Ambrosiana
The History of Italy – Ancient Rome illustrated by Lodovico Pogliaghi
02/07/2025-28/10/2025
Exhibition
Until October 28 it is possible to admire, inside rooms 2 and 3 of the Pinacoteca, an exhibition dedicated to the fascinating tables created by Lodovico Pogliaghi for the first volume of the work La Storia d’Italia, focused on ancient Rome.
An ambitious editorial project that took shape in the second half of the nineteenth century and that aims to tell the national history through an engaging and accessible visual language.
The illustrations on display, presented for the first time at the National Exhibition of Turin in 1884, testify to Pogliaghi’s exceptional narrative and documentary ability. With great historical rigor and artistic sensitivity, the author reconstructs the events of ancient Rome – from its Italic origins to the fall of the Western Empire – alternating the representation of great historical events with more intimate and reflective moments, which investigate the psychology of the protagonists.
The exhibition offers the public an iconographic journey that combines the epic dimension of history with the more human and everyday one, thanks to the meticulous attention to detail, costumes, architecture and atmospheres of the time, the result of careful antiquarian studies conducted by the artist in Rome, Pompeii and in various museums.
The plates, originally conceived to be translated into engraving and printed with cutting-edge photomechanical techniques, are inspired by the European artistic trends of the time, in particular the historical painting of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Lawrence Alma-Tadema, thus helping to make the ancient world alive, current and accessible to the general public.
An exhibition that celebrates not only Pogliaghi’s artistic excellence, but also the cultural value of historical memory, inviting visitors to reflect on the profound link between past and present.
