Cremona, an exhibition brings together important cycle by Antonio Campi

In the new Diocesan Museum in Cremona, the exhibition Antonio Campi at Torre Pallavicina opened on September 9. The Oratory of Santa Lucia. From the collaboration between the Diocesan Museum and Galleria Canesso Milan, thanks to a loan granted by the Royal Museums of Turin and new documentary discoveries, this will be the first opportunity to see reunited the surviving panels of a large cycle painted by the great Cremonese mannerist in the 1570s for Marquis Adalberto Pallavicino.

Exhibited to the public for the first time in the Milan branch of Galleria Canesso in 2021, the two nocturnes by Antonio Campi (Cremona, 1522/1523-1587) had been published fifty years ago by art historian Maria Luisa Ferrari. The recent discovery of the two works has once again brought the issue of Torre Pallavicina to the attention of scholars: thanks to extensive archival research, Monica Visioli has found an unpublished document that has allowed Marco Tanzi to update an earlier discovery of his. Some 30 years ago the Cremonese art historian attributed to Antonio Campi two panels in the Royal Museums of Turin until then considered the work of a northern painter. They had entered the Savoy collections in the 1950s when, although the author was anonymous, the state decided to acquire them because of their very high quality. Only this year, thanks to the latest documentary discoveries, has it been possible to establish with certainty that the two pairs of paintings - those from Turin and those from Galleria Canesso - share a common provenance: the Oratory of Santa Lucia in Palazzo Pallavicino Barbò.

Today we know that the private chapel commissioned by Adalberto Pallavicino was enriched by at least 15 panels with episodes from the Passion of Christ painted in the 1570s, a case unparalleled in Mannerist Lombardy at the time. Of the four works known today, the Turin ones, with dazzling colors and crowded with characters, show us the maturity of the Cremonese Mannerist while the Canesso panels are among the highest examples of the luministic experimentalism that led Antonio Campi to paint some of the most exciting nocturnes in Lombardy before Caravaggio.

Of the fate of all the other Torre panels, some certainly damaged and possibly destroyed, we still know nothing.

The documentary news and recent discoveries presented in the Cremonese exhibition will be published in a volume accompanied by new photographic campaigns.

For all information, you can email info@galleriacanesso.art.

Cremona, an exhibition brings together important cycle by Antonio Campi

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