Exhibition in Vicenza dedicated to Antonio Pigafetta and the first circumnavigation of the world

From Sept. 6, 2022 to Jan. 8, 2023, Intesa Sanpaolo is organizing, in the halls of the Gallerie d’Italia in Vicenza, the exhibition Pigafetta and the First Navigation Around the World. “Such a voyage will never be made again,” curated by Valeria Cafà and Andrea Canova. The initiative, under the patronage of the Municipality of Vicenza, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan and the National Committee dedicated to Pigafetta, is organized to mark the 500th anniversary celebration of the first circumnavigation of the globe (1519-1522), led by Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães; Porto, 1480 - Mactan, 1521) and concluded, after the death of the Portuguese navigator precisely during the voyage in the course of a battle against the natives of the island of Mactan in the Philippines, by Juan Sebastián Elcano (Getaria, 1486/1487 - Pacific Ocean, 1526), in which the Vicenza navigator and writer Antonio Pigafetta (Vicenza, c. 1480 - c. 1531) participated. It was precisely around the figure of the latter that the National Committee for the celebrations “500 years ago the first voyage around the world: Antonio Pigafetta, from Vicenza, chronicler of the Magellan expedition” was formed, with the approval of the Ministry of Culture, bringing together scholars and institutions to raise awareness of the figure of Pigafetta and investigate the legacy of the feat in which he was a protagonist.

The opening of the exhibition commemorates the final stage of the expedition with the return of the ship Victoria to Spain, which took place precisely on September 6, 1522, marking one of the most important moments of the celebrations that the city of Vicenza has been dedicating since 2019 to the Magellan-Pigafetta voyage. The exhibition, the brainchild of the Pigafetta 500 Cultural Association, features the manuscript of the Report of the First Voyage Around the World preserved in the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, considered the oldest witness to the original version drafted by Antonio Pigafetta, and which has become a reference text in our time. The document is flanked by the valuable nautical chart of the Indies and the Moluccas by Nuño Garcia de Toreno (1522), from the Royal Museums of Turin, specimens of 15th- and 16th-century cartography, ancient printed volumes and selected works from the collections of the Bertoliana Civic Library, the Diocesan Museum of Vicenza, the Civic Museums Foundation of Venice and the Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia.

On display are special objects, such as the guanaco-skin cloak, an animal described by Pigafetta that was unknown to Europeans, and precious cartographic materials that allow us to reconstruct our knowledge of the world before, during and after the voyage, offering insights into the extraordinary wealth of information that Pigafetta’s Report delivered to humanity. Meetings and events will be offered as part of the exhibition, as well as a wide range of free educational activities aimed at schools and families to learn more about the figure of Antonio Pigafetta. Typhlodidactic aids will be available to make the exhibition accessible to people with visual impairments.

Michele Coppola, Executive Director Art, Culture and Historical Heritage Intesa Sanpaolo, says, “Gallerie d’Italia confirms itself as a living part of the city, present in the most significant cultural moments in the area, alongside the Administration and in synergy with important institutions in the country. The Bank’s contribution for the 500th anniversary of Magellan’s voyage is expressed in an original exhibition initiative, around which we are proposing a program of activities and in-depth studies aimed at involving a wide audience, particularly students and enthusiasts. Palazzo Leoni Montanari is once again a place open to the city, dedicated to the enhancement of Vicenza’s rich cultural heritage and to the reflection on themes of great historical interest and ever-present significance.”

“The celebration of the great events of the past would make little sense if it were not accompanied by the exercise of historical intelligence,” stresses Giovanni Bazoli, chairman emeritus of Intesa Sanpaolo. Even an epoch-making feat such as the first circumnavigation of the world would risk remaining stuck in school textbooks if a critical gaze capable of interpreting it in its context and presenting it today, after five hundred years, with all its fascination and with all its range of consequences were not cast on it. This is why Intesa Sanpaolo decided to contribute to the international program of initiatives in remembrance of that incredible adventure with an exhibition with a strong didactic vocation and a rigorous scientific framework, investigating the expedition in its antecedents, its course and its long-lasting effects, right up to the present. And no place lent itself to this end better than Vicenza, where the writer and navigator Antonio Pigafetta, who was the most important chronicler of that great voyage, came from. The city plays a significant role in the history of the bank’s commitment to art and culture, because here we built in 1999 the first of the four venues that give life to the museum hub owned by the Group, the Gallerie d’Italia."

Among the many collateral activities planned, as part of the series of meetings “Explorations between science, literature and music,” Sunday, Sept. 11 at 5:30 p.m. is “Geographies of Sound”: a conversation between Massimiano Bucchi, sociologist and writer, and Arturo Stàlteri, pianist, composer and Radio 3 radio host. For the occasion, the composer has created a musical piece on the theme of traveling around the world, which is made available to visitors to the exhibition, downloadable via QRcode. On the occasion of the exhibition’s opening day, Sept. 6, 2022, the Order of Malta’s Magistral Post Office has provided a special location at the Gallerie d’Italia for a postal cancellation, commemorating Pigafetta’s membership in the Order and the dedication he made of the Report to Grand Master Fra’ Philippe de Villiers de L’IsleAdam. The exhibition catalog is produced by Edizioni Gallerie d’Italia | Skira. The Vicenza museum, along with those in Milan, Naples and Turin, 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.

Exhibition in Vicenza dedicated to Antonio Pigafetta and the first circumnavigation of the world

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