In the Name of Freedom.
24 March–21 July 2013 Museo Vincenzo Vela, Ligornetto
François (1784–1855) and Sophie (1797–1867) Rude
The retrospective dedicated to the pair of French artists François and Sophie Rude falls within the series of exhibitions that the Museo Vela devotes to important representatives of nineteenth-century European and American sculpture who were invited to visit the sculptor Vincenzo Vela in his house-cum-museum for an exchange of views. At the urging of the musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, which conceived the exhibition held in the same city, and by the musée du Louvre, which has contributed important works, the Museo Vincenzo Vela is presenting a selection of sculptures, in particular regarding the Rudes' public and political monuments, and some superb portraits, which are well suited for comparison with the artistic and civic figure of Vincenzo Vela.
Known to the public as the author of the famous relief of The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (also known as La Marseillaise) and the elegant and bold bronze Mercury (1834), loaned by the Louvre, the sculptor François Rude is being presented to the Italian-speaking public with a broad-ranging exhibition that highlights his development - from a rigorous and academic classicism to a sculpture inspired predominantly by naturalism and intense romanticism - through a careful choice of works of varying dimensions and materials, including the Young Neapolitan Fisherboy Playing with a Tortoise (1831), also at the Louvre, and previously unseen drawings.
The work by the painter Sophie Rude, François's wife and an artist of great talent but completely unknown until her recent scientific rediscovery, is represented in the exhibition by a small selection of high quality portraits. An intelligent and sensitive woman and a pupil of the great David, Sophie Rude supported and encouraged her husband and ensured that after his death his work received the worthy attention it merited.