Launched in tandem with the 2009 Palazzo Davanzati exhibition, which focused on art and workshop of the three Angeli brothers, this show intends to document the painting of Federigo Angeli (1891-1952) within the context of his work as a highly skilled copyist, and  'neo-renaissance' painter and restorer, who was recognised by his fellow tradesmen as having 'golden hands'.

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Federigo's intimate yearnings to produce paintings in which he could express feelings linked to the poetry of truth, stemmed from a need he would feel throughout his life, yet he chose to scrupulously confine this quest to works he painted within the domestic sphere.

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A considerable number of works, including portraits, figures, landscapes and still lifes, reflect a naturalism the artist explored with extraordinary skill. The movenment's comeback after the avant-garde wave, had contributed to the publication of magazines such as Valori Plastici and the emergence of artists such as de Chirico and Morandi, but it was also a source of new interest for former leading Futurists, including the likes of Carrà, Severini and Soffici. Under the banner of that return to Naturalism, painters working in the time period between the two world wars would search for  for truth in the sphere of tradition.

 

In this exhibition, Federigo Angeli's work reveals an artistic spirit that was current in his time, yet, in some ways, it enabled him to become precursor of that pure objective reality that the group 'Modern Painters of Reality' claimed, in 1947,  was the "primary and eternal source of painting". Angeli had masterfully expressed this brand of painting, from the 1920s onward, through ancient techniques and with the luminosity of tempera, and he was acutely familiar with this modus operandi of his intense, early work as a restorer and neo-Renaissance painter. Indeed, it should be noted that Federigo Angeli, who participated in the restoration of wall decorations at the Davanzati Palace became, together with his brothers, one of the main disseminators of the 'Florentine' style showcased, as the principal theme of the followong exhibition:

 

Federigo and the Bottega degli Angeli

Palazzo Davanzati, between reality and dream

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Museum of Palazzo Davanzati in Florence

23 October 2009 - 17 January 2010

 

Ministry of Culture, Special Superintendence for the

for the Historical, Artistic and Ethno-anthropological Heritage

and for the Polo Museale of the city of Florence

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Museum of Palazzo Davanzati

with the collaboration of

New York University - Villa La Pietra - Florence