Ravenna celebrates Pre-Raphaelites
Show is Italy's first ever on influential British movement
10 March, 18:54
(ANSA) - Ravenna, March 10 - The impact of Italian art on
Britain's influential 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite movement is
explored in a new exhibition in the coastal town of Ravenna.The event is Italy's first ever on the movement as a whole and aims to provide the Italian public with an overview of their work. Founded in the second half of the 1800s by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelites sought to break with artistic convention of the day.
They called for a revival of spontaneity and passion for nature, which they believed had been lost during the Mannerist revolution sparked by Raphael. The Pre-Raphaelites were particularly fascinated by the brilliant colours, attention to natural detail, extreme simplicity and intensity of expression in Italian medieval art. Italian art, landscapes and history played a critical role in their efforts to encourage British painting in a more personal and emotional direction. During its early years, the movement focused on medieval and pre-Renaissance styles but by the end of the 1850s, Pre-Raphaelite interest had expanded to include 15th-century paintings, particularly the work of Venetian artists.
In addition to the fascination with Italian art, the Pre-Raphaelites were also drawn by its literature.
Rossetti, the son of an Italian scholar who settled in London, was particularly inspired by Dante's writings and completed a series of exquisite watercolours and paintings illustrating key episodes of the Divine Comedy. The exhibition features numerous loans from British and US museums and private collections, including a string of works from the famous collection of Pre-Raphaelite works at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum. These are offset by a number of the original Italian masterpieces that inspired the movement, among which works by Fra Angelico, Perugino and various other 15th-century artists.
One particularly interesting section spotlights a series of mosaics in Rome's American church, St Paul within the Walls, completed by Edward Burne-Jones in 1850. A series of preparatory sketches and designs for the project, rarely displayed publicly, are also on show. The exhibition runs at the Ravenna Museum of Art until June 6, and then at the Ashmolean Museum from September 15 until December.
