The exhibition focuses particularly on the transition from neoclassical to realist sculpture during the end of the 18th century til the middle of the 19th, thus stressing a specific change of season from an institutional and academic status, by pointing out the pieces and reference style, to a more prestigious clientele, especially for quality of taste, not only for fame and economic availability, who were able to launch marble and sculpture on the road to fortune.

This has been possible by not only relying on the historical legacy of a centuries-old tradition, but on the very qualities of sculpture, for how the statues that are collected to be exhibited to the public, became instruments of knowledge and aesthetic education of taste, combining education with the spiritual and poetic quality of the images and the recognition of the value of a material and the ability of a trade.

On this occasion, an exhibition will be held, featuring 16 sculptures made from marble from the Museo dell’Ermitage, 7 plaster molds property of the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara as well as a copy by Lorenzo Bartolini kept at the Art Institute of Massa: these are works owned by Czar Nicholas I, a passionate admirer of the modern sculpture housed at the Nuovo Ermitage, an institution linked to the Carrarese School and its most important protagonists.

At the end of 1845, Nicholas I Tsar of Russia visited Italy privately, swelling the ranks of that singular artistic pilgrimage, called “Grand Tour”, which was a training program to discover the exotic Mediterranean world.

He arrived in Rome on December 13 and during his stay, the Tsar doesn’t not just visit the landmarks and monuments of the city; he was accompanied to the studios of the leading sculptors living in Rome, including those of Carrara Pietro Tenerani and Luigi Bienaimè.

Nicholas I looks and behaves as a collector: his purpose is to buy or commission works for the hall of Modern Sculpture, which he intends to set up at the Nuovo Hermitage, the first museum of imperial Russia, which is being built right next to the Palazzo d ‘Inverno

To mark the location and characteristics of the exhibition there are actually sculptures of precursors, such as Giovanni Antonio Cybei, who was the first director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, Lorenzo Bartolini, who directed the Institute during the Napoleonic period, and Antonio Canova, who didn’t just receive the important contribution of an extraordinary material from Carrara but also some truly exceptional students.

The exhibition especially points out the branching out in Italy and in Europe, the sculptors who were formed in Carrara who then formed new styles of sculpture after the neoclassical period: starting from Lorenzo Bartolini in Florence, Pietro Tenerani, Luigi Bienaimè e Carlo Finelli in Rome, Christian Daniel Rauch in Berlin, the Triscornia family in Petersburg, and to some extent, in the wake of Benedetto Cacciatori, Carlo Finelli once again in Milan.

For this occasion, prestigious sculptures are making their grand return to Carrara. They were appreciated since their first appearance and then encoded as the mirror of an era in the history of art. It’s enough to mention the Orpheus of Antonio Canova or the Trust in God by Lorenzo Bartolini, Psyche Fainted by Peter Tenerani, Love with pigeons by Louis Bienaimè or Venus in the shell by Carlo Finelli. Seven plasters, previously housed at the Accademia of Carrara, with specific references to the works on display will be exibited as well as a copy until recently unknown of Trust in God, preserved at the Art Institute of Massa. The exhibition traces the path of the sculptor who founded a school that forms and trains artist who then take on new students and re-launch and revive laboratories and workshops, where he renews the aristocratic importance and beauty of the artistic materials: the Carrara marble.