Lorenzo Bartolini: Scultore del bello naturale, by Daniel B. Gallagher


Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Portrait of Bartolini, 1806, Musée Ingres, Montauban.

Lorenzo Bartolini: Scultore del bello naturale. Galleria dell’Accademia (Florence) until November 6th.

The rebellion against French academicism in the nineteenth century was carried out from several angles. A variety of new themes, subjects, and techniques were used as ammunition, and the expanding international market widened the battlefield. It was more than a two-sided contest between “conformists” and “non-conformists,” for there were multiple camps of non-conformists each of whom eventually found something else to cling to.

Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850) and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres clung to ancient art and that of the Quattrocento, albeit with a unique, personal touch and a foundation in the Neo-Classical principles they learned from Jacques Louis David. They, along with Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret, took up residence in David’s relocated studio at the Capuchin Convent. They admired their teacher’s emphasis on drawing and the use of live models, but they were also captured by Englishman John Flaxman (1755-1826), whose illustration and sculpture showed a range of freedom previously unknown to continental Neo-Classicism. This marked the beginning of a road that would lead Bartolini back to his Italian homeland enflamed with a passion for natural beauty and minute detail.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!



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