Intesa Sanpaolo has long since started, in the context of Culture Project, the multi-year plan of Intesa Sanpaolo's cultural initiatives. A program of protection and enhancement which, alongside the restoration and historical-critical study of the works, provides for the display of some collections in museum and cultural poles called "Galleries of Italy": the Galleries of Palazzo Leoni Montanari in Vicenza, which host Russian icons and Venetian painting of the eighteenth century, and which starting from summer 2013 will also host a selection of vases from the collection of Attic and Magna Graecia ceramics; the Galleries of Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano in Naples, which frame the masterpiece of the collections, the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula by Caravaggio, and which will soon also display paintings and sculptures from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century belonging to the context of Southern Italy ; the Gallerie di Piazza Scala in Milan, which present works from the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries.
A fundamental prerequisite for the enhancement of Intesa Sanpaolo's artistic heritage is the constant conservation and research activity, carried out in restoration laboratories and libraries, which in some cases "emerges" from everyday life to tell particular stories, such as on the occasion of the recovery operation which involved the seventeenth-century decorative cycle of the Oratory of the ancient Compagnia di San Paolo in Turin, which no longer exists, and which today belongs to the art collections of Intesa Sanpaolo.
From an official note: “A decisive element for the organization of the exhibition that we are inaugurating today – declares Professor Giovanni Bazoli, president of the Supervisory Board of Intesa Sanpaolo – is the collaboration with the Reggia di Venaria, started in 2009 with the loan of some works art and now expanded through the recovery of new and significant elements of the history and history of art of the Piedmont area.
The Oratory of the Compagnia di San Paolo in Turin.
After careful restoration, carried out by the "La Venaria Reale" Conservation and Restoration Center under the high supervision of the Superintendency for Historical, Artistic and Ethno-anthropological Heritage of Piedmont, the surviving canvases of the cycle are finally brought together for the first time since 1876 painting of the ancient Oratory of the Compagnia di San Paolo, one of the most significant artistic undertakings of the Piedmontese Baroque and one of the most important pictorial cycles entirely dedicated to Saint Paul the Apostle. From 1 March 2013, the pictorial cycle will be exhibited for a year in the Sacristy of the Chapel of Sant'Uberto of the Reggia di Venaria, rearranged for the occasion with the intention of recreating the intimate atmosphere of an ancient Oratory in the year in which celebrate the 450th anniversary of the founding of the Compagnia di San Paolo.
The project for setting up the pictorial cycle was an opportunity to tell the various stages and results of the restoration of the canvases and, at the same time, a starting point for a series of historical-artistic insights that will converge in a forthcoming volume. The other works by Intesa Sanpaolo exhibited at Venaria Reale The setting up in Venaria of the surviving canvases of the pictorial cycle of the ancient Oratory of the Compagnia di San Paolo, which is accompanied by the inclusion in the new layout of the Reggia of a valuable cycle of tapestries owned by the Bank, continues and expands the collaboration relationship between Intesa Sanpaolo and La Venaria Reale. In fact, since 2009, six paintings belonging to the Intesa Sanpaolo art collections have been exhibited in the exhibition itinerary of the Reggia, which have strong cultural and figurative ties with the Savoyard clientele and with the environments of the Reggia di Venaria Reale:
– a canvas dated 1638-40 attributed to Philibert Torret known as Narciso which portrays the Royal Madame Cristina of France in widow's clothes. The painting is part of a very large series of portraits of the duchess, wife of Vittorio Amedeo I of Savoy and mother of Carlo Emanuele II, intended to adorn the homes of her subjects as dynastic effigies of precise political significance. The close-up cut and the reduced format suggest one of the many portraits commissioned by the Savoy dukes as a gift to high-ranking court dignitaries or some foreign delegate;
– two large canvases by Francesco De Mura (The continence of Scipione and Agreement between Camilla and Turno), a Neapolitan artist who in 1741 was called to Turin to paint some frescoes in the city's Royal Palace, astounded the Savoy family with his festive and modern style and was appointed court painter; – two still lifes by Michele Antonio Rapous, a Piedmontese painter who worked a lot for the house of Savoy, of which he was court painter from 1788;
– a canvas by Jan Peeter Verdussen depicting the battle of Guastalla on 19 September 1734, in which Carlo Emanuele III participated in the context of the war of the Polish succession, concluded with the peace of Aachen on 20 November 1748. It is a work of great pictorial effectiveness, which stylistically it is closely linked to the series of battles that Charles Emmanuel III also commissioned by another Flemish, Giacinto La Peigne.
The highly celebratory genre experienced vast development in the early eighteenth century, and was particularly successful in the Savoyard capital, where such representations were requested not only by the king but also by the princes of Carignano. The tapestries of the Diana cycleA red thread binds Venaria Reale and the cycle of tapestries dedicated to Diana belonging to the art collections of Intesa Sanpaolo, included from 1 March in the permanent exhibition itinerary of the Reggia, the seventeenth-century part of which was created by Amedeo di Castellamonte for Carlo Emanuele II as a hunting lodge dedicated to Diana.
The five tapestries manufactured in Brussels, made between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, evoke the atmosphere of the great tapestries, now lost, dedicated to the same theme and purchased in 1671 in Brussels for the Royal Palace of Venaria Reale. The important series of tapestries includes five hunting scenes with the presence of the goddess Diana, Apollo, hunters. The iconography of the scenes goes beyond the classic models of mythological hunting episodes, and instead seems to hide the representation of court life under the guise of myth.
Furthermore, given the iconographic inconsistency of the five tapestries, which cannot be traced back to a single literary source, the hypothesis arises that they describe various ways of hunting. The theme of hunting in Flemish tapestries enjoyed extraordinary success since medieval times; full of allusions and meanings, it was taken from engravings and drawings by the best Flemish and Italian artists. Hunting, perceived not as frivolous entertainment, but as a noble activity that linked those who practiced it with the same figures of classical mythology, celebrated sovereigns and nobles; his depiction was therefore considered a public representation of a chosen world, which took pleasure in reflecting its elegance and power in such scenes.
