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June 8 - June 15,2003 |
A feminine view of the mysteries and secrets of Rome
Women are the focus in the Le Donne di Roma exhibition in the Eternal City celebrating the renowned and unknown
By Carmela Piccione
Originally Published: 2003-05-25
Courageous, superb, proud, sensual, dominating, brilliantly intellectual, martyrs and saints, icons of absolute, perfect, disenchanted beauty, femmes fatales... they are the Women of Rome. From the Roman Empire to 1860 (Donne di Roma. Dall'impero romano al 1860), the centrepiece of an interesting exhibition running until June 15 in the halls of Ariccia's Palazzo Chigi.
The curators are Francesco Petrucci and Marina Natoli. This is a fascinating look at women's universe, a history declined in the feminine that leads us back through centuries, unveiling dark, secret plots, court intrigues, absolute dedication to power, marriages and passion for art, culture, painting, and music. The list includes Artemisia Gentileschi, Lucrezia Borgia, Margherita d'Austria and Beatrice Cenci, Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilij, the terrible Pimpaccia, Olimpia Aldobrandini, Paolina Borghese, Anna Maria Ribeiro (Garibaldi's Brazilian wife), and Ortensia and Maria Mancini, the beautiful and extravagant nieces of Cardinal Mazzarino, the Prime Minister of King Louis XIV: "among the most beautiful women in the French court", as Madame de La Fayette wrote.
However, the exhibition also commemorates more anonymous faces, of women who left their mark on history without even realizing it. These are mostly courtesans, lovers, or mistresses, immortalized in a painting or a sculpture or simply mentioned and remembered in the exhibition. People like Fulvia, spy and agent for Cicero; Sempronia, linked to Catilina, who relied on her (and her friends) for corrupting or provoking attacks; Fillide Melandroni, the courtesan loved by Caravaggio; Costanza Bonarelli, inseparable from Bernini (whose bust is on display at Palazzo Chigi); Vittoria Caldoni, famous model from Albano, immortalized by artists like Thorvaldsen, Vernet, von Hesse, Ivanov, Overbeck, and Lapcenko, a Russian painter who married her. Hers was a typically Italian type of beauty, always portrayed against a backdrop of ruins or pristine nature.
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