Mart, Sgarbi's idea: an exhibition that puts Botticelli and Chiara Ferragni in dialogue

The Mart in Rovereto will soon see an exhibition that will put Sandro Botticelli in dialogue with a number of contemporary artists (among others David LaChapelle, Michelangelo Pistoletto whose Venus of the Stacci is preserved at the Trentino museum, and Jeff Koons). But Chiara Ferragni will also be part of the dialogue: what the role of the well-known influencer will be and how she will dialogue with Botticelli’s works is still to be clarified. Just as, for the moment, it is not known what Botticelli’s works will be on display: from the previews, however, it is known that the Mart is in contact with the Uffizi Galleries, where Ferragni, last summer, posed for a now famous photo shoot destined for Vogue Hong Kong magazine. Perhaps, therefore, loans will come from the Florentine museum.

The exhibition will be the brainchild of Mart president Vittorio Sgarbi, who intends to create a “game” between some great masterpieces by Botticelli and painters of the late 15th and early 16th centuries and the contemporary. Especially fashion: and it is in this dimension that Chiara Ferragni’s presence will have relevance.

“The theme of Ferragni,” Sgarbi said last week at a press conference, “is a controversial one that we accepted and to some extent assimilated from Andy Warhol remaking Leonardo’s Last Supper: at that moment, that intuition, which also applied to Marilyn Monroe, seemed a form of variation from the themes of art up to that moment. And so the Ferragni should be understood in this dimension of an actualization, not of Botticelli, who does not need it, but of a young people’s attention and curiosity towards a classic like Botticelli. So the cut of the exhibition is fortifying itself with a dialogue between a great Renaissance master and the contemporary and communication.”

“On the other hand, the Uffizi before us had the intuition to circulate, with an effect of increasing the public on the days when it was possible, the image in which Ferragni was photographed in front of the Birth of Venus,” Sgarbi says. “And that created an effect of curiosity for an artist who is usually very popular, but maybe for a young person Jovanotti is more famous than Botticelli. So the idea of bringing him into a circuit of youthful curiosity is certainly a positive thing and therefore for this reason it cannot be execrated and questioned. The dialogue with the director of the Uffizi also means confirming the goodness of his initiative.”

Mart, Sgarbi's idea: an exhibition that puts Botticelli and Chiara Ferragni in dialogue

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