Imagined Verona

A crowded Piazza delle Erbe is portrayed in the work of Ferrari, restoring the lively and participatory atmosphere of Verona in the 1830s. At the heart of the social and economic life of the city, the square is animated by a lively market frequented by a varied humanity.

The square is surrounded by palaces and buildings such as the Domus Nova and the façade of the Palazzo della Ragione, including the arch of the Costa so called for the presence, from the mid-18th century, of a whale coast that hangs from the vault.

Avanzi depicts the monumental staircase that leads to the main floor of Palazzo della Ragione. Symbol of the building’s institutional prestige, the staircase presents its original late-Gothic structure with Renaissance details added in the 16th century.

In the restoration of the building conducted by the architect Camillo Boito at the end of the 19th century, the architectural superstructures added over the centuries - including the loggia covering the staircase - were removed to recover an ideal original project.

Alfredo Savini, who became director of the Accademia Cignaroli in 1900, set up an open-air art school in Verona, promoting the didactic practice of painting en plein air. The painting is part of a series of landscapes dedicated by the artist to the surroundings of Verona.

The painting perfectly represents his realist research on the figure and the landscape: the girl, the artist's daughter, portrayed with fervid realism in the foreground, stands out against the Veronese landscape, characterized by bright, sunny colors.

The Veronese panorama is here interpreted in a Divisionist key by Baldassarre Longoni through a fullness of light, a light-color with which the artist breaks with the conventional rhetoric of the image, while not denying the realist model of landscape painting.

His stay in Verona took place at the end of the first twenty years of the 20th century when he was appointed professor of painting at the Accademia Cignaroli. The work belongs to this period and confirms Longoni's skill in landscape painting.

This painting by Ettore Beraldini depicts a view of the arches of the Portoni della Bra as seen from the house where the painter lived at the time. The scene is pervaded by the golden light of sunset that creates plays of shadows and determines a precious and material palette.

The wide curved pavement of the Liston is populated by elegant figures, under the pillar in the foreground are public service carriages, and high up in the center there is a courageous "repentant" who makes the 19th-century clock disappear.

In the course of Angelo Dall'Oca Bianca's artistic activity, representative painting of reality has been of great importance, taking his cue from scenes of everyday life in his native Verona and reproducing the most evocative views of his beloved city in a personal key.

The profiles of the Scaliger Arches, the monumental funerary complex of the Scala family built during the 14th century at the church of Santa Maria Antica near Piazza dei Signori, stand out in the moonlight. Two male figures in historical clothes walk into the night scene.