A Masterpiece in Perugia. Van Gogh and the Italians in Paris. L’Arlésienne among Female Portraits of the Late Nineteenth Century

Curated by Costantino D’Orazio and Aurora Roscini Vitali

Following Gustav Klimt’s Le tre età (The Three Ages) and Amedeo Modigliani’s Nudo sdraiato (Reclining Nude), the third instalment of the Un capolavoro a Perugia (A Masterpiece in Perugia) project continues the fruitful collaboration between the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea and the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria.

From 2 July, Perugia welcomes an exceptional new protagonist on loan from the GNAMC: Vincent van Gogh’s L’Arlesiana (L’Arlésienne), one of the Dutch artist’s most intense and celebrated portraits. The painting depicts Madame Ginoux, owner of the Café de la Gare in Arles, where Van Gogh stayed from May 1889 until May of the following year, just a few weeks before his death. Working from a drawing by Paul Gauguin, which had remained in his possession after his friend’s sudden departure, Van Gogh created an image charged with personal meaning, biographical and psychological associations, affection and a sense of catharsis.

Within the exhibition, the enigmatic face of Madame Ginoux enters into dialogue with works by major Italian artists including Giovanni Boldini, Giuseppe De Nittis, Silvestro Lega and Antonio Mancini, drawn from the collections of the Museo dell’Ottocento in Pescara. These juxtapositions create a compelling dialogue between different artistic approaches, all of them profoundly shaped by contact with the Realist and Impressionist milieu of Paris. In the selected portraits, moreover, the representation of women is never confined to the conventions of bourgeois portraiture, but instead conveys melancholy, intimacy and the inner complexity of women from across the social spectrum.

The exhibition thus offers a fascinating journey through female faces, gazes and identities, tracing the evolution of portraiture and the artistic transformations that accompanied the emergence of modernity. Bringing together different sensibilities and innovative visual languages, the display evokes the image of an era undergoing profound change.

A unique opportunity to encounter Van Gogh in Perugia and, through art, to be guided into the heart of modernity.