De' Visi Mostruosi e Caricature.

“De’ visi mostruosi non parlo, perché senza fatica si tengono a mente” (I am not speaking of monstrous faces, because they are easily kept in mind), as we read in Leonardo da Vinci’s records in the Codex Atlanticus and in the Treatise on Painting; so they will be the many “loaded heads” or “grotesques”, the deformed faces, the exaggerated or caricatured figures created by the great artists active in northern Italy between the 16th and 18th centuries, displayed in the impressive exhibition promoted in Venice by the Giancarlo Ligabue Foundation.

 

The new challenging project of our institution led by Inti Ligabue – scheduled in Venice at Palazzo Loredan – Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti from January 28th to April 27th, 2023 – propels us into a world as alienating as it is intriguing, collateral to beauty, to the sublime or ideal object privileged by painting.

 

A fascinating journey, which identifies a line of ‘northern’ continuity from Leonardo’s loaded and grotesque heads to the caricatures of Anton Maria Zanetti and Giambattista Tiepolo in 18th-century Venice.

An extraordinary and estranging exhibition between deformed faces, anatomical exaggerations, physiognomic investigations, caricatured figures and galleries of “human characters”.

Also displayed are 18 drawings by Leonardo including – for the first time in Italy – some sheets from the Collection of the Duke of Devonshire.