EN
ITIn a recently discovered libretto, published in Verona in 1589, Valerini - actor and comedian in the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga - imagines and describes an ideal gallery, the expression of an unusual museographic dimension for the time.
To adorn the "Celeste Galeria di Minerva", goddess who presides over the intellect, there are no works by famous artists, but the most important collectors of the time, transformed into statues. Among these could not miss Vincenzo Gonzaga, even imagined by Valerini as a colossus that overshadows the museum. A celebratory provocation, to remember the love of Vincenzo and his family for art, his passion for collecting, his patronage; certainly a suggestive metaphor: the Duke of Mantua who constitutes his museum and himself becomes a part of it.
Five years of study and research, of reconstructions and investigations were necessary to redesign the legendary Gonzaga collection; about sixty Italian and European researchers involved in a real scientific and intellectual adventure, which led to the identification and following of the traces of many of the works of the amazing collection of the Dukes of Mantua; three plenary scientific committees, numerous meetings of restricted committees, a capillary archival research carried out by seven researchers, who have read and filed in these years more than 10,000 letters arriving or departing from Mantua; and countless travels and reconnaissance in museums and private collections everywhere, with real "discoveries" on the destinies and adventures of the "tiles" of this enormous "mosaic" now dispersed throughout the globe; excellent restorations, international agreements with prestigious collections and the establishment of a pool of first-rate promoters and sponsors: the Municipality of Mantua and the International Center of Art and Culture of Palazzo Te, the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities through the Superintendence for the Historical, Artistic and Demo-ethno-anthropological Heritage of Brescia, Cremona and Mantua, the Lombardy Region, the Province of Mantua, the Mantua Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Crafts and Agriculture, the Monte dei Paschi di Siena Foundation and the Monte dei Paschi di Siena Bank, the Banca Agricola Foundation Mantovana and Banca Agricola Mantovana and Eni.
All this to make possible the "Gonzaga" event, the exceptional exhibition, curated and conceived by Andrea Emiliani and Raffaella Morselli (who is also responsible for the coordination of the scientific research and cataloging group and the care of the catalogs), was held in Mantua from 2 September to 8 December 2002 in the prestigious location of Palazzo Te and in the historic rooms of Palazzo Ducale, where a specific section has been set up dedicated to drawings on the architecture and decorations of the great residence.
After almost four hundred years, over 90 paintings returned to the Dukes city, reunited again (often for the first time in Italy) - with some absolute masterpieces in the history of art such as Titian's Portrait of a Young Woman in the Mirror, Venus Toilette made of rock crystals, weapons, bronzes and rare musical codes: an emblematic and exemplary selection of the Gonzaga's collection at its peak, just as it appears "photographed" in the list of assets of Ferdinando Gonzaga of 1626-1627, published and analyzed in the context of the preliminary studies for the exhibition, "stele di Rosetta" defined it by the curators - for the "deciphering" of the collection.
A total of 90 lenders from all over the world, from America to Australia, including the Royal Collection of Her Majesty Elizabeth II - which and for the occasion even lend 9 important paintings - and a set of works that reach an insurance value of 240 million Euro.
Capable of competing with the richest collections in Europe, capable of boasting masterpieces envied and coveted by both Rudolph II and Charles I Stewart, the Gonzaga collection was the result of a passion and a policy of collecting and patronage carried out with tenacity over three centuries, by all the members of the Gonzaga family, starting with Isabella d'Este and gradually up to Ferdinando Gonzaga, her great-grandson. A sort of "obsessive syndrome" to collect the best had attacked the members of this lineage.
A love, sometimes obsessive, for beauty and art, accompanied by a precise strategy of exalting the image of the duchy and the awareness of being able to dialogue with the major courts of the world, thanks to the preciousness of their collections.
The result of all this, at the peak of the collection in the second half of the seventeenth century, was mind-boggling: 2,000 paintings with bombastic names and about 20,000 precious objects crammed or exhibited on display at the Palazzo Ducale: jewels, crystals, codes, naturalia, rarities of all kinds, ancient and modern sculptures, drawings and so on, which made the ducal collections of Mantua the most sought after and admired place in Europe.
Crossroads and reference point for renowned artists such as Giulio Romano, Andrea Mantegna, Rubens and Fetti, Giovanni Baglione and Guido Reni, Guercino and Van Dyck, the best watchmakers, carvers, goldsmiths and gunsmiths of the era, the artisans of the most famous workshops, the most loved and sought after musicians, and again architects and decorators and then art dealers, emissaries of other European courts, illustrious guests.
Then came the decline, for a duchy with no male heirs, folded in on itself and preparing to face wars and famines.
In 1625 the English collectors greed began; in 1626 Duke Ferdinando died, the last great patron and collector of the dynasty; in 1628 Charles I Stuart bought a part of the collection - from which the Gonzagas had never wanted to separate before - and finally the lansquenets, two years later, sacked the city.
The Gonzaga patrimony was definitively dispersed.
Now the exhibition "GONZAGA. LA CELESTE GALERIA. The Museum of the Dukes of Mantua" brought us back to the suggestions of Valerini, giving voice again to the taste, efforts and collecting choices of the Gonzagas, their dreams and their passions, trying to understand "the why" and "the for how" hidden behind each of the works of the mythical collection.
Leading us into this fascinating world was Ferdinando, the 6th Duke, the last great collector of the family, the one who more than others made famous the extraordinary heritage collected by the Gonzagas thanks to his stringent desire to organize the collections in a logical and viable complex, which will lead him to make Palazzo Ducale a real museum ante litteram.
At Palazzo Te, in a sinuous and brand new setting designed by FABRICA, the Benetton Group's communication research center - which also took care of the graphic image and, in collaboration with Villaggio Globale International, the communication of the exhibition - has been indeed re-proposed, through the renewed dialogue between the traced works, the topography of the places in the "Museum" of the Gonzagas, as it seems to result from the inventory of 1626-27.
So we went back to the "Logion Serata", the "Corridoio di Santa Barbara" or the "Galleria della Mostra" - "public" places as Ferdinando had wanted and thought them - and it was possible to admire some of the masterpieces that were exhibited there, such as Correggio's Educazione d'amore, Giulio Romano's The Birth of Bacchus on loan from the Getty Museum in Malibu, Bruegel the Younger's The Peasant Wedding, an example of Mantuan passion for Flemish art, and Sant'Agnese and Rinaldo and Armida del Domenichino, Erminia among the shepherds of Guercino, and the Portrait of Vincenzo Gonzaga, made by Frans Pourbus, and chosen as the image of the exhibition, now in a private collection but once located in the center of the Gallery.
It was also possible to be admitted to the "Treasury Chamber" to the "Treasure Room" and in the '"New Apartment made by Mr. Duca", environments considered "very private", where visitors will be able to recognize absolute preciousness, thinking back to the times when, at the court of the Gonzaga, a few elected, this privilege was granted.
An imposing wind, where the real protagonists are the works on display - each with a story to tell - and the "ghosts" of the Gonzagas, which those works had very strongly wanted.
Important paintings are therefore returning, such as the David with the head of Goliath by Mantegna, from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, never exhibited before in Italy: one of the four monochromes listed in Ferdinand's Library and perhaps originally intended for Isabella d'Este apartments. From Hampton Court came, among others, the Holy Family by Dosso Dossi and the fascinating Portrait of Erasmus by Quentin Metsys, this last probably purchased for the Gonzagas in England and brought back across the Channel after the sale of the Mantuan collection, chosen with care. for the king by the merchant Daniel Nys. Among the absolute novelties is the Portrait of Ferdinando Gonzaga, at a young age, made by Rubens and "unearthed" in an Australian private collection.
Of great importance and full of history and anecdotes are also the exhibited codes, weapons, bronzes, jewels, crystals and cameos: in some cases attributable to the most famous shops that worked for the Gonzagas - Fontana, Saracchi, della Scala, Coiro, etc. - in other cases they certainly belonged to the Dukes of Mantua. Just think of the exceptional nature of having brought together, from Baltimore, New York and Vienna, the only 5 plates in shaped crystal, currently found, of the famous casket with the labors of Hercules, made by Annibale Fontana, which was praised so much in the stories of contemporaries.
Also from New York, from the Metropolitan Museum, a splendid rock crystal cup returned to Mantua engraved with the crescent moon and the letters SIC, evidence of the safe belonging of the object to Vincenzo Gonzaga, just as the precious Ptolemaic cameo has also been identified from Vienna (with an insurance value of 50 million euros) or the medal that belonged to Isabella d'Este.
For the weapons to point out, between burgundy and falcioni, the pump or carousel wheel with 'Orazio Coclite', one of the most beautiful specimens that has come down to us, attributed for the pictorial decoration, to Benvenuto Tisi known as Garofalo, who worked at Raphael's workshop.
Another significant moment of the exhibition, next to the "reconstruction" of the Dukes' collection, is finally given by the sections that are located in the Palazzo Ducale or what for four centuries was the palace of the Gonzaga: a reinterpretation of what the Palace (now partially transformed into the architectural structure compared to the golden age in the history of family collecting) meant in the life and representations of the court of Mantua.
The political-cultural promotion developed with stubbornness and foresight by the Dukes reflected on the magnificence of the Palace, a place of wonders not only for the richness of the treasures collected but also for its own architecture, for the decorations and the grandeur of its rooms. The Baron of Montesquieu would write on a visit to Mantua in 1729: "I have been to the Palazzo Ducale, where the governor lives: a city", and indeed there was no Duke. between the 16th and 17th centuries - starting with Guglielmo Gonzaga - who did not want to leave his mark on the building, hiring renowned architects and established decorators, contributing to its enrichment and embellishment and continuously varying spaces and functions. The drawings exhibited on this occasion - from those of the Mantuan architect Giovanni Battista Bertani, "prefect of factories" in the second half of the sixteenth century, to the architectural drawings of Bernardino Faggiotto, engineer and architect from Ca al Monferrato, who arrived in Mantua in 1580 - they gave an account of this long work.
To accompany an unmissable exhibition, organized by the Management Committee established by the Municipality of Mantua, in collaboration with the International Center of Art and Culture of Palazzo Te and Villaggio Globale International, there are finally two catalogs published by Skira - an exhibition catalog and a essay catalog - a book on the kitchen of the Gonzaga, with the reprint - of the text by Bartolomeo Stefani, the publication of a CD with indite music by Monteverdi, written specifically for the dukes of Mantua and a very rich merchandising ranging from ties to scarves up to perfume of Isabella d'Este. The research that made up the backbone of the exhibition is finally published in the series "The Gonzaga Collections", Repertories, Correspondence and Inventories, published by Silvana Editoriale.
