Bankers and patrons: a major exhibition at Milan's Gallerie d'Italia

From November 18, 2022 to March 26, 2023, the Gallerie d’Italia in Milan ’s Piazza Scala will host the exhibition Patrons, Collectors, Philanthropists. From the Medici to the Rothschilds, curated by Fernando Mazzocca and Sebastian Schütze with general coordination by Gianfranco Brunelli.

This will be a major exhibition that will talk about patronage, and in particular about the great bankers of the past, who were often patrons, collectors and philanthropists who wanted to consecrate their rise by means of art. For them, artistic patronage and collecting appear to be strategic tools of representation and social affirmation, an eloquent example of the skillful transformation of economic capital into cultural and symbolic capital. The exhibition presented by Intesa Sanpaolo will tell different stories: in Italy, those of Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Giustiniani and Torlonia families, Enrico Mylius, and then again in the Central European area Moritz von Fries, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Wagener, Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild, in America John Pierpont Morgan. Through their portraits, accounts of their exceptional biographical story, often full of important humanitarian initiatives, and especially through exemplary works of art from their collections it will be possible to recall their figure and collecting choices.

A special section will commemorate the figure of Raffaele Mattioli, a “humanist” banker and protagonist of the economic and cultural rebirth in Italy in the difficult postwar period. A great admirer of Giacomo Manzù, Giorgio Morandi and Renato Guttuso, his prestigious acquisitions for the Banca Commerciale Italiana (Comit), which later merged into what is now the Intesa Sanpaolo Group, and his commitment to large-scale publishing have constituted an extraordinary example, to which “Progetto Cultura,” the bank’s multi-year program of cultural initiatives, gives continuity and confirmation.

The exhibition, produced in partnership with the Alte Nationalgalerie - Staatliche Museen in Berlin and the Bargello Museums in Florence, with the collaboration of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the Metropolitan City of Milan, presents more than 120 works from different periods from prestigious international museums such as the National Gallery in London, Musée du Louvre in Paris, Albertina in Vienna, Staatliche Museen in Berlin and The Morgan Library & Museum in New York. On display are authors such as Verrocchio, Michelangelo, Bronzino, Caravaggio, Gherardo delle Notti (Gerrit van Honthorst), Valentin de Boulogne Antoon Van Dyck, Angelika Kauffmann, Francesco Hayez, and a previously unpublished work by Giorgio Morandi.

The exhibition catalog is produced by Edizioni Gallerie d’Italia | Skira. The Milan museum, along with those in Turin, Naples and Vicenza, is part of Intesa Sanpaolo’s Gallerie d’Italia museum project, led by Michele Coppola, the bank’s Executive Director of Art, Culture and Historical Assets.

The exhibition opens Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 9:30 am to 7:30 pm, Thursdays from 9:30 am to 10:30 pm. Closed Mondays, last admission one hour before closing. Full tickets €10, concessions €8, free admission for convention members, schools, under 18s, special concessions €5 for under 26s and Intesa Sanpaolo Group customers. For info and reservations: www.gallerieditalia.com, milano@gallerieditalia.com, toll-free number 800.167619.

Image: Giovanni Boldini, Portrait of Fattori in his studio (1866-1867; oil on panel, 13 x 24 cm; Milan, Intesa Sanpaolo Collection - Gallerie d’Italia)

Bankers and patrons: a major exhibition at Milan's Gallerie d'Italia

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