- For these reasons, the doors of the house of the Devanna family were always open to scholars, antiques, and experts who have always appreciated the vastness and variety of the collection, even though it did not follow a precise logical thread: the two brothers used to follow the market's proposals, rather than looking for particular pieces (a possibility that sometimes occurred): the collection, Strinati explained, was not built with the aim of demonstrating a specific thesis, "such as the reconstruction of an environment, a school or individual personalities".
In particular, Rosa Lorusso Romito wrote that the interests of the two collectors were based on the curiosity for the "spectacular representations of counter-reformed pietism that recalled the altarpieces and the spectacular decorations of the domes and false ceilings of the Bitontine churches", so much so that the local art of the seventeenth century plays an important role in the Devanna collection. However, as said, it was not a collectionism motivated by academic interest: the choices of the Devanna brothers were dictated, continued Lorusso Romito, "certainly by the contingencies of the market and the financial situation of the moment, but always inspired by a taste for beauty and by an innate curiosity for different forms and artistic cultures". These choices have led to "fortuitous purchases", and also to "intuitions and discoveries pursued along uneven paths, the outcome of patient 'ambushes' or of often long and arduous negotiations, or finally of exchanges that are as necessary as they are painful, but which have led the main collector to obtain works by great masters, now 'minor' works, by lesser-known artists, for whom the original intuition was subsequently comforted by the recognition of artistic historiography, now finally paintings still the subject of contradictory attributive hypotheses, but which, however, are of certain interest not only to professionals for their high quality". And if Girolamo has always been, in a certain way, the public face of the collection and the first "signatory" of the choices, Rosaria (who constantly participated in her brother's decisions) is recognized above all as having a role linked to their conservation: it is said that she was the one who pushed her brother to donate the first portion of the collection to the State, and she always took care of the works that had instead remained in her residence in Bitonto.
In any case, for the Devanna family, the collection they had gathered thanks to a common cultural interest and a shared passion for history and artistic traditions had to represent a complete collection, capable of crossing their region and beyond. There are works, including paintings and drawings, made by great Italian and European artists (French, German, English), and as for the contemporary artists also overseas.
Masterpieces, however, exemplifies a general discovery of the unpublished and the various forms of figurative art. They will already be testified by the brothers Girolamo and Rosaria and continued in the phase of realization of the Gallery is to create in visitors a certain curiosity for aspects related to the works on display, followed by the desire to deepen and to know and also to return several times in the museum.
Walking through the various rooms of the museum, one perceives this attention in presenting the corpus of works as the result of an accurate private collection and in enticing the public not to exhaust with a simple visit the knowledge of the Gallery, but to continue the discovery following the most diverse aspects of deepening.
Particularly relevant is the presence of numerous sketches, preparatory studies, replicas or antique copies typical of a collection that comes for the most part from the antique market; and as regards the drawings, we note the variety of techniques used, such as inks, pastels, charcoal, blood, watercolors on paper or parchment, and the artists who made them between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. However, despite the studies carried out and published and the filing on the works that highlight the rich complexity of this heritage, there are still uncertainties about attributions, iconographies, and chronologies.
The museum is therefore still open to new reflections on unresolved questions and new contributions from scholars and critics. Visiting the Galleria Devanna, one can also retrace four centuries of art history, accompanied by many of the greatest masters: the exhibition itinerary is divided into five sections distributed over the two levels of the ancient palace; on the upper floor are the rooms dedicated to the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while on the lower floor there is only the section dedicated to the twentieth century.
The large collection now boasts over 350 paintings that visitors can admire and discover following a clear chronological thread.
To be continued.