When Giuseppe Mazzini ceased to live in Pisa, Lega ran to the home of the illustrious apostle of thought and action, and from the memories he took of the place, he composed a painting representing the last moments of the great Genoese
This is how Diego Martelli, in his profile of Silvestro Lega, recounts the genesis of the last portrait of Giuseppe Mazzini.
Today that painting 'returns', for the first time in 150 years, to the place where it was first imagined, the Domus Mazziniana, the old Rosselli Nathan house.
From 11 November to 15 March, it will be possible to admire, free of charge, in an evocative setting that evokes the room where Giuseppe Mazzini died - completely destroyed by the war - not the 'official' painting, The Last Moments of Mazzini Dying, but the 'alternative' version, painted by Silvestro Lega, almost at the same time, from the Pinacoteca Civica di Modigliana.
If The Last Moments portrays a melancholic, anti-rhetorical but pacified image of death, with a Mazzini who seems to be lying in sleep, the Bozzetto, which focuses exclusively on the head, expresses all the 'excited' drama of Lega's painting, the most radical and restless of the Macchiaioli, delivering us, with the anti-heroic representation of Mazzini dying, one of the highest peaks reached by European painting in the representation of the absolute drama of death.
The exhibition curated by the Domus Mazziniana and the National Committee established by the Ministry of Culture on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Giuseppe Mazzini's death is the first result of the Pisa Percorsi Museali network, desired and coordinated by the Municipality of Pisa, and is part of a broader collaboration with the Fondazione Palazzo Blu and the Museo della Grafica di Pisa.
The dying Mazzini is in fact a precious cameo that is part of the broader framework of the great exhibition on I Macchiaioli hosted until 26 February at Palazzo Blu, flanking the monographic exhibition Oltre la Macchia, dedicated by the Museo della Grafica to the engravings of Giovanni Fattori.
Through a path of rediscovery of the 'Macchia' movement that marked the beginning of artistic modernity in Italy, a collective homage of the city's cultural institutions and the entire city to one of the 'Fathers' of modern Italy politically but also culturally is thus realised in Pisa to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Mazzini's death.
A collaboration that is not only ideal but also takes the form of a series of reductions and free admission and a rich calendar of cultural events, conferences and educational and workshop activities for visitors and the entire city.
The exhibition can be visited during the opening hours of the Domus Mazziniana. Saturday and Sunday extraordinary openings with at least 10 bookings.
Opening hours:
Monday 8.30 - 13.30 14.30 - 17.30
Tuesday 8.30 a.m. - 1.30 p.m.
Wednesday 8.30 - 13.30 14.30 - 17.30
Thursday 8.30 a.m. - 1.30 p.m.
Friday 8.30 - 13.30 14.30 - 17.30
Saturday Open by appointment for schools only every second weekend of each month:
Saturday 9.30 - 17.30
Sunday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
For info and communications: eventi@domusmazziniana.it tel. +39 05024174 cell. +39 3405162418
