Self-Portraits. Ediz. illustrata

This catalogue, produced for the exhibition at Venetian Palazzo Franchetti, presents the prestigious collection of self-portraits of the Uffizi through an exhibition panorama of around seventy paintings of exceptional artistic quality.The reflected image of Narcissus seeking a hidden identity has been a subject of research for the personal introspection of artists through the centuries: from Filippino Lippi to Raphael; from Tintoretto to Guido Reni; up to the protagonists of 20th-century and contemporary art, the stimulating theme of the discovery of the self characterises the personal path of each artist until the personality is revealed.The fascinating itinerary of this volume discloses the dark side of altered identity; through a kind of journey back in time, it will be possible to know the faces and personalities of some of the protagonists of the international artistic scene: from the 15th and 16th centuries, with the presence of Filippino Lippi, Raphael, Primaticcio, Tintoretto, Guido Reni and Annibale Carracci; up to the 19th century with the testimonies of Francesco Hayez, Giovanni Fattori, Giovanni Boldini and Giuseppe Pelizza da Volpedo; to arrive finally at the protagonists of the 20th century and contemporary artists such as Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carrà, Marc Chagall, Michelangelo Pistoletto and numerous others.Post-Renaissance portrait painting placed the accent on man, witness to the absolute gift of life and fearful of death; the attention therefore shifted onto man's inner life, onto the peculiar characters of existence; also the stylistic manner of representation in painting changed its point of observation: the half-length portrait was clearly differentiated from the full-length figure, the portrait, and particularly the self-portrait, investigated the secret of immortality.This significant collection of self-portraits presents, in an exemplary manner, five centuries of painting told through the representation of the face, the very faces of the protagonists who have marked its history.Venice, Veneto Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts - Palazzo Franchetti27 January - 6 May 2007