Giuseppe Avanzi's monumental painting returns to Ferrara after eighty years

Giuseppe Avanzi’s fully restored monumental canvas depicting The Apparition of the Blessed Virgin and Saint Peter to the Companions of Saint Brunone returns to Ferrara after eighty years. Painted in 1695, the approximately 36-square-meter work, a masterpiece of late 17th-century Ferrara painting, was removed from the Temple of San Cristoforo at the Certosa di Ferrara after the January 1944 bombings.

The canvas will therefore be relocated after about eighty years in the church’s presbytery at the end of a long and complex restoration by the “Ottorino Nonfarmale” Laboratory of San Lazzaro di Savena (Bologna), carried out thanks to a project of the Municipality of Ferrara, in collaboration with and with the contribution of the Emilia-Romagna Region (L.R. 18/2000). The total investment was 97,500 euros: 60,000 from the Region and 37,500 from the Municipality.

The relocation, with the construction site open, is underway until September 14, and free guided tours of the Temple of St. Christopher are planned for the occasion: by reservation only, tours will be held on September 9, 10, 16, 17, 22, 23 and 24, at 5 p.m. To book guided tours: tel. 0532 244949 (Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Tuesdays and Thursdays also from 3 to 5 p.m.).

A press conference open to the public with the work in its original location is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 15, at 12 noon. Finally, on Thursday, September 21, at 4 p.m., the Hall of Honor of Palazzo Bonacossi will host the conference The Avanzi Canvases for San Cristoforo alla Certosa. History of a Return.

“It is a historic moment and there is great excitement about this ’homecoming’ of a masterpiece, a unique testimony of seventeenth-century Ferrara and one of the greatest works ever created for Ferrara’s churches,” said Marco Gulinelli, councillor for Culture of the Municipality of Ferrara. “Achieving the goal was possible thanks to a will that united institutions, entities, and people and that today allows us to welcome after about 80 years a symbolic work.”

Giuseppe Avanzi's monumental painting returns to Ferrara after eighty years

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