(November 2, 2016) Little known in Italy and in the United States, Guido Cagnacci – eccentric painter of the seventeenth century – has been rediscovered in recent months in New York. The current exhibition at the Frick Collection, in fact, dedicated to the work “The Repentant Magdalene”, will be joined by another one, starting from December 2, at the Italian Institute of Culture, dedicated instead to “The Dying Cleopatra”. On the occasion of the two exhibition, the Big Apple IIC organizes an evening dedicated to the analisys of the exhibited works. On Friday November 11 from 17.30 to 20 two renowned art historians and experts – Xavier Solomon and Claudio Strinati – of 17th century Italian art, will talk about the life and the work of this exceptional yet forgotten painter. Cagnacci’s works, mostly religious in subject, are known for their unabashed, often unsettling eroticism, and his biography is no less intriguing. Though his pictorial style was influenced by some of the most important Italian painters of the time — the Carracci, Guercino, and Guido Reni — Cagnacci developed an individual and immediately recognizable artistic language. The Repentant Magdalene is one of the artist’s masterpieces and has not been seen outside California since its acquisition by the Norton Simon Museum in 1982. (Sip)
