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Event Details

Tue, September 27, 2022

18:00 – 19:30

VILLA SASSETTI
Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Florence, Italy

RSVP: lapietra.reply@nyu.edu

Presentation of the Reggia di Caserta exhibition (July 1 – November 6, 2022)

A kaleidoscope of representations from the Renaissance to the early Nineteenth Century that cross and affect the whole Peninsula in the diversity of landscapes, cultural models and lifestyles, evoking, through contact with nature, the lost Eden to which man always aspires. The gardens painted or reproduced aim to immortalize their fleeting beauty, to pass it on over time. The relationship between the royal garden and its representations also stimulates visitors to carefully reflect on the protection and preservation of the nature that surrounds us.

A presentation by co-curator, Alberta Campitelli, followed by a conversation with Francesca Baldry (Villa La Pietra Collection Manager), Nick Dakin-Elliot (La Pietra Horticultural Associate) and Bruce Edelstein (Coordinator for Graduate Programs and Advanced Research, NYU Florence).

 

As part of the Museum Meetings Fall 2022 program

(Painting in banner image: J.Ph. Hackert, Landscape with the Palace at Caserta, 1793, olio on canvas, 93×130, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)

Two important paintings from Villa La Pietra’s Collection are on loan to an exhibition at the Villa Reale, Caserta

For most of the past hundred years two 17th century paintings by Joseph Heinz the Younger, showing Villa d’Este, Tivoli and Villa Mattei Celimontana, Rome, have hung in Villa La Pietra's Camera Blu, a guest bedroom with a fantastic view down the Viale, but today they may be seen on loan at the "Fragments of Paradise. Gardens over time" exhibition at the Royal Palace, Caserta. So important are these paintings, though, that this is not the first time they have been loaned out, the last occasion was in 1931 when they were to be seen at Palazzo Vecchio, here in Florence, in the "The Italian Garden" exhibition.

Featured Biographies

Alberta Campitelli

CURATOR

Historian of art and gardens, she was until 2016 director of the Villas and Historical Parks Office of the Municipality of Rome, responsible for the management and conservation of gardens and structures at the  Villa Borghese and Villa Torlonia, and other smaller villas. She founded  and directed the Museo della Casina delle Civette, the Casino Nobile and of the Roman School at Villa Torlonia and the Museum Biliotti at Villa Borghese, she directed the Museo Pietro Canonica at Villa Borghese and, from 2013 to 2014 the Macro-Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome. 

She has organized numerous exhibitions curating various catalogues. Between 2019 and 2022 she was president of the Accademia di Belle Arti of Rome.

She is professor of Museum and Cultural Heritage Management at the LUISS University Master of Art, and professor in History and Management of Historic Gardens at the School of Specialization in Landscape and Environmental Heritage of the La Sapienza University of Rome. 

She is an advisory  member of the ICOMOS-International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscape; is vice president of APGI (Association of Italian Parks and Gardens);  and is the Coordinator of ICOM Lazio. She is President of the Scientific Technical Committee for Museums and the Economy of Culture, and a member of the Superior Cultural Heritage Council, an advisory body of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage.

In 2013 she received the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture for her contributions to cultural collaboration between Italy and France.

Among her latest publications is a volume entitled Ville e Giardini d’Italia. Journeys through time and places between nature and artifice  (Jaca Book 2019) and the second edition  of  Gli Horti dei Papi. I giardini Vaticani dal Medioevo al Novecento (Jaca book 2021), first edition 2009. 

In 2022, together with Tiziana Maffei and Alessandro Cremona, she curated the important exhibition “Fragments of paradise. Gardens over time  at the Royal Palace of Caserta”, and edited the exhibition catalogue.