The Enigma of the Real. At the Corsini Gallery portraits and still lifes from the Poletti Collection.

From October 24, 2019 to February 2, 2020, the Corsini Gallery in Rome offers the public the exhibition The Enigma of the Real. Portraits and Still Lifes from the Poletti Collection and the Barberini Corsini National Galleries.

Visitors will be able to admire about thirty works that have never been exhibited in Rome from the collection of Geo POletti (Milan, 1926 - Lenno, 2012), art historian, painter and collector; these will be compared with some of the museum’s paintings and with a work from the National Museum in Warsaw.

For the most part, seventeenth-century still lifes will be on display, from those of the Roman Caravaggesque circle, to the “Kitchens” of Emilia, from the more sober and intimate still lifes of Lombardy to the still lifes of Bernardo Strozzi and those of Evaristo Baschenis of Bergamo.

Two important still lifes depicting Vases of Flowers and Fruit attributed by Geo Poletti to Caravaggio himself will be compared with a Still Life with Tuberose preserved in Palazzo Barberini, not usually on public display.

An in-depth study of the so-called Reality Painting will complete the exhibition; in addition, the three versions of the Fishmonger Gutting an Anglerfish will be compared: a unique opportunity to admire the three canvases from the Barberini-Corsini National Galleries, the Poletti Collection and the National Museum in Warsaw, respectively, brought together. These will be the subject of an unprecedented reading, both from an attributional as well as a historical and iconographic point of view, thanks also to the diagnostic investigations carried out on the first two versions.

Also present, in the sphere of Reality Painting, are Jusepe de Ribera ’s Democritus and the Penitent Magdalene of Spanish ambit: the two works underscore the quality of the collecting of Geo Poletti, a longtime friend of Roberto Longhi, thanks to whom he delved especially into the art of Caravaggio, the Caravaggesque painters and all Italian and Spanish painting of the seventeenth century.

The exhibition is curated by Paola Nicita.

For info: www.barberinicorsini.org

Hours: Wednesday through Monday from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.

Tickets: Full 12 euros, reduced 2 euros for 18-25 year olds.

The Enigma of the Real. At the Corsini Gallery portraits and still lifes from the Poletti Collection.

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