Il Risorgimento a colori: pittori, patrioti e patrioti pittori nella Roma del XIX secolo

Following the defeat of the Republican forces, Pope Pius IX began to work vigorously for the restoration of the temporal power of the Church, while the rest of Italy was still fighting for the Unification, which would be proclaimed on March 17th, 1861. Destined to become the new nation's capital, by this time Rome had already become the target of all patriotic Italians. After the generous efforts of Garibaldi - the first failed on the Aspromonte in 1862 and the second ended with the defeat of Mentana in 1867 - Rome was finally liberated and annexed to Italy on September 20th, 1870.
Almost one hundred works have been selected for this exhibition, including paintings, sculptures, engravings and drawings from the collections of the Museum of Rome and other public and private collections: these works aim to interpret the climate of liberal enthusiasm, the failures and achievements of the complex process of the Risorgimento. Italian and foreign artists – some of whom were directly involved in the struggles – are shown in comparison with contemporary history and, surpassing the traditional academic patterns, aim to develop a new language between chronicle and epic.
These include Ippolito Caffi, a Venetian patriot who died in the Battle of Lissa in 1866, the London engraver George Housman Thomas, who witnessed the siege of Rome in 1849, Gerolamo Induno and Carlo Ademollo, two of the most popular painters-soldiers who interpreted the themes of the Risorgimento, Gioacchino Toma and Michele Cammarano, both trained in Neapolitan and careful observers of truth, Luigi Calamatta who was a distinguished engraver and one of many liberals in exile, and the Roman artists Archimede Tranzi and Onorato Carlandi who, after 1870, tried to illustrate the recent history of the capital.

It is the morning of September 20, 1870, the Bersaglieri corps entered Rome at Porta Pia, the crowd poured into the streets wearing, as Edmondo De Amicis noted, the tricolor cockade: “peasants, lords, ladies, women of the people, old people, children... In the meantime it gets darks... The Corso is lit as if by magic… A group of women, walking two by two, hold lit matches in their hands, to show their breasts covered with tricolor cockades, ribbons, scarves.”
This touching commemoration of that memorable day on which the secular Papal Rome became the capital of Italy inspired Roberto Capucci to pay his symbolic tribute to Roma capitale.
His Angelo dorato (Golden Angel), a precious synthesis of the many baroque angels that adorn Roman churches and monuments, wears the tricolor cockade to ensure, even in the epochal transformation of the city, a perfect continuity of beauty and art of Rome.