Antonio Carlini (Treviso, March 28, 1859 - July 27, 1945) can be the emblem of those artists who, although very notable, owe fame more to their actions than to their creations. Despite being a very fine and prolific sculptor, master of Arturo Martini, Carlini is known and celebrated above all for his pioneering commitment to the protection of the artistic heritage.

In his early twenties, in 1883, together with Luigi Bailo, Augusto Serena and Girolamo Botter, he participated in the rescue of the fresco cycle with the Stories of Saint Ursula by Tomaso da Modena - now exhibited in the Santa Caterina Museum - which was in danger of being lost forever with the demolition of the church of Santa Margherita. The extensive documentation of the urbs picta is also owed to Antonio Carlini: his sheets, preserved in the "Giovanni Comisso" Library in Treviso, commissioned by the Bailo, allow us to know the consistency, the themes, the colors of many painted facades of the medieval and Renaissance city, now lost.

His intervention for the protection of the Loggia dei Cavalieri was decisive, a merit so great that it almost made him forget his original vocation as an artist. Without underestimating this role of Carlini, the exhibition that the Bailo Museum reserves for him from 10 December 2022 to 26 March 2023, curated by Fabrizio Malachin, aims to focus attention on the sculptor: a complete artist placed in neo-Canovian positions, nevertheless capable of absolute creative originality. To be brought together for the first time are more than 60 busts, high reliefs, medals. Examples of a truly frenetic artistic activity, which from sculpture alone radiated into different fields. His, for example, is the project of the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Monte in San Zenone degli Ezzelini. His many interventions with a patriotic theme, from the monument-ossuary in memory of the Papal Dragoons in Cornuda, to the tombstones of Mazzini and Cavallotti, in Rovigo, or, again, to the bronze medallions of Mazzini and Cavour in the Loggia del Comune, in Conegliano. But important restoration works carried out in Trentino are also remembered by him.

Another passion of his is ceramics: for the "Gregorj" factory in Treviso, in the years between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, he created numerous vases. Famous are those decorated with medieval representations, celebrated at the International Exhibition in Rome in 1911. "Carlini sculptor fits - says the curator Malachin - in the ideal history of Venetian sculpture (which is absolutely not only regional given its protagonists) as a link of conjunction between two worlds, Antonio Canova and Arturo Martini, passing through Luigi Borro, who was our Antonio's teacher. Canova – Borro – Carlini – Martini are thus linked by an ideal common thread which allows us to discover the evolution of the language of modern sculpture and to better understand Martini who developed his extraordinary innovative art also as a reaction to Carlini's rules”.