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ARTE | MASTERPIECES OF SCULPTURE, DECORATIVE ARTS AND POLYCHROME MARBLES: THE BARGELLO MUSEUMS

A public talk in English by Paola D’Agostino | Director of the Bargello Museums in Florence. 

Paola D’Agostino, Director of the Musei del Bargello, presents this museums’ consortium, constituted in 2014, following the Reform of autonomous Museums, through the celebrated masterpieces of Renaissance sculpture – from Ghiberti to Donatello, from Michelangelo to Giambologna – the sophisticated decorative arts – equally precious, but less known to the public at large – and the abundance of colored marbles that well illustrate the excellence of design of the Medici Manufactures in the quest and commerce of colored marbles, which were greatly appreciated also in Malta.

Paola D’Agostino was appointed Director of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in 2015. This recently created museums’ consortium, now called Musei del Bargello, comprises five major institutions in Florence: The Museo Nazionale del Bargello, the group’s headquarter, the Medici Chapels, the Church and Museum of Orsanmichele, Palazzo Davanzati and Casa Martelli. An expert on Renaissance and Baroque sculpture, Dr. D’Agostino was the Nina and Lee Griggs Assistant Curator in European Art at the Yale University Art Gallery from 2013 to 2015, where she co-curated the exhibition The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art 1760–1860. Previously, she worked as Senior Research Associate in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During her tenure at the Metropolitan she contributed to the forthcoming catalogue of Italian bronze sculpture and co-organized the exhibitions Bernini: Sculpting in Clay (2012-2013), and Antonio Canova: The Seven Last Works (2013).

She studied at the Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘Federico II’, where she received her Ph.D., at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (M.A.) and at University College London (MPhil program). She collaborated on the exhibition Earth and Fire. Italian Terracotta Sculpture from Donatello to Canova at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts (2001–2002).

She has published several articles on Baroque sculptors and the artistic relationship between Spanish and Italian art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Her book Cosimo Fanzago scultore, the leading sculptor in Baroque Naples, was published in 2011.

Paola D’Agostino’s work is characterized by a comparative approach. Her rigorous close study of objects, in terms of technique and style, is always combined with a broader analysis of patrons’ demands and historic context. This often entails the juxtaposition of works of art in different media, in order to give a more cogent picture of the manufacture and distribution of artifacts, as well as understand issues of design and function.

Since Dr. D’Agostino’s appointment as Director of the Musei del Bargello, she initiated several major reinstallations and renovations projects in all the five museums, improved access to visitors, forged international partnership with prestigious Italian and foreign Museums, fostered academic relationships with several Italian and American Universities and organized groundbreaking exhibitions at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, such as Verrocchio, the master of Leonardo in collaboration with the Fondazione di Palazzo Strozzi and the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Free admission. RSVP: segreteria.iiclavalletta@esteri.it 

  • Organized by: Istituto Italiano di Cultura | La Valletta
  • In collaboration with: Mdina Metropolitan Cathedral Museum