The major project of revision and reorganization of the exhibition itinerary of the Gallery, conceived by the Director of the Complex Simone Verde , in line with the orientations of contemporary museography, is completed with the opening to the public of the Galleria del Teatro, the upper North Wing, the Passerella Farnese and the Ducal Medagliere.
“ Today – declares Simone Verde , director of the Pilotta Monumental Complex – one of the most prestigious collections of ancient art in Italy is being returned in its entirety to the public in all its splendor.
With the opening of the upper North Wing, of the Farnese Passerella which houses the Farnese medal collection and of the Galleria del Teatro, the entire exhibition itinerary of the Galleria Nazionale della Pilotta is completed, after six years of intense work, presenting many works which until now had remained in storage and were finally exhibited for the first time”.
“The various interventions are part of the most virtuous managerial management possible, whereby enhancement supports protection, in line with the essential programmatic indications established by the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano”.
This is an operation that involved dozens of people, from officials to restorers, from city institutions to sponsors, to various professionals who made their professionalism available to obtain a result that fills our hearts with pride and satisfaction.
Our commitment obviously does not end here. A final step will be taken shortly to complete the redevelopment of the Monumental Complex, which will take place with the inauguration of the new Archaeological Museum, the oldest in Italy, and the redevelopment of the internal square of the building.
High North Wing
After two years of work, the Upper North Wing offers seven new rooms dedicated to the most significant exponents of Emilian art between the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, promoting a direct connection with the chronological development of the works dedicated to the Flemish and the art of Parma Mannerism, and the rooms of the Lower North Wing.
The architectural project, entrusted to Studio Bordi Rossi Zarotti of Parma, made it possible to achieve a balance between structural intervention and the display of the collections. The intervention also involved a general securing of the works, eliminating risk factors through the introduction of innovative panels and supports that prevent direct contact between the paintings and the brick curtain wall, as well as the creation of a specific display case designed to ensure the best conservation and enhancement of the precious Self-Portrait by Annibale Carracci .
The visitor is accompanied to discover the masterpieces of Emilian painting from the 16th and 17th centuries, starting from the rooms dedicated to the painter of the manner Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli.
Proceeding, one encounters in the room called The Legacy of Correggio , the works of Giovanni Battista Tinti and Pier Antonio Bernabei , testimony to the artistic climate of Parma at the end of the sixteenth century, characterised by a new interest in the works of Correggio.
The section dedicated to the Carracci workshop includes the paintings of the brothers Agostino and Annibale and their cousin Ludovico, architects of an artistic reform which, in order to convey the moral contents of the Counter-Reformation to the general public of the time – mostly illiterate and contested by Protestantism – made use of the simple and direct language of affections, with a completely new verisimilitude, capable of stimulating the devotion and involvement of the faithful. Here, thanks to the director of the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, Maria Luisa Pacelli, who generously granted on loan the two lateral canvases that flanked the altarpiece of the high altar of the Capuchin church of Santa Maria Maddalena in Parma, the original decorative nucleus of the Carraccis’ works is exhibited for the first time: the altarpiece depicting the Pietà with the Virgin and Saints Francis, Clare, John the Evangelist and Magdalene , considered by Andrea Emiliani to be the beginning of Baroque painting, and the lateral canvases with Saint Louis IX, King of France, and Saint Elizabeth.
On the sides of the walkway are displayed two large paintings belonging to the artistic maturity of Ludovico Carracci and created for the Cathedral of Piacenza, The Funeral of the Virgin and The Apostles at the Tomb of the Virgin , in which the influences of Michelangelo are evident in the gigantism of the figures and chromatic solutions inspired by Venetian painting.
In the fifth room you can admire the paintings of Bartolomeo Schedoni, a Modenese painter who served at the Farnese court from 1607, capable of expressing a more autonomous and original language, in which one can perceive a synthesis of the two great currents of Baroque painting. In addition to the example of Correggio, filtered through the painting of the Carracci, the revival of Caravaggio motifs in the use of light and in the gestures of the characters stands out, with a result of unparalleled scenographic and emotional impact.
The penultimate room displays the works of the Caravaggio-style painters in Emilia , Leonello Spada, Trophime Bigot and Giovanni Lanfranco , who are influenced in various ways by the innovations brought by Merisi at a crucial moment for the development of religious painting in the area and, in the last room, those of the Emilian painters of the 17th century , Giovanni Lanfranco, Sisto Badalocchio and Luigi Amidani , whose training was influenced by the artistic results of the Carracci.
The visit continues, going down to the first floor of the north wing, with the sections dedicated to the paintings of Guercino and to the interpretation offered by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo of the Apostolado , an iconographic genre widespread in Spanish painting, which consisted of the representation of the 12 apostles with their attributes, and to the rearrangement of the paintings by Francesco Del Cairo and Carlo Francesco Nuvolone in the room dedicated to Art in Lombardy 1600-1700 .
During these two years, the restoration of several paintings on canvas was completed, including Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli (curated by the Ottorino Nonfarmale srl restoration laboratory, thanks to the support of the Getty Center in Los Angeles in exchange for a loan of a work from the Gallery in 2021), as well as Saint Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata and the Transport of Christ to the Sepulchre by Sisto Badalocchio, the young Saint John by Bartolomeo Schedoni and the Ascent to Calvary by Lanfranco , curated by the restorer of the Pilotta Complex, Gisella Pollastro.
Similarly, a large restoration and recovery campaign was developed for numerous gold frames, which were placed back next to the paintings after the removal of the old display (curated by BRestauro, Restauratori Associati and Roberta Notari restauration).
Farnese footbridge
With the installation of the new management, the walkway above the west wing, until then dedicated to the exhibition of the Bourbon interventions on the urban planning of Parma, hosts a display consistent with the themes of the nineteenth-century area to which it leads, namely the halls of ducal portraiture.
The passage was then transformed into a section that narrates the history of the duchy and presents the portraits of the Farnese dukes in a succession that is completed in the hall with the new reigning house of Bourbon and with the display of the rich heritage of Renaissance medals and coins and printed volumes never exhibited before. The thematic interweaving between the portrait gallery of the walkway, the ancient coins and the medals thus allows us to address the ways in which a genre new to the 15th century was born: that of the princely portrait, indebted to ancient numismatic models.
The intervention conceived by Director Simone Verde was realized with the scientific consultancy and collaboration of Davide Gasparotto, Senior Curator, Department of Paintings of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and Paolo Parmiggiani, art historian and expert in Renaissance art.
It is important to underline that antiquarian numismatics was born in Parma, the city that in 1523 gave birth to Enea Vico (b. 1523), artist and engraver, as well as scholar and theoretician of glyptics, the engraving on precious stones, and of numismatics. It was precisely in the 15th century that the medal established itself as an artistic form aimed at commemorating the characters and events of the time in a complex game of images and names, symbols and celebratory inscriptions.
Among the works of particular importance and value exhibited in the Farnese Passerella, it is worth mentioning the medals of Antonio Puccio Pisano, known as Pisanello , considered the creator of the modern medal, such as the one dedicated to the leader and captain of fortune Niccolò Piccinino or the one with the effigy of Ludovico III Gonzaga. Referring to the numismatic models of imperial Rome, Pisanello defined the formal and expressive characteristics of a genre that enjoyed great fortune for five centuries.
A section is also dedicated to the medals of the Farnese family , which began with Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, later Pope Paul III, and continued with his successors. Through the collections of the National Archaeological Museum of Parma it is now possible to retrace the Farnese genealogy, whose exponents and historical events were regularly celebrated with the issuing of medals made by the major specialists in this artistic field such as Pastorino de’ Pastorini, Giovanni Vincenzo Melone, Gian Federico Bonzagni, Francesco Mochi, Jacques Jonghelinck, Cesare Fiori, whose medal with the portrait of Ranuccio II Farnese is presented.
Theater Gallery
In order to restore meaning and comprehensibility to the history of the Teatro Farnese, a masterpiece from 1618 and the first modern theatre in European history, which has already been the subject of a long and elaborate cycle of interventions, it was decided to turn the areas below the steps into a museum, reusing pre-existing materials or display cases designed for previous exhibitions, such as those donated by the Cariparma Foundation, and to bring together the documents relating to the Archaeological Museum, the Palatine Library, the Gallery and the Teatro Farnese.
These spaces, previously used as passageways or as cluttered warehouses for disused goods, have been reclaimed, with beneficial effects in terms of improving safety in terms of fire prevention, and transformed into museum areas.
In the Gallery of the Theatre you can find architectural models relating to the history of the theatre, such as the Model of the “Prince’s Balcony” and of the entrance to the Farnese Theatre , made in Parma in the 18th century, or the Model of the Farnese Theatre , from the end of the 18th century , in polychrome wood, paper and wax, or the statue of the Standard Bearer (1618) by Luca Reti , whose restoration was carried out thanks to a memorandum of understanding with the Central Institute for Restoration.
Particularly interesting is the painting Interior of the Farnese Theatre (1867) by Giovanni Contini which gives an account of the conditions in which the theatre found itself in the mid-nineteenth century, when only thanks to the strenuous opposition of the Parma Academy of Fine Arts was its demolition prevented.
Part of this new section is dedicated to the rediscovery and reinvention of ancient theatre in the Renaissance context ; a second sector, instead, to the series of shows and wedding festivities organised from 1628 to 1714 in the Farnese space , where audiovisual documents on the ephemeral Baroque apparatus of the ducal celebrations have converged, deriving from an exhibition organised in collaboration with the Cariparma Foundation.
Video mapping
To make the spectator aware of the extraordinary importance of the Teatro Farnese and invite him to rediscover the appearance and original use of the hall seriously damaged by the bombings of the Second World War, a video mapping was created which, through the use of projections, sounds and moving images, recreates and brings back to the stage that machine of theatrical illusion where some of the ideas and scenic experiments of modern theatre were realized.
Videomapping , a project of the Monumental Complex of Pilotta, promoted by the Ministry of Culture – General Directorate of Entertainment, conceived by Stefano Gargiulo and Simone Verde, produced by Kaos Produzioni and created thanks to the support of CINECITTÀ SpA, offers the public the opportunity to dialogue with a place full of souls and identities, to recreate that illusion, no longer physical but digital, reactivating the stage machinery of the Theatre, evoking the ancient pomp of the decor, bringing to mind a machine made of men, ropes, pulleys, pieces of wood, statues, stuccos and decorations.
Like a large carousel that has stopped the theatre for a long time and its inhabitants come to life, the columns begin to turn like the rollers of a rusty mechanism, the movement becomes more and more fluid; the other portions of the proscenium and its decorations start to move; the motion and sounds of the stage machinery become more and more harmonious, musical, and participate in the celebration of the reconstruction of the Teatro Farnese and the infinite scenic potential of its stage.
The videomapping projections will be held every day, during the opening hours of the Pilotta Monumental Complex, with a 30-minute interval, from 11.00 to 18.30.
New services to the public
Among the new services designed to improve public use, we highlight the creation of a rest area with seats and vending machines, which is accessed from the Sala del Trionfo. The entire space has been enhanced and completely redesigned to give visitors back an environment previously intended as a storage area, near which a large block of bathrooms has been created with approximately 20 toilets and a nursery room corresponding in numerical terms to the regulations currently in force in terms of accessibility.
In this refreshment room, a series of ceramics dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been set up in some display cases, never exhibited before, such as an entire Wedgwood-style service with plates, tureens and ladle that recalls the function of the room, linking up with the other ceramic artefacts exhibited in the Sala del Trionfo, which constitute a rare and precious testimony of the eighteenth-century production of the Royal Glass and Maioliche Factory established in Parma by the Bourbons , some of which were generously donated by the scholar Cristina Campanella.