Two masterpieces by Orazio Gentileschi to be compared for the first time in Cremona

From October 19, 2019 to February 2, 2020, Cremona ’s Pinacoteca “Ala Ponzone” will host the exhibition Orazio Gentileschi. The Flight into Egypt and Other Stories, which for the first time compares two versions of the Rest during the Flight into Egypt by Orazio Gentileschi (Pisa, 1563 - London, 1639), one coming from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the other from a private collection, along with a selection of paintings, sculptures, ivories and engravings on the theme of the Flight into Egypt. Two other versions of Orazio Gentileschi’s Rest are known, one kept at the Louvre and the other at the Birmingham Museum. They are among the most interesting works of the seventeenth century: the two versions of the theme exhibited in Cremona date from the time when Orazio Gentileschi enjoyed enormous international fame, which grew by the time the painter sojourned in Paris, where he was called to the court of Maria de’ Medici, and during his subsequent stay in London, where he worked for George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham.

The fall of King Charles I of England also provoked that of his powerful minister, and his Rest on the Flight into Egypt was auctioned off by George Cromwell in Antwerp in 1646. It thus ended up in the collections of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, for his castle in Prague, and finally at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Also tormented was the story of the work now in a private collection: after several passages, in the 19th century the painting also ended up in the collection of the Dukes of Buckingham, replacing the twin that ended up in Prague. Put back on the market, it became part of Paul Getty ’s collection in Malibu and is now one of the treasures in a private collection in Mantua.

For the first time in history, the two Buckingham versions of the Rest during the Flight into Egypt are being exhibited vis à vis, thanks to the willingness of the private collector and thanks to the loan granted by the Viennese museum (in exchange, however, the Kunsthistorisches will receive from the Civici Musei di Cremona the celebrated St. Francis by Caravaggio, a masterpiece of its collection that therefore still leaves its museum). The exhibition is meant to be an opportunity for the public and experts alike: the opportunity is to view the two canvases side by side (studies conducted so far have assigned primogeniture to the version preserved in the Mantuan collection).

The opportunity for a simultaneous viewing of the two paintings also makes it possible to retrace the iconographic theme of the Flight into Egypt and the many episodes connected to it, focusing on a theological and especially iconographic reflection on the theme of the Stories of the Infancy of Christ through the centuries, starting from the Middle Ages. In the exhibition, the two canvases by Orazio Gentileschi are flanked by a selection of ivories, sculptures, miniatures, paintings and engravings on the theme in its various iconographic declinations. The story of the flight into Egypt, handed down from the Gospel of Matthew alone, is among those most beloved by artists and their patrons. An interest that led to the flourishing of a conspicuous literature and stimulated an extraordinary series of pictorial inventions, drawing not only on the beve passage handed down by the Evangelist but also, and more, from the apocryphal Gospels.

Pictured is the private collection version of the painting.

Two masterpieces by Orazio Gentileschi to be compared for the first time in Cremona

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