The National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia and the Vittoria Gallery in Rome present the exhibition The Smile of the Sphinx, a solo show by Federica Zuccheri, open to the public from March 27 to May 3, 2026. 

The exhibition is included in the ticket price.

The exhibition path, curated by Tiziano M. Todi, unfolds through 10 sculptural works, selected to create a concentrated and coherent path. The works, made with precious materials such as bronze, silver, stone grafts, and precious details, never seek ornamental effects. On the contrary, they build dense presences, seductive and disturbing figures, capable of oscillating between grace and pain, light and darkness, attraction and unease. In Zuccheri's work, myth is not a quotation or a nostalgic refuge, but a tool to reactivate questions about the present. Federica Zuccheri's sculptures address themes related to desire, metamorphosis, vulnerability, seduction, and power, transforming them into images that do not exhaust themselves at first sight. The elegant, refined, and often luminous form never diminishes the internal tension of the work, but makes it even more evident. It is precisely in this coexistence between beauty and unease that one recognizes one of the most authentic traits of her research.

Set up under the frescoed hemicycle of Villa Giulia, one of the most evocative environments of the Renaissance complex built by the will of Pope Julius III between 1551 and 1553, designed by Jacopo Barozzi known as Vignola, Giorgio Vasari, and Bartolomeo Ammannati, the exhibition reflects the precise character of Federica Zuccheri's research, in which sculpture asserts itself as a complex, narrative, and symbolic language. In this context, the frescoed hemicycle does not merely serve as a frame but actively participates in the construction of the visual experience. Its enveloping architecture, together with the pergolas, grotesques, and the illusionistic construction of space, generates a true gaze machine, a place where contemporary art can fit in not through overlap but through resonance. The "jungle" of frescoes enters into dialogue with Zuccheri's figurative universe, creating an unexpected continuity between decorative memory and contemporary imagination. The sculptures do not blend into the space; they traverse it. They inhabit it as vigilant presences, capable of establishing a direct, never pacified relationship with the architecture and the visitor.