Outline of the Exhibition
CORREGGIO
Parma- Galleria Nazionale – Camera della Badessa in San Paolo- Monastero di San Giovanni Evangelista- Cattedrale
September 20, 2008 – January 25, 2009
SCIENTIFIC COMMITEE
Lucia Fornari Schianchi, Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, Bruno Adorni, Marzio Dall’Acqua, D.E. Ekserdjian, Mario Di Giampaolo, Eugenio Riccomini, Sylvia Ferino, Andrea G.de Marchi, David A.Brown
SEDI: Parma, Galleria Nazionale - the National Gallery in the Pilotta
Camera di San Paolo; The Church of San Giovanni Evangelista; The Cathedral - Piazza del Duomo
September, 20, 2008- January, 25, 2009
The scientific project includes several sections dedicated to analyse and illustrate the training of the artist, his life, development and his artistic maturity; his relationship with the culture of his time and with the principal artists contemporary with him; in order to attempt, through a complete as possible collection of his works, an articulate vision of his personality as a man and an artist.
On a practical note, appropriate comparisons with works by other masters (including Leonardo, Mantegna, Giorgione, Dosso Dossi, and Lorenzo Lotto), will be an opportunity to make closer examination and deepen our understanding of the artist; at the same time enriching the course of the exhibition both visually and from critical and narrative points of view. Finally, the parallel contrast with the finished works, the sinopite paintings (for example “Our Lady of the Incoronation” in the Palatine Library – in the Pilotta, Parma), and the preparatory sketches, particularly important for the frescos and the domes, will help to virtually enter the studio of the sixteenth century’s artist, in the infinite labyrinth of his endeavours, between fidelity to the idea and adaptation and between “invention” and “execution”.
THE TOUR
The tour will take you through the halls of the Voltoni del Guazzatoio, the Teatro Farnese and the Grande Salone della Rocchetta on the first floor of the National Gallery. From his early years (in Correggio, Modena, Reggio Emilia, San Benedetto Po and Mantova) moving on to the Commissioners and Humanists, to the documents and frescos in the Camera di San Paolo, the work of earlier and contemporary Great Masters, and finally to the body of work and sketches by Allegri, that will inevitably be the heart and the soul of the exhibition.
SECTIONS:
Places and Patrons and the culture at the time of Correggio (Correggio, Modena and Reggio Emilia, Mantova, Parma, the Humanist Circles).
Biography through documents
The Great Master and his credentials (from Mantegna to Leonardo, the Venetians, to Raphael, with a section of illuminated books, among which are those by Franesco Marmitta and Francesco Mainieri)
The material culture of the context
The Sculpture of the period (in particular the works by Antonio Begarelli), compared with chosen and relevant pieces of archaeological derivation
Correggio and Architecture (manuals of architecture and drawings)
The creative workshop (the sketches relating to the altar-pieces and the documentation of the great frescoed domes)
CORREGGIO'S WORK
Training and first Mantovan period (with particular attention to the theme of Pity, with credit also for the comparison with Ercole de’ Roberti and the Compianto in terracotta by Guido Mazzoni)
The Madonnas and the smaller pieces (Zingarella, Adorazione dei Magi, Volto di Cristo)
The large altar-pieces made for Parma Projected images of the larger altar pieces preserved in Dresden – (a “virtual tour”)
The paintings for the Del Bono chapel (Correggio painter of “psychological” and “sentimental”)
Correggio painter of the senses (a necessary counterpart to Correggio master of the sacred images)
The associates and the pupils (Michelangelo Anselmi, Giorgio Gandini del Grano, Francesco M. Rondani)
