'PORTRAIT DIALOGUES' Exhibition: In the spotlight

From March 19 to April 22, 2022, international artists debut with a series of portraits featuring friends from Florence's Oltrarno district, 'in conversation' with women artists of the past

From March 19 to April 22

Thursdays to Sundays or by appointment, 3pm to 6.30pm

La Colonica del Palmerino, Via del Palmerino 6

For the first time, three emergent painters, trained at Charles H. Cecil Studios, an art atelier in the heart of the Oltrarno, will exhibit portraits of friends and neighbours from the district. Their works, were created using the 'sight-size' method which was "first used by Titian and the old Baroque masters and was later adopted by the British School of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with great continuity and success," writes S. Bordley, in the exhibition's pamphet introduction. "The last effective practitioners of the method were associated with the so-called Boston School – its most famous representative being John Singer Sargent."

Exhibition signage (Portrait Dialogues. March 19 to April 22, 2022)

Dialogue with historic women artists. At Il Palmerino Cultural Association, the artists’ work will be displayed alongside eighteenth-century portraits by Tuscan painter Violante Siries Cerroti (1709-1883) and a 1930s copy by Federigo Angeli of Angelica Kauffman’s (1741-1807) Uffizi portrait. Portraiture has been a popular genre for women artists from the Baroque period onwards, and Kauffman is celebrated as one of the most famous portraitists of 18th-century Europe. Siries Cerroti, who drew commissions from Grand Tour travellers and Tuscan nobles excelled in the depiction of clothes and finery, true to the idea that women – who did not have access to nude models – excelled in portraying the exquisite fashion details in paintings used to secure marriages from afar and establish a sitter’s economic wealth or bolster their marketable image.

Reservations required to join aperitif on inauguration night and final evening

(March 19 / April 22): associazione@palmerino.it

Painters Sam Bordley, Lydia Chapman and Emily Rogers at rest

The "Portrait Dialogues" exhibition forms part of 'Oltrarno Gaze 2022' cultural programme, organised by The British Institute of Florence and Il Palmerino Cultural Association. The aim of 'Oltrarno Gaze 2022' is to spotlight modern-day art and artisanship from the Florentine district, whilst exploring its connection to historic women artists of the past. It is made possible thanks to a grant by the Advancing Women Artists Legacy Fund, with special thanks to Alice Vogler, Donna Malin, Connie Clark, Pam Fortune, Nancy Hunt, Nancy Galliher and AWA Legacy Fund Director Margaret MacKinnon.

Project conception and coordination

Linda Falcone

Media and communication

Calliope Arts / Restoration Conversations

The Florentine

With the patronage of

Consulate of the United States of America in Florence

Participating partners 'Sotto al British' at the British Institute of Florence, Gruppo Fotografico Il Cupolone APS, 'Creative People in Florence', Freya's Florence, Amalia Ciardi Duprè Museum, Atelier degli Artigianelli and Spazio NOTA with Osservatorio Mestieri d'Arte