Photo credit Gérard Blot courtesy Eni
and Comune di Milano
Milano: Palazzo Marino – George de la Tour exhibition. For the first time in Italy the "The Nativity" by Georges de la Tour (1593-1652) is on display (until
January 8 2012) accompanied by one of the most famous masterpieces
by the artist from Lorraine, "St. Joseph the Carpenter". The
special event for the traditional Christmas exhibition at Palazzo
Marino was organized by Eni with the collaboration of the Municipality of Milano and the Louvre and curated by Valeria Merlini and Daniela
Storti. There is little documentary evidence about the life of the artist, whose
training and background remain shrouded in mystery. There is a
continuing hypothesis that he may have travelled to Italy where he came into
contact with the work of the great Caravaggio, to whom reference is always made
in any critical analysis of de la Tour's work. The Nativity was added to the
collection of the Louvre in 1926 after being attributed to La Tour by Hermann
Voss, the great German art historian who, in 1915, had brought the artist back
from the oblivion into which he had fallen.
Photo credit Gérard Blot courtesy Eni
and Comune di Milano
George de la Tour: - The Nativity - a detail: The theme of the
nocturnal adoration of the shepherds was one that spread out
from Italy, starting in the early sixteenth century with Correggio's celebrated
Adoration of the Shepherds, held in Dresden and commonly known as The Night.
But, in the magical atmosphere of the work of Georges de La Tour, in the
intimate and restrained domesticity of the scene, the Franco-Flemish stylistic
tradition plays an important role.
Photo credit Gérard Blot courtesy Eni
and Comune di Milano
George de la Tour: St Joseph the Carpenter – a detail.
Also in the perhaps better known work, St Joseph the Carpenter, the
warmth of the diffused light from the candle held by the young Jesus, who
watches his putative father at work with admiration, is immersed in a
night-time scene that was familiar to the Northern European tradition of the
period. In the painting, the moving father-son
relationship, also allows us to reflect on the iconographic character of
the devotion to the Saint, the Son and the Cross, which is reflected in the
work the Joseph is leaning over, in the manner of many of the religious texts
of the period. Also from a technical perspective the work is perhaps the best example of a body of
"candlelit" work by de la Tour. The light, which is hidden from
the eyes of the observer by the hand of the Child and is spread across his
face, which becomes the true source of the luminosity of a familiar and
intimate scene, made transcendent. Visitors will be able to admire these two
paintings against a dedicated backdrop, with carefully selected materials, that
gives them the appropriate space to be fully appreciated.
Photo credit Gérard Blot courtesy Eni
and Comune di Milano
A donation has been made
AIRC
Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca
sul Cancro