Italy has been the stuff of dreams for artists, poets, novelists, diplomats, soldiers and merchants since the Renaissance. So much so that the trip to Italy became an obligatory stage in the training of the honest man from the 17th to the 19th century. The proposed exhibition invites us to take a similar route by following the Pompeian red, the real Ariadne's thread of this journey.
At the foot of Mont Jura and Mont Blanc, a few kilometres from the Swiss border, the Château de Voltaire, a perfect example of neo-classicism, invites you to embark on your "Grand Tour" through a collection of paintings from the 16th to the 18th century, in a poetic and refined setting by the scenographer Jean-Louis Janin Daviet and under the scientific curatorship of two art historians, one Italian, Anna Chiara Fontana, and the other French, François Marandet.
Through these fragile pen strokes or vigorous brushstrokes, artists who witnessed the creative explosion that sprang up in Renaissance and Baroque Italy express themselves.
By highlighting these paintings and drawings, this exhibition seeks to highlight the reasons for the enduring fascination with the Italian model and will give you a better understanding of how and why this country exerted a profound and major influence on the arts from the 15th century onwards.