The museum event of the year. Everyone agrees on this, talking about the exhibition ‘The art of travelling. Italy and the Grand Tour’, from this afternoon (vernissage at 5.30pm) to 27 October at the Lia Museum. An exhibition that intends to focus on the great journey of training and education that between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries involved reaching places full of memory, where one could find comparison with the past and refreshment for body and soul. Italy was the country of memory and the great garden of Europe, and even our gulf and its city became the destination, albeit late, of these cultured pilgrimages, a true natural attraction because, as John Ruskin stated in 1845 when here comes in the moonlight, no other place is as “destined for watercolor” as this one.
In short, a further opportunity to valorise the Lia collection, in dialogue with extraordinary works on loan from all over Italy, among others, from the National Gallery of Ancient Art of Palazzo Barberini in Rome, from the Civic Museums of Padua, from the Museum of Rome and from the Art Collection of the Cariplo Foundation. “An exhibition of great value which confirms our Lia Museum among the Italian structures capable of hosting exhibitions of an international level – declares the mayor Pierluigi Peracchini – The exhibition boasts exceptional masterpieces and prestigious loans, destined to fascinate and attract a large audience. The exhibition will lead us in the footsteps of travelers between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to discover Italy through cities such as Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples and, subsequently, our Gulf of Poets: a splendid opportunity to deepen our knowledge of our collections and explore the in the footsteps of the young scions of the European aristocracy”.
Rome, Venice, Florence, Naples: these are the four stages that the visitor to the exhibition, transforming himself into a nineteenth-century grandtourist, will discover in a completely new and immersive installation through an extraordinary aesthetic experience. The exhibition – curated by Andrea Marmori, with the contribution of Barbara Viale and the installation by Emanuele Martera – includes around fifty works including paintings, sculptures and objects and involves, in fact, the entire museum space, starting from a nucleus of works connected directly or indirectly to the Grand Tour preserved at the Lia Museum.
Marco Magi
