The final exhibition of the XNUMXth edition of Restitutions, the safeguarding and enhancement program that Intesa Sanpaolo has been conducting for about thirty years in favor of the country's artistic heritage, was presented today at the Reggia di Venaria.
The exhibition The fragility of beauty. Titian, Van Dyck, Twombly and 200 other restored masterpieces, under the High Patronage of the President of the Republic, organized in collaboration with the Consortium of Royal Savoy Residences, will remain open to the public until 16 September 2018. The exhibition presents 80 groups of works, for a total of 212 artefacts restored thanks to Intesa Sanpaolo in the two-year period 2016-2017. The works belong to 17 Italian regions: in addition to Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Marche, Liguria, Tuscany, Abruzzo, Lazio, Campania, Calabria and Puglia, already involved in previous editions, Friuli was involved for the first time , Umbria, Basilicata, Molise, Sardinia and there is also a foreign presence, coming from Dresden.
In this edition, Intesa Sanpaolo collaborated with 44 protection bodies (Superintendencies, Museum Poles and autonomous Museums) and there are 63 owner bodies. An impressive recovery work, which involved 205 restoration professionals throughout Italy, including the "La Venaria Reale" Conservation and Restoration Center with which Intesa Sanpaolo has established an ongoing collaboration for some time.
The exhibition covers a chronological span of almost 40 centuries, ranging from antiquity to the contemporary, thus providing a broad panorama of the Italian artistic heritage. Among the exhibited works, the frescoes of the Tomb of Henib, from the Egyptian Museum of Turin; the precious Head of Basel, from the National Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria; the Portrait of Caterina Balbi Durazzo by Anton Van Dyck, from the Royal Palace of Genoa; San Girolamo penitente by Tiziano, from the Pinacoteca di Brera; San Daniele in the lions' den by Pietro da Cortona, from the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, to works by Morandi, Burri and Twombly. Among the great variety there is no shortage of particular objects such as the Tupinambà Cloak, made with feathers and cotton fibers, which arrived in Italy from Brazil between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, now kept in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, or the seventeenth-century painted Harpsichord, from the National Museum of Musical Instruments in Rome.
The exhibition itinerary is organized according to a chronological/thematic logic which focuses on the fragility of our heritage. It concludes significantly with a room dedicated to the tragedy of the works victims of the earthquake.
On the occasion of the exhibition, a cycle of informative meetings on restoration and a series of educational workshops will be organized by the Educational Services of La Venaria Reale and the Conservation and Restoration Centre. Also in the context of Restituzioni, Intesa Sanpaolo will support the international symposium "Even statues die". Destruction and conservation in ancient and modern times to be held on May 28 and 29 in Turin to address the theme of the fragility of cultural heritage with scholars from all over the world. The Symposium is organized by the Egyptian Museum of Turin, the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation and the Royal Museums, in collaboration with the Archaeological Research Center and Excavations of Turin.
Restitutions is a program promoted by Intesa Sanpaolo in 1989 and makes use of the scientific curatorship of Carlo Bertelli and Giorgio Bonsanti. For 29 years, the Bank has collaborated every two years with the ministerial bodies in charge of protection (Superintendencies, Poli Museali and autonomous Museums) to identify works belonging to public, private or ecclesiastical museums, archaeological sites and churches throughout Italy, in need of restoration and supports their actions. The choice of works follows a single criterion: listening to the needs of the territories to enhance their identity through interventions that favor the effective need and urgency of restoration. The goal is always to recover assets representative of the variety of the Italian historical-artistic heritage, both in chronological terms and in terms of materials and techniques – painting on wood and canvas, frescoes, mosaics, sculpture in marble or stone, in bronze, textile products, jewellery, etc. – masterpieces of undoubted importance, as well as works that are close to us and contribute to building the experience of the area.
At the end of the interventions of each edition, the restored works are exhibited in an exhibition organized by Intesa Sanpaolo, where the public can appreciate the result of the work of the restorers. From 1989 to today, more than 1300 works have been "returned" to the community: a sort of ideal museum, with evidence ranging from proto-historical periods to the contemporary age, from archeology to goldsmithing, plastic and pictorial arts . There are more than 200 museums, archaeological sites, churches, guarantors of the public destination of their treasures, which have benefited from this program, hundreds of qualified restoration laboratories, distributed from North to South, in charge of the restorations and as many scholars involved in the drafting of the historical-critical cards for the catalogues. A curriculum to which must be added the restoration interventions carried out on works of monumental scale such as, for example, the early Christian floor mosaics of the Basilica of Aquileia, the frescoes of Altichiero and Avanzo in the Chapel of San Giacomo in the Basilica del Santo in Padua, the frescoes by Lanfranco of the Chapel of San Gennaro in the Cathedral of Naples, up to the recent restoration of the Casa del Manzoni, in Milan, a real "national" monument. Furthermore, in this context, in June 2009, coinciding with the twenty years of activity of Restituzioni, the restoration of the fourteenth-century frescoes by Stefano Fiorentino in the church of the Chiaravalle Abbey in Milan was completed.
In addition to the Restitutions project for the protection of public heritage, Intesa Sanpaolo also expresses its commitment in the cultural sphere through the national and international enhancement of its conspicuous and prestigious historical, artistic, architectural and archival heritage, particularly in the three locations of the Galleries of Italy in Milan, Naples and Vicenza, with the intention of sharing it with the community. The cultural initiatives take the form of a three-year plan of interventions called Progetto Cultura, which includes exhibitions, meetings, educational and training activities as well as synergistic activities with other important national and international cultural institutions.
