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“Anatomy of a Portrait” (“Anatomia di un Ritratto”) will have its world premiere in the Venetian Nights program of Venice Days on Sept. 4.
Directed by Francesco Clerici (“Hand Gestures”) and Mattia Colombo (“Trees That
Walk,” “I Wanna Sleep With You”), the documentary pieces together the story of Fernanda Wittgens, Italy’s first female museum director. Fernanda led the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan during WWII and through its period of reconstruction. A courageous anti-fascist activist during the Mussolini regime, she was sentenced by the Fascist Special Tribunal to 20 years in prison, but was released after the war ended.
Having very limited historical material about Fernanda at their disposal, the directors decided to bring together actress Sara Drago and art historian Giovanna Ginex into a recording studio in order to “bring to life” Fernanda’s voice based on her letters and Giovanna’s extensive research on Fernanda’s life for nearly 40 years.
“In a sense, ‘Anatomy of a Portrait’ is a ‘requiem for the biopic’: it is a film not about the impossibility of telling a life story “truthfully,” but about the meaning that life can hold today, and it is only natural that the archival footage and historical reconstruction – which initially seem essential – gradually dissolve into the present, transforming into a confrontation with contemporary realities and urgent issues,” Clerici and Colombo told Variety.
The Italian-Swiss documentary is produced by Marco Malfi Chindemi’s Rossofilm with Luce Cinecittà and Lab 80 Film, in co-production with Rough Cat and RSI – Radiotelevisione Svizzera.
Variety interviewed the directors Francesco Clerici and Mattia Colombo shortly before its Venice world premiere.
How did you decide how you would tell Fernanda’s story?
Francesco Clerici: What really remains of Fernanda Wittgens are her letters (only those she wrote, not those she received), a few photographs and a five-second clip from a video. That was our starting point: to think about how to tell her story, not by forcibly filling in the gaps left behind, but – as the film puts it – by ‘respecting’ them. A biopic is always an act of hagiographic fabrication, and it immediately struck us as a contrivance born of convention, but not the right approach.
The turning point came when we met art historian Giovanna Ginex for a preliminary interview about Fernanda Wittgens. We realized that what really mattered was not only what remained of Fernanda, but how she continued to resonate in someone who had devoted so much of her life to studying her. Giovanna had spent almost forty years researching Fernanda and, in a way, had already created her own portrait of her.
So we began to think that perhaps we shouldn’t try to fill the absence of images at all, but instead film what happens when someone tries to bring a person back through the traces she has left behind. We brought in Sara Drago, an actress from another generation, to give Giovanna’s imagined Fernanda Wittgens a voice, a body and a gaze. But we weren’t interested in having an actress simply impersonate Fernanda. We wanted to see whether an actress could become a space through which Fernanda might somehow reappear.
The film became the encounter between two women — an art historian and an actress — rather than the reconstruction of a life. Wittgens’s voice passing through Giovanna, finding a new voice and body in Sara, and finally reaching us.
How important is Brera today within the context of the art world in Italy and the world at large?
Mattia Colombo: What makes Brera unique – quite apart from the undeniable importance of the ‘Supermasterpieces’ by Raffaello, Piero della Francesca, Caravaggio, Mantegna and so on – is that it is a museum designed for the city and its inhabitants, not just for tourists. It is designed to foster reflection, workshops, exhibitions, experiences and dialogues with the city, each time in a different way: it is a museum that engages with the local community, rather than simply being a destination for tourists.
Of course, Brera has changed enormously since Fernanda’s time, but when we look at the museum today, we can still see traces of her vision. And perhaps most importantly, there are people at Brera today who still look to Fernanda as an example and who, in their own way, are trying to carry forward the work she began.
Why do you think it’s important to tell Fernanda’s story now?
Clerici: Amid the resurgence of fascism and the far right, and the disregard for art as a form of memory and value – and, more generally, in a world that is dramatically similar to the one in which Wittgens had to struggle to assert her authority as a woman in an almost entirely male-dominated institutional world – her story feels particularly relevant today.
What feels equally contemporary to us is her belief in art and cultural institutions as something profoundly public and political. Fernanda risked her life not only to protect works of art during the war, but also to help politically persecuted people escape the Fascist regime. And after the war, she fought to rebuild Brera as a museum that was open and accessible to everyone. For her, preserving art, making it accessible and defending freedom were deeply connected acts.
