Artemisia rediscovered, the exhibition in Naples: from London the face of the «painter»
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art
NoonDecember 3, 2022 – 10:37 pm
Great exhibition at the Gallerie d’Italia also with works by colleagues Annella and Giovanna
from Stefano de Stefano
“THEMy most illustrious and most reverend Lord, that brother of mine has come, who took as much of me as I wanted, and he has come with the opportunity to present to my lord Count a picture on behalf of my father, in which there is painted the image of Saint Mary Magdalene…». Thus begins the handwritten letter that Artemisia Gentileschi sent to the Viceroy of Naples Manuel de Acevedo y Zùniga, 6th Count of Monterrey, on 28 July 1637. A letter that is part of the “original postal letters” of bundle 64 of the State Archives. Well this document, exhibited at the opening of the exhibition “Artemisia Gentileschi in Naples”, presented yesterday at the Gallerie d’Italia headquarters in via Toledo (where it will be open until 19 March 2023) proposes a little-known aspect of the «painter» born in Rome in 1556 and presumably died in Naples in 1656. In these lines, in fact, Artemisia orders her to block the payment of that painting to her brother, forcefully claiming the money for herself and demonstrating so also another face, that of an able and strong-willed manager of herself. A circumstance also confirmed by the tributes of paintings made to illustrious personalities, so that they would then entrust her with important commissions. No longer therefore only the female artist who passed through the grim experience of the rape suffered by the painter Agostino Tassi, linked to the Roman period of the first part of his life, but also the woman aware of her role, excellent in management skills, who emerged above all in the second phase , the Neapolitan one, to which the exhibition project set up in Palazzo Piacentini is dedicated. In fact, very little was known of the 26 years spent in the Neapolitan city, with only the brief interruption of the trip to London in 1638. Andd is merit of this exhibition, curated by Giuseppe Porzio and Antonio Denunzio, turn the spotlight on a long period, with a particularly intense first phase and a second in which it is afflicted by economic difficulties with the story of the concubinage of the daughter Prudenzia Palmira and the shotgun wedding following the birth of his nephew Biagio, in 1649. Elements to which must be added the role of viceregal and bourgeois patrons, ending with the relationship between Artemisia and the literary academies, which already during her lifetime contributed to amplifying her fame.
shadow carousel
«Artemisia Gentileschi in Naples», the exhibition at the Gallerie d?Italia
Collaboration with London
In this sense, the collaboration with the National Gallery in London is important, which had already organized a cycle on the Roman artist in 2020, which however can only be visited for 6 weeks due to the lockdown. «On that occasion – explains the director of the National, the Anglo-Neapolitan Gabriele Finaldi – we presented a self-portrait in the guise of Saint Catherine of Alexandriapurchased at a Parisian auction in 2018. A painting that we brought to Naples and from which the entire exhibition itinerary starts».
An unprecedented for Italy, therefore, dating back to the Florentine stay that began in 1612, as unpublished for our country are also the same “Saint” of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and the “Judith and the handmaid with the head of Holofernes” of the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo. But the fact is evident that the red thread that runs through the 50 works (half by Artemisia and half by other painters for a comparative reading) exhibited in the rooms of the Gallerie d’Italia refers above all to Naples, where the artist had the opportunity to renew his own language initially built in his father Orazio’s workshop, with a return to Caravaggism, gentler and brighter, the result of comparison with the artists active in the city around the 1930s such as Ribera (see the large canvas by San Gennaro of the cathedral of Pozzuoli, and to add also the one with Saints Proculus and Nicaea), finoglio (with l‘Annunciation of Capodimonte), de Somer (with Samson and Delilah), Guarini (with the Saint Catherine of Alexandria), Andrea Vaccaro (with Susanna and the old people), Station (with Corisca and the satyr).
«Painter» in Naples
And
finally highlighting another important fact: TOrtEmisia was not the only “pintora” woman of her time in Naples. In fact, here we also find Diana Di Rosa, known as Annella, a Neapolitan artist, she too is a victim – according to an ancient but unreliable tradition – of gender-based violence and better known by name than really thorough, present with The Rape of EuropaAnd Giovanna Garzoni, author of portraits and still lifes, from the Marches and from Venice, active in Naples between 1630 and 1631. Also present at the inauguration was the mayor of Naples, Gaetano Manfredi: «The story of this great female artist, so delicate and complex, makes us feel closer today than ever. Thanks to the Gallerie d’Italia, an important segment of that art district which, passing through the Royal Palace, will soon be enriched by the opening of the hypogeum in Piazza Plebiscito”. «The participation of 160,000 visitors to our new museum which was inaugurated only in May – echoed Michele Coppola, national manager of the Gallerie d’Italia – confirms the intuition of the Sanpaolo Intesa group to focus heavily on the city of Naples».
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December 3, 2022 | 10:37 pm
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