ROME.- After more than a year of renovation work, the Civic Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Anticoli Corrado is reopening to the public with an exhibition that looks closely at one of the themes most deeply tied to the history of the Lazio village: portraiture.

The exhibition, “Anticoli Corrado between the 19th and 20th centuries: portraits and figures,” opens on Saturday, May 23, at 11:30 a.m. and runs through July 26, 2026. Curated by Manuel Carrera and Agnese Sferrazza, the show marks an important new chapter for the museum, which has undergone major improvements aimed at making its spaces more accessible and welcoming.

The renovation project, supported by the European Union’s PNRR – NextGenerationEU funding, focused on removing physical and cognitive barriers. It also forms part of a broader effort to renew the museum’s educational activities and improve the way it communicates with visitors.

At the center of the reopening exhibition is the portrait, a genre that played a key role in the artistic life of Anticoli Corrado. From the mid-19th century onward, the village attracted Italian and foreign painters who were drawn not only to its landscape, but also to its people. Over time, Anticoli Corrado became a meeting place for artists, models and visitors from different parts of the world, developing a reputation as a village where art and daily life were closely intertwined.

The exhibition brings together a selection of portraits, some from the museum’s permanent collection and others loaned from private collections. The works reflect a wide range of artistic backgrounds and styles, showing how a seemingly simple subject — the human figure — could lead to very different and often deeply expressive results.

Several works in the exhibition are being shown publicly for the first time, adding particular interest to the project. Among the highlights is “Portrait of a Woman from Anticoli,” painted in 1858 by the Swiss artist Ernst Stückelberg during his time in Anticoli Corrado. The painting has been donated to the museum by the artist’s heirs on the occasion of the exhibition.

Another important section is devoted to a small group of early, previously unpublished paintings by Ferruccio Ferrazzi. Although Ferrazzi was Roman, his family origins were in the Aniene Valley, and he maintained personal ties with Anticoli Corrado. These works offer a chance to explore a lesser-known aspect of his artistic development.

The show also looks at the painting of the 1930s and 1940s, a period strongly represented in the museum’s collection. Artists such as Emanuele Cavalli and Fausto Pirandello are presented as figures who, each in their own way, combined modern sensibilities with references to classical and Renaissance art, from Roman frescoes to Piero della Francesca.

The exhibition concludes with postwar works by Enrico Gaudenzi and Sergio Selva, both sons of artists. Their works suggest how the figurative tradition remained alive in Anticoli Corrado even as new avant-garde languages gained ground in the second half of the 20th century.

A catalogue published by De Luca Editori d’Arte accompanies the exhibition. It includes scholarly essays by the curators and a study by Emanuele Greco on Angelina Toppi, a woman from Anticoli who served as a model for several artists, including Giorgio de Chirico.

“Anticoli Corrado between the 19th and 20th centuries: portraits and figures” is on view from May 23 to July 26, 2026, at the Civic Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Anticoli Corrado, Piazza Santa Vittoria, 2, Anticoli Corrado, Rome.

The museum is open Tuesday to Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. It is closed on Mondays.