Canesso Gallery in Paris opens branch in Milan: two Antonio Campi on display

One of the most important antiquarians in Paris, Galerie Canesso, is coming to Italy: the important Parisian gallery, founded by Italian Maurizio Canesso in 1994, has in fact decided to bet on our country and open to the public, as of today, October 1, 2021, a new location in Milan, at number 24 Via Borgonuovo, in a space surrounded by greenery in what was the greenhouse of the garden of Casa Valerio, one of Milan’s historic palaces right behind the Brera Art Gallery.

The gallery, among the most important internationally in the antique art market, was founded, as recalled, in 1994 by Maurizio Canesso from Varese in Paris, and its activities revolve mainly around artists who were Italian or who worked in Italy between the Renaissance and the 18th century. Over time, the gallery has consolidated its reputation enough to sell many of its paintings to the world’s most important museums including the Metropolitan in New York, the Louvre in Paris and Abu Dhabi, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

Why open in Italy? Because, Galleria Canesso explains, the company believes in developing the Italian market and collecting. “Mine was a bet born in the spring of 2020, in the middle of the lockdown,” Maurizio Canesso declares. “With Ginevra Agliardi, who will be the director of the Milan gallery, we asked ourselves how to face the future. So, in that moment of great uncertainty, we decided to react and open a new location in Milan. While Paris is a worldwide reference point for larte because collectors from all over the world pass through there, Milan is one of the European cities that best combines contemporary and antique. This city has an extraordinary cultural humus, and here I have an open dialogue with art historians and museum institutions. Lombardy is also the heart of my artistic interests; over the years, alongside the Genoese and Neapolitans, I have had many works by painters from northern Italy in the gallery.”

The start of the new space on Via Borgonuovo is given over to two works by Antonio Campi (Cremona, 1522 1587) well known to critics but never presented to the public. These are two extraordinary Nocturnes with scenes from the Passion, examples of the light experimentalism typical of Lombard Mannerism that made Campi the favorite artist of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo and a direct predecessor of Caravaggio, who was born on September 29, 450 years ago. Accompanying the panels, a Christ in the Garden of Olives and a Christ before Caiaphas, will be a group of paintings born in the same artistic context, that which gravitates around 16th-century Cremona.

Canesso Gallery in Paris opens branch in Milan: two Antonio Campi on display

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