The Places of Giovanni Fattori at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, past and present: an exhibition curated by Giuliana Videtta and Anna Gallo Martucci and promoted by the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze invites visitors to carefully analyse not only the works but also the places that house them.

The exhibition accompanies the visitor through 60 years of Fattori’s artistic life but it also offers a unique occasion to enter the history of one the most important institutes for Florence’s artistic life, the Florence Academy of Fine Arts where the union between the Academy of Drawing, the Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy Gallery that still existed at the end of the 19th century has been ideally recreated.

For the first time, visitors can follow Fattori’s footsteps through the loggia, the cloister, the garden, they can stop in the classroom where the artist taught in his last years (reconstructed with period furnishings, they can enjoy a “view” of the Library, the Refectory, which still evoke the old Convent of San Matteo, of the Bartolini’s Gallery of Plaster Casts which is today housed in the Academy Gallery but which at the time was an integral part of the Academy of Fine Arts and of the 17th century Chapel by Giovanni da San Giovanni. At the same time visitors can admire more than 130 works including painting, drawing, etching and engraving.

Works that illustrate the life at the Academy in those years - with special attention to the works of the young Fattori and of the teachers (P. Benvenuti, V. Consani, G. Bezzuoli, A. Ciseri, G. Duprè, E. Pollastrini) - and compare the artist’s production with that of his fellow students at the Academy (including G. Boldini, O. Borrani, A. Cecioni, the Purists L. Mussini and S. Ussi, the Macchiaioli painters S. Lega and T. Signorini).

The exhibition also examines Fattori’s creative themes: from history (Elisabeth the first, Mary Stuart at Crookstone Field) to military themes (Cavalry Charge, The Massacres in Mantua, Army Manoeuvres), to landscapes and country life (The Tempest at Sea, Oxen with Cart).

Part of the exhibition scrutinizes an artistic and social aspect of Fattori’s and the Academy’s history: paintings, documents and photos witness the presence at the Academy of female students, after the institution in Florence of the Women’s Course of Figure Drawing with Fattori as its teacher.

The exhibition The Academy Today. A Homage to Fattori, curated by Luigi Bernardi and housed in the Ghiberti Hall, completes this event: present-day students exhibit their works carried out for this occasion.