From 4 November 2025 to 1 February 2026, the exhibition “Venus Entering the Bath by Luigi Pampaloni. A new acquisition for the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze e Musei del Bargello” will be open to the public in the temporary exhibition hall of the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze.

The exhibition, curated by Giulia Coco – art historian and curator of the Gipsoteca of the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze e Musei del Bargello – was created on the occasion of the museum’s purchase of the preparatory terracotta sketch for the marble work Venus Entering the Bath by Luigi Pampaloni (1791–1847). The terracotta, of rare delicacy, was found on the antiques market and this year became part of the collections of the new museum system of the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze e Musei del Bargello.

The acquisition of the sketch provides an opportunity to explore a theme that is dear to and deeply ingrained in the Galleria dell’Accademia: artistic creation – Giulia Coco pointed out – The comparison that the exhibition offers between the preparatory sketch, the plaster model and a marble replica of Pampaloni’s work aims to illustrate the creative process of 19th-century sculpture in an exemplary way.

The curator also emphasises the symbolic value of the acquisition, which reflects the educational vocation of the Galleria dell’Accademia, mainly expressed in the collection of plaster casts which, in the works of Lorenzo Bartolini and Luigi Pampaloni, evoke the themes of training, creation and artistic practice.

Born in Florence in 1791, Luigi Pampaloni trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in his city and then in Carrara, under the patronage of Elisa Baciocchi. A pupil of Lorenzo Bartolini, he completed his training with Francesco Carradori and Stefano Ricci – distinguishing himself with a style in which classical idealism and naturalistic sensibility merge with an intimate and gentle sentiment.

In Venus Entering the Bath – a marble work created between 1836 and 1838 for the American Meredith Calhoun and lost in the early 20th century – Pampaloni reworks the Canovian tradition with personal grace, translating the myth into a gesture of everyday naturalness.

Alongside the terracotta and plaster model (from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence), the exhibition displays a marble replica of Pampaloni’s work (now part of a private English collection) and a tactile model of the preparatory sketch, made in epoxy resin by the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, with the advice of the Italian Union of the Blind and Partially Sighted (UICI) in Florence.

The result of extensive research, the model – created using 3D scanning of the terracotta sketch – was produced by the new XR|Lab, an internal research centre at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, led by Professor Juri Ciani and Professor Gerardo de Simone, with the involvement of PhD students Giulia Vaccari and Federico Niccolai.

In Venus Entering the Bath, Pampaloni reveals his adherence to Bartolini’s sentimental naturalism, reinterpreted with a more intimate and lyrical taste. As Dr Coco observes: Pampaloni worked with sober truth, the result of studies and meditations on the ancient world and Canova, reinterpreted in a purist and romantic key, and updated through Bartolini’s revolutionary teaching.

The exhibition allows us to understand the genesis of Luigi Pampaloni’s creative process, in an ideal continuity between the studio and the school, offering the public an opportunity to get up close to the material and techniques of sculpture and, thanks to the presence of the tactile model, a more inclusive visit – says Andreina Contessa, Director of the newly established museum system Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze e Musei del Bargello, in office since October 2025. The exhibition offers a journey that intertwines formal research, theoretical reflection and the application of new technologies to teaching and the enjoyment of art, thus enhancing the figure of the sculptor in the artistic landscape of his time and showing, at the same time, how academic tradition is capable of continually renewing itself and communicating to ever-new audiences.

The exhibition is accompanied by a scientific catalogue published by Sillabe, which brings together essays by art historians Giulia Coco, Elena Marconi and Carlo Sisi and restorer Eleonora Pucci. The contributions explore Pampaloni’s poetics, the historical and artistic context and the technical process that leads “from clay to marble”. Through this new acquisition and the related exhibition, the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze e Musei del Bargello reaffirm their commitment to promoting 19th-century sculptural heritage and recounting artistic practice, a fundamental element of the identity of the newly established museum system.

During the opening of the exhibition, tours will be organised in Italian and English by the staff of the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze e Musei del Bargello, as well as tours in Italian Sign Language, in collaboration with the Ente Nazionale Sordi di Firenze (National Deaf Association of Florence). At the end of the exhibition, the terracotta sketch will be displayed in the Gipsoteca of the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, thus becoming part of the museum’s permanent exhibition.