From 29 September 2017 the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice hosts the exhibition Canova, Hayez, Cicognara. L’ultima gloria di Venezia curated by Paola Marini, Fernando Mazzocca and Roberto De Feo.
“Everything about Venice is, or was, extraordinary
her aspect is like a dream, and her history is like a romance”
Lord Byron
In the year of the bicentennial celebrations of the opening of the museum, this exhibition marks a unique moment in the artistic history of the Serenissima, commemorating the cultural revival of 1815 sparked by the return from Paris of the Triumphal Quadriga, or four Horses of Saint Mark, the iconic symbol of the city.
The acknowledged leader of this revival was the intellectual Count Leopoldo Cicognara, President of the Accademia di Belle Arti, who together with his friend Antonio Canova, the guiding spirit of the project, and Francesco Hayez, worked to create a museum on an international scale, a worthy setting for Venice’s unrivalled art heritage, yet one also suitable for promoting contemporary art.
The exhibition presents over 100 major works, arranged in nine thematic sections.
And here, for the first time in 200 years, a series of artefacts known as “The Homage of the Venetian Provinces” sent to the imperial court of Vienna in 1818 to mark the fourth marriage of Emperor Francis I, has been reunited and returned to their native city.
