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In 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 over 10,000 letters arriving or departing from Mantua in these years; and countless travels and reconnaissance in museums and private collections everywhere, with real "discoveries" on the destinies and adventures of the "tiles" of this huge "mosaic" today scattered all over the globe.
As part of the research preliminary to the exhibition, a detailed analysis was carried out on the documents of the Gonzaga Archive kept in the State Archives of Mantua, in order to integrate the information already available on the acquisitions of art by the Dukes in the period between 1563 and 1630. Based on the data collected, an extremely rich overview of the the art market with which the Gonzagas had to deal: to the wide range of negotiations, the not always clear payment methods and the unjustified fluctuation of prices at first sight, we add the variables constituted by the social rank of the seller and the buyer, the fame of the artist and the state of conservation of the work, just to mention the most common factors in the documents.
The huge documentary screening has therefore made it possible to establish lines and trends, market and trade centers, family roles and ambassadors and residents hierarchies, arrivals and departures of artists and much more; above all, the emerged is already enough to define a clear and understandable map of the market and of the artistic exchanges between the Gonzagas of Mantua and the rest of the world.
PROJECT "Gonzaga Collecting 1563-1630"
The "Gonzaga collecting 1563-1630" project, started in 1998 and directed by Raffaella Morselli with the archival coordination of Daniela Ferrari, turns its attention to computer cataloging and to the publication of documents, sources and essays on the collecting season that has seen as protagonists Guglielmo Gonzaga, Francesco, Vincenzo, Ferdinando and Vincenzo II, respectively III, IV, V, VI, VII and last Duke of Mantua, in the passage from the 16th to the 17th century.In order to follow the phases of accumulation and subdivision of Gonzaga objects, as well as the places where objects and paintings were purchased, and to identify the intermediaries who created with them a dense network of art market relationships, it seemed inevitable, on the track of Alessandro Luzio's researches and even earlier by Antonino Bertolotti, starting from the official documents preserved in the State Archives of Mantua, the perfect container of the Gonzaga Archives.
A group of seven researchers employed at the State Archives of Mantua is examining the Gonzaga correspondence that arrived and departed from Mantua within this chronological delimitation, including original letters and copy letters, correspondence from ambassadors and other correspondents according to the topographical subdivision suggested by the arrangement of the Archive itself, which also has a remote reference to the history of collecting, understood in a broad sense in order to be able to apply a broad and non-penalizing filter in the selection of news. Basically, a database of ten thousand documents has been created which indicates all the letters that have a reference to an object or a series of objects (if they are connected to each other) worthy of a place within history of Gonzaga collecting, including not only artistic products, but by extension everything that can be of interest to a material and market history, to the passage between two centuries that are capital for the history of collecting itself. At the same time, the same computerized filing was applied to the three Gonzaga inventories of 1540-1542; 1626-1627; 1665.
THE GONZAGA MUSEUM:
THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENTS IN PALAZZO DUCALE, IN THE INVENTORY OF 1626-1627
The inventory of 1626-1627, commissioned by Vincenzo II immediately after the death of Ferdinando Gonzaga (20 October 1626), is a fundamental document for the knowledge of the collection of the Dukes of Mantua, as it photographs and immortalizes the collection and the places that they contained, at its peak: a moment before the shocking inheritance, the partial sale of the treasures to Charles I of England and the Lanzichenecchi's assault.The work of cataloging the collections from Ferdinando Gonzaga's death was made with different experts employed for almost five months (who also worked simultaneously on the same categories of objects; for example, 1356 paintings, drawings and prints are cataloged in nine days) and then it seems to stop: a pause probably forced by events, which causes the loss of fundamental parts of the collection such as the very famous library, the scientific museum, the so-called catacombs that is Ferdinand's sanctum sanctorum, musical instruments, cameos and gems, medals, weapons and armor parade.
We are not faced with that general and legal list of the assets of the collection, which Ferdinand would have liked, but with an inventory of the most precious and significant assets of the collections, which does not include real estate or writings, and which ignores entire parts. of the collection and all the furnishings of the building.
Yet, studied at length and "deciphered" by Raffaella Morselli and the team of researchers who have supported her, the inventory - "Rosetta stone" of the legendary Gonzaga collection - turns out to be, although incomplete, an extraordinary source of news , with a double reading: vertical (for rooms) and horizontal (for techniques and materials). Above all, it helps to enter into the exhibition and cataloging logic used by Ferdinando, who wanted to bring order to the immense family heritage, creating logical spaces for viewing the works and placing the latter in connection with each other according to a very sophisticated intellectual scheme.