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# 74 •DECEmBER 14 , 2015
eyes for two hundred years or so, but for
the most part has also been ignored by Pietro Tenerani is one of these sculptors
forgotten by the general public. Born
all.
in Carrara, he moved to Rome in 1814
This happens even more to sculpture, winning a contest by the Academy of
which in the popular imagination jumps Fine Arts with a work entitled "Agitato
from Canova to the artists of the group dale furie" (Shaken by the furies), and
of the twentieth century, and this phe- became a pupil of the then famous Bernomenon is even more strange because tel Thorvaldsen, in whose workshop he
our main or more beautiful squares and remained for fifteen years. Rome was at
our most cured and celebrated gardens the center of the influence of Antonio
always welcome statues and busts crea- Canova and fascinated by the icy current
ted by artists of primary importance, but and superhuman figures of Thorvaldsen:
that the criticism of the twentieth cen- full neoclassicism.
tury, overwhelmed by the avant-garde,
long ignored or snubbed as academic Despite this training and the immediate
productions, related to a tradition that is success due to the attention of the grebelieved to be stale and uncommunica- atest museums in the world, Tenerani
wanted to move away from the stylistic
tive.
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