WINTER PARK, Fla. (AP) - Francesco de Mura was an artist time forgot.
For 10 years, Winter Park resident Arthur Blumenthal has made it his mission to help the world remember.
All eyes were on the 18th-century Italian artist when the fruits of Blumenthal’s labor went on public view Saturday. The Cornell Fine Arts Museum is the first in the world to present a comprehensive exhibit on De Mura, once the toast of Naples and a leading figure in European art.
The exhibit casts an international spotlight on the Rollins College institution, where Blumenthal has compiled the first comprehensive catalog of De Mura’s work. It will then travel to other museums around the country.
“It’s rare to find an ’Old Masters’ exhibition outside of major cities,” said Blumenthal, who was director of the Winter Park museum from 1988 to 2007.
Titled “In the Light of Naples,” the exhibit features paintings on loan from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Art Institute of Chicago and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which is contributing a piece that has never been exhibited. Works also have been borrowed from private collections and shipped from Italy and the United Kingdom.
It is “surprising” that De Mura has never been the subject of a major retrospective given his “importance as a painter,” wrote David Alan Brown, curator of Italian paintings for the National Gallery of Art, in a letter of support.
When viewing slides of the art to be displayed, Brown wrote, he “was simply astonished by the sheer quality and beauty of the images. I believe that visitors to the exhibition will find De Mura’s original works even more of a revelation.”
That’s Blumenthal’s hope, too. His goal is to reintroduce De Mura, an artist who once consorted with the king of France and then was literally bombed out of history.
“All these forces were working against him,” Blumenthal said. “When he died in 1782, he disappeared.”
Contributing to De Mura’s decline was a shift in popular artistic style from the heavier baroque to the lighter manner of neoclassical. French artists also started to eclipse Italians on the art scene of the day.
But the final nail in De Mura’s artistic coffin would come 150 years after his death. During World War II, Allied forces bombed the abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy. Among the priceless works lost: One-third of De Mura’s output.
“It was the most important concentration of art destroyed during the war,” Blumenthal said. “As an American art historian, I needed to repay them for the destruction of their cultural property.”
The exhibition contains sketches of some of the lost works, but even gathering De Mura’s surviving artwork proved difficult. In the centuries after his death, his art was scattered across the globe. Much that remained in Italy was inaccessible - painted on walls or ceilings of closed churches or private buildings.
Blumenthal persevered. He had strong inspiration: The Cornell owns a De Mura painting, “The Visitation.” While interviewing for the director’s job in the 1980s, he had been shown the work, kept in storage.
“I said, ’Oh my God, do they know what they have here? What a beautiful painting,’” he recalled. “It was one of the reasons I took the job. That painting made it a little more interesting.”
Ena Heller, the Cornell’s current director, saw academic potential in the exhibition.
“It is interesting to dig this guy up, as it were,” she said. “What would we uncover? What could our students and the public learn about him?”
With about 40 paintings, sketches and other works, the exhibition provides context, comparing De Mura to his contemporaries and better-known artist Francesco Solimeno, who was his mentor.
“It is a very big project for a museum of our size,” Heller said. “Our donors and community have really rallied around it.”
After its three-month Winter Park debut, “In the Light of Naples” will travel to the museums at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
“It’s part of our attempt to make the Cornell more visible nationally,” said Heller, noting that the exhibit’s catalog will be invaluable to art historians and educators. “We’re trying to get our name out there.”
Blumenthal hopes all his work will let De Mura’s name live on.
“I’m resurrecting Francesco De Mura from the dead - his career, his reputation,” he said. “He has been cheated out of his proper place in the history of art. I want to give him his due.”
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Information from: Orlando Sentinel, https://www.orlandosentinel.com/
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