Pietro Tenerani e Luigi Poletti: storia di un'amicizia

<p>This contribution intends to illustrate an unprecedented aspect of the personality of the sculptor Pietro Tenerani and the architect Luigi Poletti, highlighting how their friendship, which blossomed in Rome around 1826, was a bond so strong as to have repercussions both on a human level and on on the artistic choices of both, in a continuous exchange of ideas and projects that also influenced other colleagues of the time. Tenerani chose Poletti to restore both the house where he went to live, in via delle Quattro Fontane 173-175, and the ateliers that he had gradually purchased on the same street, thanking him with a chalk representing the portrait of his friend. Poletti, for his part, not only involved the sculptor in the restoration site of the basilica of San Paolo f.m., where the two collaborated together in the chapel of San Benedetto, but named him first in the list of his closest friends in his will, giving him a painting from his prestigious collection.The two artists were also united by a particular attention towards the education of young people: Tenerani through the desire to open his own plaster cast gallery to the public, Poletti through teaching and the establishment of a scholarship. The concrete result of the friendship between Poletti and Tenerani was Carlo, the sculptor's son, who had studied with Poletti and became an architect and engineer. As such, he built a new palace on the land purchased by his parent in what would be called Via Nazionale, managing to set up the plaster cast gallery his father had dreamed of.</p>