Surviving panels from an important cycle by Antonio Campi reunited at the Sabauda Gallery

The Royal Museums of Turin present, in the Hall of Late International Mannerism of the Sabauda Gallery the exhibition event Antonio Campi at Torre Pallavicina, which brings together the surviving panels of a large cycle painted by Antonio Campi, a Cremonese mannerist, in the 1670s. On view from Dec. 7, 2023 to March 10, 2024, the dossier exhibition, the second stage of the initiative previously held at the Diocesan Museum of Cremona and ending Dec. 3, 2023, aims to focus attention on the painter’s work for the Oratory of Santa Lucia in Torre Pallavicina, a town in the diocese of Cremona, now in the province of Bergamo; the exhibition presents what is left of a large altarpiece with a Christological theme, of which the two panels with theRoad to Calvary and the Resurrection, belonging to the collections of the Galleria Sabauda, and the two panels with theOration in the Garden and Christ before Caiaphas from the Galleria Canesso, which has kindly lent them.

TheOration in the Garden, characterized by intense patheticism, and Christ before Caiaphas, of rare realistic suggestion, are distinguished by the use of a rich and refined palette with marked chromatic accords between shades of pinks, yellows and greens, contrasting with the nocturnal backgrounds. Both are evidence of the luministic experimentalism that characterizes the painter’s maturity. The two panels were first exhibited to the public at the Milan branch of Galleria Canesso in 2021, after having been published in 1974 by art historian Maria Luisa Ferrari and then long dispersed. Their recent discovery has once again brought the Torre Pallavicina issue to the attention of scholars and, thanks to extensive archival research, it has been possible to establish with certainty that the two paintings belong to the same pictorial cycle as the two Turin panels.

Acquired by the state in 1957 for the collections of the Galleria Sabauda with an attribution to a “Flemish painter around the middle of the sixteenth century,” theAndata al Calvario and the Resurrection were recognized by Marco Tanzi as significant evidence of the precious, elegant, and resplendent painting of Antonio Campi, whose debts to the northern manner and Düreresque inventions are visible.

Today we know that the private chapel commissioned by Adalberto Pallavicino was enriched by at least fifteen panels with episodes from the Passion of Christ. The Turin panels show the mannerist vein of the Cremonese painter, while the two Canesso works are high specimens of that luministic experimentalism that led Antonio Campi to paint some of the most striking nocturnes in Lombardy before Caravaggio. Of the fate of the other panels in the Torre Pallavicina cycle, some certainly damaged and possibly destroyed, nothing is yet known.

The documentary news and recent discoveries, accompanied by new photographic campaigns, are published in the exhibition catalog edited by Eleonora Scianna and published by Persico Dosimo in 2023.

The dossier exhibition is open Tuesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and admission is included in the Royal Museums ticket.

Installation photos. Credits Daniela Speranza for the Royal Museums.

Surviving panels from an important cycle by Antonio Campi reunited at the Sabauda Gallery

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