The puzzle Lorenzo Lotto The exhibit at the Quirinal Stables
Wonderful Lorenzo Lotto at the Quirinal Stables where the declared intention of the curator Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa, show that "despite his exclusion was one of the masters of Italian art," you can able to say in full. Born in Venice in 1480, lived in the lagoon, Treviso, Bergamo, Rome and the Marche, his is one of the more complex and troubled history of the Italian Renaissance apex of modernity, but plagued by wars and conflicts, disputes and doctrinal heresies in 1527 that resulted in the sacking of Rome, put on fire by the mercenaries of Charles V of Habsburg. Lorenzo, who was at the court Papal States in 1509, did not live like many other artists that tragic event will change the course of history and art.
He found, however, departed from Rome in 1510, in the midst of wars resulting from the birth of the League of Cambrai. He knew the fratricidal tragedy unleashed by Pope Julius II, at first an ally of France just to reduce the sphere of influence of Venice, and then allied with France against this. A tragedy where political and spiritual ideals and Christian humanists were shaken in front of the cult of power and where he developed a lot of load rejection of utopia renaissance Mystical Lombard-Venetian Gothic architecture and aesthetics, and references to Flemish painting. Much discussed is its
adherence to the heretical movements flourished in Venice after the preaching of Luther, but it sure is the intellectual labor that, as pointed out years ago in an essay Barilli Renato Master (a modern and otherwise), results in an aversion to the prospect of intellectualism toward the illusionistic reproduction of reality, to the classical perfection of human bodies and developing a spiritual light that is a prelude to the Baroque. All this, in the belief that not just look at the outward appearance, full of wild contradictions, but to explain the creation should look elsewhere. We are reminded angular bodies of the Madonna of the desired tracks or naive perspective of Susanna and the Elders Uffizi, all in the exhibition. It reminds us of the famous portrait of Lucina Brembati whose name (Lu-ci-na) is suggested as a puzzle inside a crescent moon. On the other hand, if not precisely what painting is a puzzle, an intellectual game, an experiment in search of a melancholy truth that we can only pretend to be able to discover? An experiment that Lorenzo, capable of a versatile painter Raphael, Bellini as that of the Nordic and many other like no other knows how to make.
is therefore no doubt, as the editor rightly points out, the universal contribution to the history painter's aesthetics and its height is comparable to that of Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo. Unjust lack of recognition that Lorenzo was going to pay dearly, though. In 2008, in fact, a number of surveys have revealed that his work was in extreme pain. The Altarpiece of San Domenico in Recanati was affected by termites, the Altarpiece Ponteranica detachments were noted in color, the San Nicola dei Carmine was in desperate conditions, and so on. Again, that is, the lack of timely maintenance, impossible without the necessary resources, threatened to smash a priceless heritage. Again, the distinction between use and protection is prevalent today in danger of producing irreversible consequences. Insidious because a distinction by separating the value from the importance art history insinuates the idea that cultural property is that if it produces wealth, if consent is in the current taste, suggesting a hierarchy of protections guaranteed by the commercial potential and the systematic disposal of the principle of conservation.
That this is the perverse dynamic which, as a process of natural selection, are now entrusted with the Italian cultural heritage, it just tells the story of Lot, in the splendid exhibition open from today until May 12 is the positive ending . After the visits of 2008, in fact, would be expected to open ex officio of the restoration procedures. But the rescue could not get from the scientific and administrative machinery of the state, but it was necessary because they were found to enhance the funds for the protection, in a kind of mechanism to the contrary. With intelligence was put in place a tourist route in the Land of the Lot, have created a series of cultural events and to give visibility and motivate the sponsors, was organized the exhibition at the Stables with fortunately already tangible results: of the 34 Italian operas in the present exhibition, 17 have already been restored. The mechanism described, of course, is the promotion of trade. And it was virtuous, because it has helped to save one of the most original chapters of European art history and a testament to his own personal aesthetic of an era troubled, close to the contemporary sensibility. But the uniqueness of the Italian artistic heritage is in the thousands of artists who can not aspire to secondary sponsor and a major exhibition at the Quirinal Stables. And that without a systematic and comprehensive protection, are likely to end up in dust in the current Russian roulette of Italian culture.
