Italian
The revival of ancient gods on the advertising posters of the Belle Époque and of an Italy that was going through an innovative and simultaneously unprecedented era
The National Museum Collection Salce presents the exhibition The Last Renaissance. Gods and Heroes at the Dawn of the Age of Technology 1890/1935, born from a collaboration between Villa Pisani in Stra and the Treviso Museum, curated by Francesco Trentini (Head of Protection and Enhancement of Villa Pisani) and Elisabetta Pasqualin (Director of the National Museum Collection Salce). After the success recorded at Villa Pisani, where it was open to the public from January 31 to May 24, 2026, the exhibition is now being presented in a specifically updated version to meet the museum characteristics of the Santa Margherita venue.
On the occasion of the celebrations for the eightieth anniversary of the referendum that established the birth of republican Italy, the new exhibition in Treviso is enriched by a special selection of posters in which the rebirth of the Ancient is measured against the Italian Tricolor and, more generally, with national identity. Evocations of Demeter and the goddess Fortuna, a standard-bearer of Roman inspiration, and sarcastic appearances of Hermes integrate into the exhibition path with the need to shape a strong national imaginary.
The exhibition showcases the extraordinary revival of ancient gods on the advertising posters of Italy during the Belle Époque through 74 works, some of which are rarely displayed to the public – emphasizes Elisabetta Pasqualin – The works, exceptional for their aesthetic quality and historical-cultural value, range from the large advertising posters by Adolf Hohenstein, Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Giovanni M. Mataloni, Marcello Dudovich, Duilio Cambellotti, Plinio Codognato, to the extraordinary author covers of the “Piccola Biblioteca di Scienze Moderne” published by the Turin publisher Bocca, up to the two rare tins created by Hohenstein for the Cinzano company.
The rebirth of the Myth in the advertising of the era, expressed within a thematic exhibition, has much to say about our time and the technological age we are still experiencing. The exhibition path shows how at the end of the 19th century, when scientific and technological research profoundly altered collective and individual life with a speed and pervasiveness never experienced before, the Ancient and the Myth re-emerged in the extreme effort to humanistically govern a process with contours far from manageable.
Following this underlying idea, the exhibition “The Last Rebirth” – continues Francesco Trentini – aims to lead the audience to rethink through images the impact of great engineering enterprises, physical, chemical, and technological discoveries, progress applied to consumer goods, and the new forms of self-representation of an Italian society with many unprecedented traits. The interpreters of this novelty were the group of extraordinary authors presented here, variously involved with the world of Officine Grafiche Ricordi in Milan, who operated in perfect synchrony with the contemporary research of symbolist painters such as Max Klinger and Arnold Böcklin. For the visitor, it is about discovering the unsuspected research – typical of the new age of technology – of a difficult balance between the transformation of the world and the irreducible mystery of reality.
Divided into three sections, the exhibition guides the visitor through a fascinating journey among absolute masterpieces of Italian Liberty advertising posters.
– Myth and technique: the visit opens with this section, where the underlying theme of the exhibition is illustrated by showcasing the multiple forms of the relationship between divinity and modern technology. Key pieces include: the group of nymph and satyr created by Adolf Hohenstein for the advertisement of Dr. Craveri’s phosphorus-free matches; the Hermes from the poster by Leopoldo Metlicovitz for the inauguration of the Simplon Tunnel (1906); the smiling figure of Astraea imagined by Giovanni M. Mataloni for the Auer gas lighting poster (1895), presented here in its first version in green and in the red print, illustrating the technical peculiarities of chromolithography of the time.
– Myth, desire, and consumer goods: the irony and seductive advertising of consumption characterize the second section where Hermes returns, this time wanted by Hohenstein (1898) as a testimonial for “Il Corriere della Sera”, and then the Hercules by Metlicovitz (ca. 1910), promoting canned meat production, and even Leda, who in the amusing poster by Marcello Dudovich for Rinascente (ca. 1922) falls in love with the swan during the “white sale”.
– Antiquity and contemporary life: complementing the themes addressed in the first two sections, the third showcases the general desire of man to identify with the dawn of the age of technology and the Ancient. The shaping of self-image with classical antiquity is here perfectly evidenced by exceptional documents such as the poster by Metlicovitz for the magazine “Musica e musicisti” (1904), the advertisement by Plinio Codognato for “L’Avanti” (ca. 1910), and the extraordinary series of affiches created by Duilio Cambellotti for the Greek Theatre of Syracuse.
The Last Rebirth is an opportunity for a deep cultural memory exercise, which the National Museum Collezione Salce offers one hundred years after the start of the inexhaustible experience of the Atlas of Mnemosyne curated by Aby Warburg and his circle starting in 1926, perhaps the most eloquent testimony of this last rebirth that still challenges us.
