A new Rome show on Symbolism promises to give an accessible overview of this highly influential modern art movement without oversimplifying it for public consumption.
"The challenge was to produce an effective synthesis with works by around 60 major artists that could also appeal to the wider public," said Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli, the chief of Rome's National Gallery of Modern Art (GNAM), which is hosting the event.
It gives enthusiasts the chance to admire works by masters like Paul Gauguin, Gustav Klimt and Edvard Munch among many others.
The exhibition, which is entitled Symbolism: From Moreau to Gauguin to Klimt, is an enriched version of a show that recently attracted 160,000 visitors to Ferrara's Palazzo dei Diamanti.
"Even though it is not an easy show for the layman, we had more visitors than we expected in Ferrara," said Andrea Buzzoni, the president of co-organizers Ferrara Arte.
"This proves that there is a section of the public interested in discovering new things".
Symbolism was one of 19th-century European art's most important movements.
It was officially born on September 18, 1886 when French daily Le Figaro published the Symbolist Manifesto written by Greek poet Jean Moreas.
The Symbolists believed art should seek to express subjective states of mind and emotions.
The use of images with symbolic meaning is the best way to reach the absolute truths behind these feelings, they argued, rather than a realistic depiction of the world.
The Symbolists did not use the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but ambiguous and sometimes obscure ones, frequently drawn from dreams and mythology, which had highly personal meanings.
This made them the forerunners of Surrealism.
The movement had followers in the fields of music, prose, poetry and philosophy, as well as in the visual arts.
The show takes a chronological approach, starting with the works that led up to the movement's foundation.
These include French artist Gustave Moreau's depiction of Helen on the Wall of Troy.
The second part focuses on Symbolism's heyday after the publication of Moreas' manifesto.
One of the highlights here is Gauguin's dream-like, almost surreal wood panel of exotic women, Be Mysterious (1890), which is on loan from Paris' Musée d'Orsay.
There are also several paintings by Munch, such as his moving representation of Melancholy.
The third part of the show features works made in the movement's final phase, in the first decade of the 20th century.
Here it is possible to admire Austrian artist Klimt's tender representation of the Three Ages of Woman (1905).
Around 100 artworks are on display at the GNAM, Tuesday to Sunday, 8:30am-7:30pm, until September 16.
Tickets cost nine euros.
