Carlo Sisi presenta il gruppo scultoreo di Lorenzo Bartolini delle Sorelle Campbell, abitualmente esposto in Gipsoteca e oggi, con il nuovo allestimento della Galleria, visibile nel braccio sinistro della Tribuna del David. Le due giovani ritratte sono Emma e Julia, due delle cinque figlie di Lady Charlotte Campbell, la nobildonna scozzese che si trovava a Firenze tra il settembre 1819 e l’agosto 1820 con l’amica Lady Mary Berry, per scrivere un libro sui santuari toscani. Un’opera leggiadra, omaggio di Lorenzo Bartolini al suo maestro Antonio Canova che Sisi descrive con grande maestria, introducendoci inoltre al fascino dell’atmosfera internazionale che si respirava a Firenze in quel periodo storico, la Firenze della contessa d’Albany e dei principi Demidoff ma anche dei Lorena.
Between September 1819 and August 1820,
Lady Charlotte Campbell is in Florence
with a very enterprising friend, Mary Berry,
and they are in Florence to write a book on the Tuscan shrines.
Together with the Scottish aristocracy Lady,
there are the five daughters.
Two of them, Emma and Iulia,
will have the privilege of being hosted
in the studio of the then famous Lorenzo Bartolini
to be portrayed.
A privilege that rewards them,
rewards them for their beauty and for their grace.
A term that at the height of the 1920s
had a very important meaning.
The two girls are caught in an unstable moment.
It almost seems to hear the sound
of what was defined in contemporary correspondence
as the waltz of Edinburgh.
A very sweet dance that makes them agile
like modern grace.
And this is precisely the operation that Lorenzo Bartolini does.
First of all, a tribute to a genius
who was still thriving in Italy and in Europe of the time,
Antonio Canova.
We think of the beautiful dancers,
the one with the finger on the chin,
the one with the tambourine.
Figures of women who dance,
suspended, almost forgetting the weight of matter.
On the other hand, a very modern grace.
And this is the title of Lorenzo Bartolini.
Lorenzo Bartolini had brought
into the Academy of Florence,
already as a young man, a new message.
The masters of the time forced us to the beautiful ideal.
The overcoming of the contingency of reality
towards a perfect synthesis that recalled the ancient.
Lorenzo Bartolini, on the other hand,
feels the throbbing of nature.
What he will define as the beautiful relative.
The possibility, that is, to grasp the observed nature,
all the details.
That grace that is a fragrant grace,
not the grace obtained from the ancient.
The two girls perfectly synthesize
this wonderful moment
that reflects another aspect to underline
as a social and historical context.
They are two young foreigners,
they have a natural beauty,
they dedicate themselves to dance,
they enter into that climate of serene politics
and serene balance
that distinguished Florence from the Restoration.
The years of Elisa Baciocchi have just passed,
the Napoleonic Empire is over.
Florence is the international Florence,
the Florence of the Countess of Albany,
of the Princes of Midoff.
The extraordinary place where
even the opposites coincided perfectly
is the Florence of the Lorena.
And so grace, nature,
beauty comforted by dance
are the elements that synthesize
this extraordinary masterpiece
that we could already define as pre-Romantic.
