- The exhibition opens with a double shot: first, the vicissitudes of Luca Signorelli's effigy are presented to the public, offering an initial insight into the artist's critical fortune.
The story, although also proposed for the exhibition in 2012 and enriched here with the presence of two nineteenth-century portraits of Signorelli, one made by Pietro Pierantoni in 1816 and the other in 1848 by Pietro Tenerani, is quite unique: for centuries was handed down an incorrect portrait of Signorelli, that Vasari attached to the biography of the artist in his Lives, taking a resounding crab.
The historian from Arezzo, in fact, spread an image of Vitellozzo Vitelli, made by Signorelli, mistaking it for that of the painter himself, however in a very bizarre way, since Vasari claimed to have known Signorelli in person, albeit as a child: only in the late nineteenth century we realized the dazzle. Then we move on to presenting the context of late fifteenth-century Rome, on the one hand through the image of the city in the maps of the time (as it was two years ago for the exhibition on Pinturicchio and Borgia, also held at the Capitoline Museums: the exhibition on Signorelli is structured on a similar basis and is in continuity), a subject to which an essay by Laura Petacco in the catalog is also dedicated (it was a time of profound change for a city that was ceasing to be a peripheral medieval center built disorderly among the ruins of classical Rome and was becoming the sumptuous capital of Catholicism), and on the other hand insisting in particular on the works of Pope Sixtus IV (born Francesco della Rovere; Pecorile, 1414 - Rome, 1484), who was pontiff from 1471 until his death and was the promoter of the intense renovation Urbis of which, in this introduction to the review, are retraced the main stages.
Although strongly present in the political events of his time (seen in retrospect, the years of Sixtus IV were characterized by a driven secularization of the papal power), and although strongly criticized (the nepotism that characterized his pontificate reached extreme levels, and in 1476 the Pope advocated the appointment of the highest municipal offices, severely limiting the powers of the City), Sixtus IV actually gave a new face to the city: the jubilee of 1475 provided an opportunity for the modernization of many buildings and the construction of new ones (the construction of the Sisto bridge and the restoration of other bridges over the Tiber stand out, including the Milvian bridge and the Sant'Angelo bridge, as well as the arrangement of the road network, the construction and renewal of hospitals and charities, starting with the restoration of the Hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia to which an exhibition hall is dedicated, without calculating the impressive building reform that sanctioned further changes to the appearance of Rome).
Among the most significant acts of Sixtus IV is also the donation of the ancient bronzes of the Lateran to the Roman people. Sanctioned on December 15, 1471, the donation was a move devised by the Pope in the context of building consensus around his figure that always distinguished his work, but in fact it also represented the founding act of the Capitoline Museums, since the works were transferred to the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Campidoglio, so that anyone could observe them.
That's where the rest of the exhibition is set. The donation also included the Spinario, a bronze statue of a shepherd boy pulling a thorn out of a foot, very famous in the fifteenth century and even earlier, which became the object of the attention of a vast plethora of artists by virtue of the originality of its pose (as is well known, it is seated, one leg above the other horizontally, and bent forward to examine the thorn stuck in the left foot), as well as the effect of the grace and naturalness with which the child's attitude is resolved. Signorelli, as mentioned before, was called to Rome in 1482 for the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, although initially his presence was not expected alongside that of Botticelli, Perugino, Cosimo Rosselli, and Ghirlandaio. Signorelli later arrived, called together with the other Tuscan Bartolomeo della Gatta (Pietro di Antonio Dei; Florence, 1448 - Arezzo, 1502), to provide his help because the work was late: so, the cortonese helped Perugino, together with Bartolomeo della Gatta, in the fresco of the Delivery of the keys, moreover always together with his fellow countryman he executed the scene of the Testament of Moses, and finally alone he completed the Fight on the body of Moses, then destroyed by a collapse and replaced in the sixteenth century forwarded by a corresponding fresco by Hendrick van der Broeck.
At this point it is therefore necessary to imagine Signorelli going up to the Palazzo dei Conservatori (and perhaps visiting some of the collections of antiquities that the most prominent Romans had begun to set up in those days), is fascinated by the sight of ancient statues, and takes important insights that we find later, punctually, in his paintings. The first of these, among those on display in the exhibition, is the Madonna and Child coming from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich: behind the two main figures, there is a young nude whose pose is similar to that of the Spinario. The ancient statue is also on display in the exhibition, in two versions: the bronze one of the Capitoline Museums and the Spinario Medici in marble, now in the Uffizi (probably the latter was already well known to Signorelli even before his move to Rome, since it is attested to the presence of the statue in the repertoire of the ancient Laurentians in the garden of San Marco, and is also known his knowledge by artists of the early Florentine Renaissance: Giovanni Luca Delogu, in the form of the Bavarian Madonna filled in for the catalog of the exhibition in 2012, noted that the Medici Spinario "at the time of Signorelli was now a consolidated image of repertoire, having already been treated by Brunelleschi, Masaccio and the same master of Luca, Piero Della Francesca, in the cycle of Arezzo").
- The Madonna of Monaco was the subject of critical debate at the beginning of the twentieth century, both as regards the date, and as regards the autography (even if the criticism of the latter is now substantially unanimous in assigning the work to the master of Cortona), and especially for the meaning of the nude behind the protagonists, which could be interpreted as a neophyte who is about to get undressed to receive the sacrament of baptism, according to a hypothesis already in vogue in the early twentieth century and hardly questionable. This presence also returns in the Baptism of Christ by Arcevia, also present in the exhibition.
To be continued.