On Friday 16 December, in the magnificent halls of Palazzo Marucelli-Fenzi (Via San Gallo, 10 - Florence), currently home to the Department of History, Archaeology, Geography, Art and Performing Arts (SAGAS) of the University of Florence, the exhibition 'Arts in Dialogue. Late Baroque Echoes in the Sculptures of the Ginori Museum'.
The ceremony was attended by University of Florence Deputy Pro-rector Giovanni Tarli Barbieri, the President of the Fondazione Museo Archivio Richard Ginori della Manifattura di Doccia Tomaso Montanari and the Regional Museums of Tuscany Director Stefano Casciu, along with Fulvio Cervini, Deputy Director of the Department of History, Archaeology, Geography, Art and Entertainment (Sagas) at the University of Florence and exhibition curators Cristiano Giometti (University of Florence), Andrea Di Lorenzo (Director of Museo Ginori) and Rita Balleri (Museo Ginori).
The exhibition, open from Dec. 16 to Feb. 17, compares the theatricality of Sebastiano Ricci's 18th-century paintings and Giovanni Baratta's stuccoes, which decorate the rooms of the Golden Age and Youth at the Crossroads, with the sculptures made or acquired in the 18th century by the Manifattura Ginori thanks to the collecting activity "for the use of the factory" of its founder, Carlo Ginori, who paid homage to the great tradition of late Florentine Baroque by translating into porcelain the compositions of sculptors Giovan Battista Foggini, Massimiliano Soldani Benzi, Giuseppe Piamontini, Antonio Montauti and Agostino Cornacchini.
In the rooms of the Palazzo Marucelli-Fenzi, exceptionally open to the public for the occasion, a selection of porcelain sculptures and terracotta and wax models from the Museo Ginori dialogues in a completely new way with the decorations made by Ricci and Baratta between 1705 and 1706.
Particularly interesting and striking is the juxtaposition of Baratta's stuccoes with three wax casts reproducing as many works by the same sculptor. Made by the Manifattura Ginori in the 1840s and brought together here for the first time since 1965, the casts belong to the Museo Ginori (Eurydice and Allegory of Prudence) and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello (Allegory of Wealth).
Organized by the Department of History, Archaeology, Geography, Art and Performing Arts (SAGAS) of the University of Florence together with the Museo Ginori, the exhibition has been produced in collaboration with the Regional Museums Directorate of Tuscany and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure and with the support of the Amici di Doccia Association.
Access to the exhibition is by reservation only (at mostra.fenzi@gmail.com) on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, with free guided tours for groups of up to 10 people, lasting 45 minutes. The exhibition will be closed from Dec. 23 to Jan. 8, with the exception of Dec. 27 and 29, during which it will be possible to visit from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
"The happiest thing about this occasion," said Tomaso Montanari, president of the Fondazione Museo Archivio Richard Ginori della Manifattura di Doccia, "is that two art venues usually inaccessible to the majority of the citizens of Florence and the world (i.e. the rooms of Palazzo Marucelli-Fenzi, extraordinary for Sebastiano Ricci's paintings and Baratta's stuccoes, and the Museo Ginori, closed while awaiting renovation) become visible again by interweaving and telling, through what is now musealized, the broader context of what is instead still alive and grafted into a palace frequented every day by so many girls and boys who study here.
It is a sign of vitality and it is also a promise for the future of a close collaboration between the University and the Museum, which share a single mission, that of research, the production of knowledge and its redistribution. I am very grateful to my colleague Rector Alessandra Petrucci and SAGAS Department Director Paolo Liverani, Cristiano Giometti, and all fellow art historians at the University of Florence."
"The exhibition Arts in Dialogue," said Cristiano Giometti, "is for the SAGAS department of the University of Florence an important occasion that marks the beginning of the collaboration with the Museo Ginori and offers the possibility to open to the public the monumental rooms of Palazzo Marucelli-Fenzi that house the magnificent decorative cycle of Sebastiano Ricci and Giovanni Baratta. The hope is to be able to begin a path of protection and enhancement of these rooms, masterpieces of European late Baroque art."
"The opportunity to see terracotta, waxes and porcelain from the Museo Ginori on display and in conversation with the beautiful and unknown eighteenth-century rooms of Palazzo Marucelli-Fenzi," said Stefano Casciu, Regional Director of Museums of Tuscany, "is unmissable, both to admire the quality and beauty of the works purchased or created by the Manifattura Ginori at the behest of the Founder, Marquis Carlo Ginori, and to discover one of the most beautiful Rococo settings in Florence, a jewel that I hope will soon return to the widest public accessibility.
This is a fine team effort between the Ginori Foundation, the University of Florence and the Regional Museums Directorate of Tuscany, with further contributions from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure and the Friends of Doccia, in the common desire to soon return to everyone the splendid and extremely rich legacy of the Richard Ginori Factory, a national cultural heritage."
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