Matilde Festa Piacentini

After a first solo exhibition in Urbino in December 2024, high-resolution reproductions of 15 autograph works by Matilde Festa Piacentini are now on display. The original corpus, which reached the Conservation and Restoration School of the University of Urbino “Carlo Bo” in 2014 from a private collection, has undergone restoration supported by diagnostic analysis and digitization techniques for Cultural Heritage.

The research revealed a versatile artistic figure—painter, decorator, and mosaicist—of remarkable charm and talent. Initially trained in Cairo by her orientalist uncles Nicola and Paolo Francesco Forcella, Matilde Festa Piacentini became a distinctive presence in the Italian art scene of the early twentieth century. Despite this, she was later unjustly forgotten, due to political reasons and, perhaps above all, misogyny.

The exhibition also includes a video featuring documentary and iconographic materials on her life and work, and a touchscreen that allows visitors to explore diagnostic studies and digital documentation of the paintings.