Palazzo Pallavicini

The Ary Jan Gallery is delighted to lend three major works by Auguste Renoir, Charles Sims and Louis Grimshaw for the exhibition “Capolovoro di giornata” (“A Wonderful Day”).

From the mid-19th century onwards, artists stopped painting gods and battles. They broke away from the academies. They became interested in truth and documented everyday life: the morning light on a muddy field, the hustle and bustle of city life, the ambiguous darkness of a city night. During this extraordinary century, even a single moment became worthy of being captured on canvas for posterity. This paved the way for the photography of reality. The exhibition is organised into twelve sections, each devoted to a two-hour period: six by day, six by night. Dawn as the opening, night as the closing. In between, a whole day.

The exhibition aims to shed light on everyday life in the 19th century by exploring a single day in depth, depicted chronologically through the paintings of the century’s great masters. It is a visual and sensory experience, designed to evoke moments of daily life and to provide a genuine understanding of 19th-century society and customs through painting. Visitors learn by experiencing: the customs and traditions of the era, hour by hour.