04 Oct ART-718- Venetian encounters with art.

We went to see the exhibition “De’ Visi Mostruosi e Caricature. From Leonardo da Vinci to Bacon”, in the splendid location of Palazzo Loredan (hosting Fondazione Ligabue).

The exhibition puts together portraits of deformed faces, caricatures, and misshaped visions of faces, in an itinerary going through 75 artworks from museums and private European collections.

In between the pieces, a remarkable collection of exactly 18 drawings by Leonardo stands out, as it is the very first time they are displayed in Italy.
These artworks convey a particular fascination that Leonardo had for the grotesque, not only conceived as an exaggeration but as what is deemed as “different”.

The deformed faces present recurrent somatic traits through all the different artists, almost delineating a historical-artistic route, which unwinds in a “Northern” continuity between Humanism and the Serenissima, in the exploration of the grotesque and caricatures.

The majestic Palazzo Franchetti is the precious set of the exhibit Lee Miller – Man Ray. Fashion, Love, War. Dedicated to these two extraordinary personalities, work and life partners, who wrote some fundamental chapters of the history of photography and art, both together and as a single artist.