Ottocento Ad Arezzo: La Collezione Bartolini

In the early Middle Ages there was an extraordinary flowering of benevolent organizations in Italian cities. In Arezzo, those who wished to help their neighbors formed the Fraternita dei Laici; in 1262 they were granted a charter authorizing them to provide assistance to the needy, succor to the sick, and burial to the dead. With time they became a major force in Aretine cultural life, commissioning artworks that helped reshape the city, opening a library, and running the town theater. They also provided schooling.

After Ranieri Bartolini (1794-1856) had learned all he could in the Fraternita's school in Arezzo, they sent him to Florence's Accademia delle Belle Arti, and from thence to Rome, where he worked with the leading artists of the time, before returning to Arezzo, where he practiced his trade and also taught, at the Collegio Leopoldo.

In addition to teaching and painting he collected, amassing a huge number of paintings, sketches, studies, and illustrations, and engravings, some by Renaissance artists and others by his contemporaries. He left the collection to the city of Arezzo, which put it on display in the Pinacoteca; over the years some pieces either disappeared or were sold, and then the entire collection vanished during the War. Some of it -- about 5000 pieces, mostly sketches and studies, many from the art school where Bartolini taught (i.e. things that are perhaps commercially less interesting) -- was found in the attic of the Fraternita. They have now finished digitizing them and have put about 140 of the more interesting works on display.

Though these aren't, for the most part, pieces by leading artists, they provide a fascinating look into artist's daily lives -- studies where they reposition the figures, thinking with their pens as it were (the effect is like reading a scribbled-upon first draft of a manuscript), sketch books where they drew whatever came to mind, and works that were obviously done to quickly, to capture a moment or mood. There are also a number of finished works, some from the Fraternita's collection, and others derived from the preliminary studies, for example Pietro Benvenuti's Adoration of the Shepherds, and there are some pleasant sketches of archaeological artifacts (with the pieces from which they were drawn).

In short, the show opens a window onto a period few are familiar with -- the Early-Mid 1800s -- also onto a phase of artistic life -- preparation and composition -- that, again, few get to see, unless they're friends with artists and watch them at work.

Practical things:

The show is in the Church of Saints Lorentino and Pergentino, which the Fraternita restored for the occasion. It's located on Via Cavour, not far from the Duomo, and will be open daily except Mondays 10-7, until January 18, 2004.

Seeing the show will take about an hour. What to do after? There's the Bacci Chapel, with Piero Della Francesca's spectacular fresco cycle, and there's the home of Giorgio Vasari, the author of Lives of the Artists and a first-rate painter/architect in his own right. There are also the Medieval streets and squares, which are among the prettiest in Tuscany.

Getting there: Arezzo is on the major Florence-Rome rail line, and it's about a 40.minute train ride, from Florence.