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Category :Art News |
Written by: Silvia Bosi
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Palazzo Barberini: Rome’S Museum Of Italian Ancient Art Is Complete
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Tuesday 5 July 2011
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Last week, after many years, the long renovation works of Palazzo Barberini were concluded, and the palace is now open to the public in all its splendour. The National Gallery of Ancient Art, after a break of at least six decades, has regained the collocation it deserves and given back to Rome the great museum that Palazzo Barberini was originally meant for. The elegant 17th-century residence, commissioned for his family by Maffeo Barberino, who became pope as Urban VIII, was designed and realised by more hands: from Carlo Maderno to Borromini, from Bernini to Pietro da Cortona.
The Ministry for Cultural Heritage, in these years, has had to face a few setbacks, first waiting for the relocation of the Officers’ Circle from the palace, then dealing with the new planning and funding.
The first rooms of this “small Louvre”, the ground floor and the noble floor, had already been inaugurated last 16th September, while last Tuesday the gallery opened 10 other rooms on the second floor of the building, for a total of 35 spaces filled with beauty.
In conjunction with the celebrations for the 150 years of the Unity of Italy, the capital has a new extraordinary museum pole, offering precious ancient works that embrace a timeframe of about seven centuries: starting from the 13th-century Roman crosses and wooden tables up to the neoclassical rigour of the 18th century, including masterpieces of the calibre of Caravaggio’s Judith and Holofernes and Raffaello’s Portrait of a Young Woman (also known as La fornarina). The National Gallery, unlike many other local museums, hosts and valorises a selection of very different pieces for theme, provenance, school, period, presenting itself as a large and varied archive on the evolution of the figurative art of that era.
The second floor alone, restored impeccably by the City of Rome’s board for the conservation of its Architectonic and Landscape Heritage, presents two-hundred paintings from the last century taken into consideration, from the mid 17th century to the second half of the 18th century, completing the setting already inaugurated on the lower floors. A good part of these paintings has never been displayed to the public, which therefore will have the privilege to appreciate for the first time their great quality and peculiarity, within an exhibition that mimes the evolution of the wide artistic period proposed. The director of the Gallery, Anna Lo Bianco, has opted for a choice of particularly representative works, arranged not only in chronological order, but also keeping into account painting genres, schools of provenance or places of origin, offering new food for thought. All of this is corroborated by the presence of detailed captions, explanatory panels and audio-guides to assist visitors throughout their journey.
The public will also be able to see again masterpieces that have been left in storerooms until now, all of them restored and reviewed for the new exhibition, such as L’Angelo custode (The Guardian Angel) by Pietro da Cortona, the Portrait of Urban VIII by Bernini, La Poesia by Salvator Rosa, Il Banchetto del ricco Epulone (The Rich Man’s Banquet) by Mattia Preti, Batoni’s Portrait of Henry Peirse, the famous Zeus and Ganymede by Mengs, Canaletto’s View of St Mark’s Square, the View of Villa Medici by Van Wittel (Vanvitelli), Boucher’s Little Gardener, Tiepolo’s Satyr with cupid.
A parenthesis is represented, instead, by the Lemme Collection and that of the Duke of Cervinara, both with a taste of 18th century – which, being created according to the taste of a particular figure and being illustrative of a coherent choice, are arranged in two adjoining rooms, next to the marvellous Sala Corvi decorated with tempera around 1780.
A long chapter of the saga of Palazzo Barberini ends with the definitive completion of the museum: a happy ending that sees ancient figurative art duly valorised by a customised Roman framing.
Tags: Bernini, Borromini, Carlo Maderno, Raffaello, Caravaggio, Pompeo girolamo Batoni, Boucher, Canaletto, Mattia Preti, Salvator Rosa, Palazzo Barberini, Mengs, Tiepolo, Pietro da Cortona, Van Wittel
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Tags: Pompeo girolamo Batoni, Bernini, Raffaello, Salvator Rosa, Tiepolo, Canaletto, Mattia Preti, Boucher, Mengs, Pietro da Cortona, Carlo Maderno, Palazzo Barberini, Caravaggio, Borromini, Van Wittel
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