Contemporary art contaminates the classic collections. And an exhibition – “Echo and Narcissus - Portrait and self-portrait in the collections of MAXXI and the Barberini Corsini National Galleries” – celebrates contamination to the nth degree in Rome. For those who love the challenge, the exhibition tenaciously desired by Giovanna Melandri, president of Maxxi and by Flaminia Gennari Sartori, director of the National Galleries of Palazzo Barberini and curator of the exhibition with Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, director of Maxxi arte, is a unique event not to be missed. For many reasons.
BAROQUE SPLENDOR AND AVANT-GARDE WONDER
The Scalone by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the helical staircase by Francesco Borromini: we are only at the beginning of a journey that celebrates the reopening of 750 square meters of Palazzo Barberini after seventy years of the complicated story that had reserved for the Armed Forces Officers Club some halls of the building, now recovered and open to the public, precisely, with the exhibition. And this is already a good start, but the best comes from the discovery of the 11 new rooms dotted with masterpieces that the National Galleries and Maxxi have skilfully combined. And so to the Narcissus by Caravaggio who revels in his image - the nymph Echo who fell in love with him according to Ovid's story is completely absent - replies Giulio Paolini with its black monolith (the installation “Echo in the void“) which reflects the icon in a contemporary key. It is the first shock also because we have entered the Oval Room, a jewel in itself.
The first step is majestic, the entrance into the large living room with the vault frescoed by Pietro da Cortona: 500 square meters of frescoes celebrate the glory of Pope Urban VIII, the passing of time and the Barberini family. Here Luigi Ontani has imagined an installation on Hours which flows, through a series of panels in sequence, like a clock, thus giving time a representation in space. In the Throne Halls Shirin Neshat and his video that questions the unearthed ghosts of memory”Illusions & Mirrors” (protagonist the actress Natalie Portman) converses with the Beatrice Cenci by Guido Reni which is said to have been portrayed shortly before going to the gallows.
Without describing each room, of the 11 dedicated to the exhibition, “Large dessert” by Kiki Smith in the Audience Hall also deserves mention. The affected grace of the statuettes of her on the huge transversal table marry perfectly with the pastels of Benedetto Luti and Rosalba Carriera, their all-female eighteenth-century allegories and portraits. And then there Raphael's Fornarina, the portraits Pape (John Paul II) e Mao di Yan Pei-Ming flanking the bust of Urban VIII by Bernini with the idea of the separated image of spiritual and temporal power.
ANCIENT ART, MODERN LOOK
Amaze, strike, make you think. “We started from the idea of looking at our works with different eyes” explains Flaminia Gennari Santori who underlines how we also wanted to give the idea of a “Museum that dialogues with the other Museums”. In the words of Giovanna Melandri, the exhibition is the result of the “passionate convergence between two national institutions. At the center of the project are our two collections and the theme of identity: masculine, feminine, of power. In the era of selfies, of the obsession with self-portraits, we wanted to encourage in-depth reflection on the relationship with the other”. “A search for balance between the works and between them and the spaces of the Museum. Thus was born the fascinating path between ancient and contemporary art of #EcoeNarcisoExhibit” , tweets Bartolomeo Pietromarchi.
The exhibition will remain open until October 18th.
