The exhibition

1. Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait, 1985, silver gelatin print, Courtesy The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation 2. Wilhelm von Gloeden , Presunto autoritratto come “Nazareno” (Taormina?), print dated 27 settembre 1903, negative 1880 ca., albumen print, Alinari Archives - Alinari archive, Florence

The exhibition highlights Robert Mapplethorpe's relationship with classicism, as well as his sculptural approach to the photographic medium. The interest in antiquity, a passion for the masters who preceded him and the careful understanding of statuary, particularly Michelangelo's work, are persistent motifs in the artist's research.

In his compositions, free from any conformism, the figurative models of Classical Art  and the iconography of the Catholic tradition come to life in a new light.

An avid collector of photographs, Mapplethorpe became acquainted with Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden's work, which he most likely had the chance to  study already at the beginning of the 1980s, thanks to contacts with the gallery owner Lucio Amelio and to a stay in Naples.

Von Gloeden, one of the pioneers of staged photography, in his compositions celebrates an ideal reference to the past, conceived as an inexhaustible source of subjects and suggestions: his unique stylistic sign, which makes him an icon even today, constitutes an evocative reference for Mapplethorpe.

The subjects, the poses, the atmospheres evoked by both artists, so thoughtfully studied in the staging, lead us to the discovery of an unconventional idea of beauty and eros.

The relationship with classicism

Wilhelm von Gloeden, “Turi appoggiato col braccio al fico d'India...serpe” (Taormina), 1885 ca., silver gelatin dry glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - von Gloeden archive, Florence

Wilhelm von Gloeden, Naked boy among the calla flowers (Taormina), 1905 ca., silver gelatin on glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - von Gloeden archive, Florence

Fratelli Alinari , Antinoo Farnese (National Archaeological Museum, Naples), before 1922, silver gelatin on glass plate negative, Alinari Archives- Alinari rchive, Florence 

Robert Mapplethorpe, Antinous, 1987, silver gelatin print, Courtesy The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Wilhelm von Gloeden , From the series "La Guerrero" (Posillipo, Naples), 1880-1890 ca., silver gelatin on glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - von Gloeden archive, Florence

Fratelli Alinari , Gladiatore Borghese di Agasias di Efeso (Louvre Museum, Paris), before 1908, silver gelatin on glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - Alinari Archive, Florence

Robert Mapplethorpe, Von Hackendahl, 1985, silver gelatin print, Courtesy The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe, Derrick Cross, 1983, silver gelatin print, Courtesy The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Fratelli Alinari , Torso Gaddi (Uffizi Gallery, Florence), 1880 ca., silver gelatin on glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - Alinari Archive, Florence

Around a hundred images are displayed along a visual path that mixes the works of the authors involved: Robert Mapplethorpe, Wilhelm von Gloeden and the Fratelli Alinari, in an ideal continuity that accompanies the visitor along a journey into the "desire for beauty". In search of that archetypal idea of perfect beauty, of geometric balance, of harmony of shapes and volumes.

"Just as the ancients had gradually risen from human to divine beauty, the latter represented the measure of beauty since then", wrote Johann Joachim Winckelmann in "The History of Art in Antiquity".

The authors on display compare themselves with the measure of beauty, in a stylistic research that unites them in gestures, compositions and posing. So much so as to create a whole with their works, from which an ideal, unique and yet indecipherable, can be glimpsed.

Spirituality, Christianity and icons

Wilhelm von Gloeden , “La Ragazza di Mandanaci” (Taormina), 1880-1885 ca., silver gelatin on glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - von Gloeden archive, Florence

Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, 1986, silver gelatin print, Courtesy The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Wilhelm von Gloeden , "Tripolitana" (Taormina), 1903/1904 ca., silver gelatin on glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - von Gloeden archive, Florence

Robert Mapplethorpe, Ada, 1982, silver gelatin print, Courtesy The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Wilhelm von Gloeden , Presunto autoritratto come “Nazareno” (Taormina?), print dated 27 September 1903, negative dated 1880 ca., albumen print, Alinari Archives - von Gloeden archive, Florence

Robert Mapplethorpe, Jack Walls, 1983, silver gelatin print, Courtesy The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

The “spiritual in art” has multiple forms. The works exhibited on the second floor are imbued with symbolic and iconographic elements handed down by religious traditions. From the posture of the hands, to the reclined head. The long veil that covers the women's heads and the symbolic shape of the cross, evoked by an uncovered male sex, in a shot that follows the crucified Christ, so frequent in Christian iconography.

Catholic symbolism has permeated the vision of these authors, who, by recalling iconographic elements consolidated in its tradition, approach themes such as innocence, sin and the sublimation of suffering.

The masters compared: Mapplethorpe, von Gloeden, the Fratelli Alinari

Wilhelm von Gloeden, “Caino” (Taormina), 1900 ca., silver gelatin on glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - von Gloeden archive, Florence

Robert Mapplethorpe, Ajitto, 1981, silver gelatin print, Courtesy The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Fratelli Alinari, Adolescent, cast of the original by Michelangelo Buonarroti (Accademia Gallery, Florence), before 1916, silver gelatin on glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - Alinari archive, Florence

In his art Mapplethorpe expressed  the search for beauty in its primordial form. Beauty that is not in the subject photographed, but in its formal essence. His photographs show naked bodies, perfect shapes, tense muscles, smooth forms, vibrant and balanced.

Naked bodies, especially male ones, are Baron von Gloeden's favorite subject. Eternal adolescents with waxen skin, warmed by the sun, smooth and glabrous, resting on rough, wild rocks. Arcadian scenes in a Mediterranean landscape such as the one described by Ulysses, while he was sailing and observing the coasts of Sicily.

Mapplethorpe's Dionysian and von Gloeden's Apollonian, demonic carnality and innocent purity, dialogue and overlap, in an erotic involvement and aesthetic satisfaction. The sexual charge is filtered by classicism.

The subjects of the Fratelli Alinari are also naked, but their nudes are not made of skin, but stone. The Alinaris photographed the statues of antiquity starting from a classical idea of beauty, according to a deliberately conceived aesthetic, masterfully constructed thanks to the new (for the time) possibilities offered by the camera.

“To shoot sculptures, the Alinaris take only one picture and therefore the identification of the point of view appears truly decisive". (From: Arturo Carlo Quintavalle “Gli Alinari”).

  And it is precisely thanks to the reproducibility potential offered by photography that their images impose themselves in the world as a model, the same model that Mapplethorpe, "the boy who loved Michelangelo", was inspired by.

Classical sculpture (and painting) influenced photography. And photography appropriated these artistic techniques to reprocess them with its own means and language, to give them back, in turn, to art.

What the authors on display have in common is the need and the ability to bend art to a photographic vision.

Flowers

Wilhelm von Gloeden, "Hypnos" (Taormina), 1907/1908 ca., albumen print, Alinari Archives - von Gloeden archive, Florence

Fratelli Alinari, "Calla Aethiopica" (Botanical Garden, Florence), before 1896, silver gelatin on glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - Alinari archive, Florence

Robert Mapplethorpe, Calla Lily, 1984, silver gelatin print, Courtesy The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Fratelli Alinari, "Lilium Auratum" (Gardens of Florence), before 1896, silver gelatin on glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - Alinari archive, Florence

Fratelli Alinari, "Amarillis" (Florence), before 1896, silver gelatin on glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - Alinari archive, Florence

One section of the exhibition is dedicated to flowers, a subject much loved by the authors. On the walls, a bouquet of floral essences (suggesting phallic or vaginal shapes) frames 'Hypnos', a famous photograph by von Gloeden in which a boy wearing a crown of flowers (Giacomo Lanfranchi, one of the Baron's models) stares at the visitor with a lanky gaze, clutching in his arms two stems of Datura (Brugmansia, also known as angel's trumpet), a plant cultivated for decorative purposes with hypnotic and hallucinogenic effects (the anthropine it contains dilates the pupils).

The compositional similarities between Mapplethorpe's and the Alinari's photographs are so striking as to make their attribution difficult.

Focus on: Baron von Gloeden's pictorial portraits

Wilhelm von Gloeden, “Fauno” (Taormina), 1890-1900 ca., gelatin silver dry glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - von Gloeden archive, Florence

Wilhelm von Gloeden, Two young men next to the bitch Nedda (Taormina), 1885-1895 ca., collodion glass plate negative, Alinari Archives - von Gloeden archive, Florence

Wilhelm von Gloeden, Three naked young men: "Pasqualino," "Pietro," and "Pinuccio" (Taormina), 1896-1898 ca., collodion negative (glass plate), Alinari Archives - von Gloeden archive, Florence

Wilhelm von Gloeden, From the series "Cain", (Taormina), 1900 ca., silver gelatin dry glass plate negative,Alinari Archives - von Gloeden archive, Florence

Four original negatives on glass plate, measuring about 18x24 cm are on display. Precious objects  that show the technical and artistic skills of Baron Von Golden who would often use large format cameras for his pictures , including the bulky 30x40cm plates which he used to carry with him on the steep and wild slopes around Taormina.

The plates, when backlit , show the very peculiar touch-ups - in some cases tiny details, in other cases proper paintings - the photographer made on the plates to obtain positive prints that had a special and fascinating “pictorial” look. A unique and original trait which nonetheless, as the baron stated, remained within the boundaries of purely photographic vocabulary.