What is the point of moving two masterpieces by Antonello da Messina for an international summit?

It’s business asusual. According to choices as always imposed without a serious to in-depth dialogue with insiders and local communities, two masterpieces by Antonello da Messina, theAnnunciata from Palazzo Abatellis and the so-called Portrait of an Unknown Sailor from the Mandralisca Museum, are about to leave their locations to go to Taormina. The reason? Not an exhibition of high scientific importance, but an international summit, the G7, which will take place in the Sicilian city on May 26 and 27. Local newspapers already give news of movements to prepare the reception that will be reserved for the two works: there is talk of technicians who would be at work at Palazzo Corvaja, the venue deputed to receive Antonello’s works coming from Palermo and Cefalù. Apparently they will be exhibited as early as May 15.

We are faced with yet another instrumental use of art history. Because there is no logical reason that could justify moving two unique works such as Antonello’s to Taormina: all the worse if one thinks that the president of the Region of Sicily, Rosario Crocetta, in presenting the improbable idea said, referring to the Portrait of an Unknown Sailor, that the painting "is our Mona Lisa and we must try to enhance it“ and that ”if the French had taken it and exhibited it in Paris, now this work would be talked about all over the world." Barroom arguments, ridiculously foreignophilic, naïve almost to the point of improbability and completely oblivious to the fact that two masterpieces of the 15th century are in no way equated with testimonials for a tourist advertisement. Moreover, it is hard to see how an artwork on the move can enhance the territory from which it comes: a visitor who sees the portrait in Taormina will have one less reason to go to Cefalù, and the cities from which the works arrive are being depleted (indeed: we can say with some certainty that the two works by Antonello that you want to send to Taormina are the two most representative works of the respective museums) losing attractiveness in the eyes of those who want to visit them and, looking also simplistically at the practical side, causing considerable discontent in those who perhaps had booked a trip to Palermo or Cefalù on the G7 dates and will have to visit Palazzo Abatellis or the Mandralisca Museum without Antonello. These are the usual, trite considerations that only local administrators show that they have not yet understood. Because it is absolutely not true that a territory promotes itself by sending its works of art around in the guise of ambassadors, and that the lender, from such an activity, obtains imperishable glory (moreover, as far as I know, there are not even studies to support such a baloney theory). If anything, the opposite is true: it is the host venue that gains prestige from the exceptional nature of the loan.

The two works by Antonello da Messina that one would like to send to Taormina. Left: TheAnnunciation (c. 1476; oil on panel, 45 x 34.5 cm; Palermo, Palazzo Abatellis, Regional Gallery). Right: the Portrait of an Unknown Sailor (c. 1465; oil on teavel, 31 x 24.5 cm; Cefalù, Museo Mandralisca)

But beyond that, there are far more important reasons that should have led any administrator truly attached to his or her land to avoid even considering the idea of such a futile move. In the meantime, we are talking about works that have more than five hundred years of history: these are delicate objects, which is why any movement of them, even minimal, entails serious risks as well as an additional workload for already overburdened technicians, who will have to check the status of the works before and after the transfer, check that the move occurs under the most stringent safety measures, make sure that the host location has the right conditions for conservation and, in case of problems upon return, compensate appropriately for any damage that will have been created, all with unnecessary added expense. All operations that could easily have been avoided if it had not occurred to someone that an international summit needs two works by Antonello da Messina in order to know of the existence of the city of Cefalù, or to endow itself with fetishes designed to symbolize the inspiration of Sicily. And that the work may not emerge unscathed from displacement is not a remote hypothesis: long is thelist of works that, in recent years, have suffered damage during travel and exhibitions.

Then there is a symbolic reason that is not secondary: a work of art, if reduced to the role of a freak show that is supposed to act as a backdrop to a summit of global importance, suffers a total emptying of its meaning. It is a discourse that, on these pages, we have addressed several times, but it is nevertheless worth reflecting on the fact that a work of art, to paraphrase Longhi, is a figurative text, that is, an image that contains a story, that comes from a precise historical and social context, that bears witness to a particular cultural temperament, that stands in relation to the world around it, and the task of art history should be to recreate that relationship. Any operation that disregards these assumptions has nothing to do with art history: it is pure and simple exhibitionism, all the worse if those who want to show off are public institutions that use art history as a vacuous backdrop for the locations in which they hold events.

Well, therefore, did the Syracuse community, which firmly opposed the loan of Caravaggio’s The Burial of St. Lucy by averting the possibility of the work leaving for Taormina: the fact that the initial idea was to bring Antonello da Messina and Caravaggio together should in itself be sufficiently eloquent about the total lack of ideas on the part of those who think that artistic heritage is a kind of gold seam to be exploited at will whenever the occasion calls for it. However, this has not been enough to bring the regional administrators back to milder advice, and they have simply turned their sights to other works. One only has to wonder how much more time it will take to make those who would like to move tables every quarter of an hour understand that art history is a serious subject. See you, then, at the next summit?

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