Italian lesson, studies on human body proportions

205 years since the artist’s birth (1820 – 1894)

Gheorghe Tattarescu is among the very few Romanian artists from the 19th century who kept his studies executed in the training years (Italy, Rome 1845-1851), dreaming of setting up a higher art school upon returning to Bucharest.

Not only did he apply the Italian academic method in teaching, but he was the first to conceive a manual about the artistic representation of the human body. This synthesis of the acquired knowledge, entitled « Precepts and useful studies on the proportions of the human body », was published in 1865 in the typography of the associated workers, the Romanian Pasagul, Bucharest.

,, Tattarescu and Tattarescu School. The Italian lesson, studies on the proportions of the human body ” It brings to the attention of the visitors the graphic works in which the human body is studied in various positions, following the correct rendering of the movement, as it was done at the San Luca Academy in Rome, to which are added compositional studies that are the basis of known works such as « Renaissance of Romania », paintings relevant to the subject, as well as to the subject.

These works are among the few testimonies by analyzing the way in which the beginning of the Bucharest artistic education could be determined. The exhibition illustrates the seriousness of the pedagogical method that was the basis of higher artistic education and the rigor with which Professor Tattarescu trained his students at the Belle Arts School in Bucharest, founded with Theodor Aman in 1864. in a fire, on March 24, 1884.

Prerude to the major work for which Gheorghe Tattarescu is appreciated, this unique lesson understanding the way of building and playing in the two -dimensional bodies has never been meant to a public exposure. The rigor of the execution, the holographic testimonies that accompany the sketches and, last but not least, the plasticity of the drawings are able to overcome their nature of simple instruments in the perfection of the painter Tattarescu and have become valuable testimonies for both the recovery of the heritage and for the research of the history of the institutional artistic education.

Both the general public and the specialists will have the pleasure of exploring a unique visual tab from the artist’s biography, respectively the period of training at the San Luca Academy in Rome, where he studied with teachers such as Charta, Giovanni Silvagni and Pietro Gagliardi. Awaiting the reopening of the Gheorghe Tattarescu Museum, the Bucharest Municipality Museum inaugurates the Palace dedicated to the Italian lesson, studies on the proportions of the human body, which includes unique or very little known works.

April 9, 2025 – August 31, 2025, Suțu Palace

Rodica Ion, curator/museum of Bucharest municipality