the nineteenth and twentieth century with particular regard to the Neapolitan sculpture for what concerns the monographic publication dedicated to Raffaele Belliazzi (1935-1917) and the figurative arts of Terra d’Otranto with particular reference to the investigations related to the Salento-born Stanislao Sidoti (1837-1922). Her publications are also dedicated to some of the most influential artists of the late 20th century. She has participated in seminars and conferences of national importance.

danielarucco5@gmail.com

On the sidelines of the recent exhibition in Lecce. Reflections on the sculptural production of Francesco De Matteis, drawing from contexts of Salento and Neapolitan area

The personality of Francesco De Matteis, sculptor, interior decorator, plasticizer and caricaturist from Salento, emerges from oblivion in the first anthological exhibition Francesco De Matteis. 1852-1917, set up in the spaces of the Historical Museum of Lecce (MUST). The project was born from the need to start drafting a first systematic and monographic reorganization of De Matteis’ artistic production. The artist from Salento trained at the workshop of Achille De Lucrezi in Lecce and worked on clay in local pottery factories, mainly in the laboratories of the Manufacture Paladini di San Pietro in Lama. The young De Matteis, like the other artists, lived in Lecce the fervor and cultural ferments of the post-unification era. On 5 February 1877 he began attending the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Naples. He was admitted to the class of sculpture of Tommaso Solari and continued to update on small-format works, Drawing inspiration from the attendance with the eclecticism of the Neapolitan artistic environment and developing a production of sculpture of such a level to be counted among the most deserving of the panorama of southern sculpture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.