From 11 October, the Vatican Museums will present to the public for the first time the entire corpus of the Nobili Collection: an exceptional body of 64 self-portraits belonging to the most extensive collection of artworks belonging to Franco and Maria Antonietta Nobili, built up by the Italian businessman and executive (Rome, 1925-2008) together with his wife during the course of the second half of the twentieth century.In keeping with a long-standing wish of their parents, and to honour their memory, the works were generously donated in 2021 by the couple's five daughters and thus included in the Vatican Museums' holdings in the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Installed in the spaces of the Rooms of the Borgia Tower, the exhibition – curated by Rosalia Pagliarani of the Nineteenth Century and Contemporary Art Department – features a group of self-portraits ranging from the most renowned names in Italian art of the early and late twentieth century, such as Giacomo Balla, Giorgio de Chirico, Mino Delle Site, Emilio Greco, Pietro Marussig, Pippo Oriani, and Ottone Rosai, to the equally distinguished names of the Roman School and its environs, such as Ferruccio Ferrazzi, Franco Gentilini, Virgilio Guidi, Mario Mafai, Luigi Montanarini, Adriana Pincherle, Fausto Pirandello and Alberto Ziveri, together with foreign artists such as Xavier Bueno, Jean Cocteau and José Ortega. The humanistic interests of the Nobili couple, along with their love of Rome, is revealed through the presence of artist-writers such as Carlo Levi, Trilussa and Mino Maccari, while the nineteenth-century is represented by the intense self-portraits of Antonio Mancini, Filippo Palizzi and Ettore Ximenes. The figure of the Venetian Linda Buonajuti is fascinating and still little-known; her self-representation as a full-figure Amazon was chosen, with its extraordinary Central-European air, as the opening work of the exhibition.
The exhibition, which will remain open until 11 January 2025, will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue edited by Rosalia Pagliarani (Edizioni Musei Vaticani), the result of studies and research on the new acquisitions. The volume, containing informative notes on 64 works – many of which are previously unseen – also retraces the history of collecting and the special relationship that in some cases was created between the Nobili family and the artist.
