Set amongst undulating landscape and towering cypress trees in the heart of the Italian countryside, this summer Umbria’s Reschio Estate will host a new exhibition with sculptor Nic Fiddian-Green. From 23rd July 2022, a new collection of sculpture and drawings will be unveiled and scattered across the 3,700 acre pastoral estate, including Fiddian-Green’s largest carving to date, ‘How Still the Night’.
Marking 40 years’ work, the exhibition will see 15 equestrian inspired sculptures unveiled at Reschio. The centrepiece ‘How Still the Night’ is Fiddian-Green’s largest carving to date. With a studio on Reschio’s doorstep and at Studio Sem in the medieval town of Pietrasanta – the birthplace of Michelangelo’s David – Fiddian-Green has spent the last three years crafting ‘How Still the Night’ from a single 35 tonne block of pure white Carrara marble. At four-metres high, the result is a majestic stallion floating weightlessly into the sky with ethereal grace.
Sharing the Bolza family’s passion for the powerful Umbrian landscapes that has inspired this work, ‘How Still the Night’ will take centre stage Reschio this summer, set atop the hill at the heart of the estate. It will appear alongside a curated selection of other sculpture in bronze, copper, lead and gold. In addition to the 14ft marble Horse at Water; there will be a 12ft bronze Mighty Head, an 8ft Roman Horse and a 16ft copper Horse at Water.
Meanwhile, a collection of 30 drawings will be shown at Ristorante Alle Scuderie, home to soaring ceilings, wide-reaching views of the surrounding countryside and an air of old-world Italian glamour. Taking inspiration from the Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca, whose work can be found in many of the churches and museums close to Fiddian-Green’s Italian workshop, the drawings bring to life Italy’s classical architecture and Arcadian landscapes that Fiddian-Green has observed over the past five years.
“I am delighted to be showing my work at Reschio once again and I have been looking forward to this moment since my first exhibition here back in 2015,” says Nic Fiddian-Green. ‘How Still the Night’ is quite unique and Carrara marble has been a joy to work with. I can’t wait to see it in situ at Reschio in the landscape where I first envisaged it a long time ago, and I hope the Etruscan people would approve as their work has been my inspiration.”
Longstanding admirers of his work, the Bolza family is honoured to once again be hosting Nic Fiddian-Green’s exhibition at Reschio, working alongside Nic to place these majestic sculptures throughout the rolling landscape, which so inspired them 30 years ago, so that they almost seem a part of it.
“My father first came across Nic unloading his work in preparation for an exhibition at The Sladmore Gallery in London’s Jermyn Street in 2011”, says Count Benedikt Bolza, Reschio’s second-generation owner. “Since then, we have forged a close family friendship. Nic’s monumental sculptures are prominently displayed over the estate and they really capture the spirit of Reschio’s landscape.”
A legacy project, Reschio Estate was originally bought by Count Antonio Bolza in 1994. In the almost three decades since, Count Bolza’s son, London-trained architect Count Benedikt, and his wife Donna Nencia, have set about restoring the crumbling farmhouse ruins that dot the estate into exquisite private homes, ten of which are available to rent. In May 2021, the Bolza’s completed their most ambitious chapter yet, opening the doors to award-winning Hotel Castello di Reschio, a stylishly reimagined 36-room hotel featuring a field-to-fork restaurant and ethereal subterranean Bathhouse in the estate’s spectacular tenth-century castle.
