Carlotta Gargalli (1788-1840). A Bolognese painter in the Rome of Canova

The Museo Ottocento Bologna turns the spotlight on the figure of Carlotta Gargalli (Bologna, 1788 - Rome, 1840), the first woman to attend the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna at the end of the "Age of Enlightenment".

The exhibition inaugurates a series of monographic exhibitions dedicated to women painters from Emilia, and is designed to emphasise the modernity of this artist, who thanks to her talent and determination was able to assert herself in an artistic context that was almost entirely dominated by men at the time. It reconstructs Gargalli's pictorial corpus and biographical profile, focusing on the relationship between the sculptor Antonio Canova and the young men who studied at the Accademia del Regno italico at Palazzo Venezia, which he presided over, an institution that was short-lived but which trained some of the most brilliant artists of the time, first and foremost Francisco Hayez and Tommaso Minardi. Canova's contribution was also fundamental in launching the career of Carlotta Gargalli.