Each portrait gives us a representation, real or ideal, both of the physiognomy of the character depicted in it and of the historical and environmental context that surrounds him, starting from the hairstyle and clothes and ending with the background. In recent centuries, after the invention of printing, there have been numerous techniques used by artists, resulting from different materials such as wood (xylography), metal (intaglio) and stone (lithography), and from different work tools such as burin, drypoint or acids by corrosive action, the final result of which is ink on paper.
An interesting and extensive exhibition of over one hundred original printed portraits of exponents of Friulian history and culture, painted from the end of the 15th century (the oldest of 1493) to the beginning of the 20th, is currently on display in the Church of San Lorenzo di San Vito al Tagliamento, which can be visited on weekends or by reservation until May 19th. It is entitled «…to revive the memory of many rare and pilgrim talents» and is taken from the collection of prints by Deny and Severino Danelon, probably the most important of its kind in a private context in our region.
The catalog that illustrates it, after the introduction by Stefano Aloisi and a note on the various engraving techniques of Diana Cristante, presents a card for each work depicted, with an essential biography of the character, the name of the author, the dimensions and the technique used for printing. For many characters the artist is contemporary, therefore the portrait is to be considered faithful, for others however, and obviously for those who lived in ancient or medieval times, it is idealized or based on previous descriptions.
Alongside portraits in loose print, the exhibition features some period books in which they were included as an integral part. Among the numerous characters, we mention five portraits in burin and etching of Fra Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623), historian and consultant of the Republic of Venice, some on loose print (like that of the English engraver George Vertue) and one inserted in the frontispiece of a biographical volume published in the mid-eighteenth century in Helmstadt, which describes the origins of his father’s family from San Vito.
Several portraits, painted by various artists in different eras, celebrate the famous painter Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis known as Pordenone. Needlessly pompous, given the imminent end of the Serenissima Republic, appears that of the last doge of Venice, the Friulian Ludovico Manin (1726-1802), created by the contemporary artist Vincenzo Giaconi. Among the women, we mention the burin and etching portrait of Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi (1777-1820), buried in Villa Vicentina, by Eugène Gervais, the lithograph of the noblewoman Elisabetta Teresa Doria da Camino by Fernando Bassi, the etching in volume of the painter and writer Irene di Spilimbergo by Giacomo Aliprandi, the woodcut of the writer Caterina Percoto by Tranquillo Marangoni. The exhibition is advertised with the effigy of a strange character, Giovanni Lodovico Isolani, born in San Vito al Tagliamento in 1579 and died in Vienna in 1640, who became commander of an imperial Austrian regiment of Croats, who had his portrait painted by the contemporary artist Balthasar Moncornet with a showy oriental-style headdress.
Tags: Illustrious Friulians history culture images
