Thanks to Luciana Malavasi’s bequest, Ferrara’s artistic heritage is enriched with a precious testimony to the visual culture of the 20th century. Last May 27, at the Il Ponte Auction House in Milan, the City of Ferrara was awarded one of the most significant preparatory cartoons of the cycle The Myth of Ferrara, a masterpiece frescoed by Achille Funi between 1934 and 1937 in the Sala dell’Arengo of the Municipal Palace of Ferrara. The work, now kept in the storage room of the Municipality’s Gallerie d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, becomes part of the civic collections thanks to the fund donated by architect and urban planner Luciana Malavasi, destined to increase the collections with works by Ferrara artists active between 1840 and 1980 who played a significant role in the city’s culture.
The cycle in the Sala dell’Arengo represents the pinnacle of Funi’s fresco production and one of the greatest examples of Italian mural painting in the 1930s, of which he was a protagonist along with Mario Sironi. The scenes celebrate the founding myths of the Este city, with episodes from the legend of Phaeton, Saint George and the dragon, the tragic loves of Hugh and Parisina, and the epic events of Ludovico Ariosto’sOrlando Furioso and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata.
The recently acquired cartoon refers precisely to the latter scene, with an ideal view of the Holy City. Funi reworks there in a visionary key Roman architectural elements, already the focus of his studies in the 1930s. In particular, the drawing relates in its geometric layout and suspended atmosphere to works such as the Roman Forum preserved at the Gallerie d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Ferrara.
Conducted to an advanced stage of definition, the cartoon comes very close to the final fresco version, representing Achille Funi’s ambition in an exemplary way: to merge the great tradition of the Ferrara workshop with a modern, ironic and dreamlike language, capable of restoring the myths and legends of the city’s culture with narrative force and formal refinement.
“The acquisition of Jerusalem,” stressed Culture Councillor Marco Gulinelli, “thus allows us to fill a gap in the civic collections, which until now did not preserve any trace of the production process of this masterpiece. The civic collections’ collection of Funi’s works thus reaches ten paintings, and a significant chapter is added to the itinerary of the Gallerie d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea that will be remounted at Palazzo Massari upon the now imminent completion of the restoration and redevelopment of the historic complex. The purchase honors the will of architect Luciana Malavasi, whose extraordinary generosity allows the city community to implement the artistic heritage with works of art of great value.”
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| The civic collections of the Municipality of Ferrara are enriched with an important work by Achille Funi |
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