The exhibition event, is sponsored by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism and promoted and produced by the Municipality of Milan-Culture, Palazzo Reale and Civita Mostre, will be open to the public until 26 February 2017 in the noble halls of Palazzo Reale.
“After the extraordinary preview of the past Christmas holidays, which offered the public the opportunity to admire the 'Adoration of the Shepherds' at Palazzo Marino, this exhibition offers a vision of Rubens with a broad horizon, capable of containing within itself the parabola of development of his poetics passing through the classical influences, the relationship with Italian art, the relationship with some of his contemporary artists known during his stays in our country - declares the councilor for culture Filippo Del Corno -. An important artistic project to allow everyone to admire the work of a great artist of all times up close, but also a cultural operation to rediscover the centrality of Italy in the development of the history of art".
Italy is fundamental for Rubens, as well as Rubens for Italy: we owe him the first signs of the birth of the Baroque which spreads in very high expressions in every region. An influence that all critics recognize and exalt to the point that Bernard Berenson likes to call him "an Italian painter". His relationships with Genoa, Mantua, Venice and the Roman story allow us to reconstruct the thread that binds him so deeply to Italian culture, which will remain his identity trait for all of his subsequent production.
And this is precisely the leit motif of the exhibition "Pietro Paolo Rubens and the birth of the Baroque": highlighting Rubens' relationships with ancient art and classical statuary and his attention to the great Renaissance masters such as Tintoretto and Correggio and above all to make known the extraordinary influence exerted by the great Master on the younger Italian artists, protagonists of the Baroque such as Pietro da Cortona, Bernini, Lanfranco, up to Luca Giordano.
To make this complex theme clear and linear, Anna Lo Bianco, curator of the exhibition, has selected a group of works that are absolutely exemplary of these themes, with comparisons as evident as possible between paintings by Rubens, ancient sculptures, works by some great protagonists of the sixteenth century and of Baroque artists: a corpus of over 70 works, 40 of which by the great Flemish master, brought together thanks to international loans from some of the largest collections in the world such as those of the Prado National Museum, the Hermitage of St. Petersburg, the Gemäldegalerie of Berlin and the Prince of Liechtenstein, and on loans from numerous Italian collections, including the
National Gallery of Ancient Art in Rome, the Capitoline Museums, the Borghese Gallery, the Uffizi Gallery and the Palatine Gallery in Florence, the Ducal Palace Museum in Mantua, the Spinola Palace Gallery in Genoa, the National Archaeological Museum in Naples .
"I would like the meeting with Rubens to leave a trace of his radiant nature, of the deep love for art and for life that distinguishes him" is the wish of Anna Lo Bianco, who curated the exhibition with the support of a prestigious international scientific committee composed of Eloisa Dodero, David Jaffé, Johann Kraeftner, Cecilia Paolini and Alejandro Vergara.
