“No one is a prophet in their homeland”: this proverb is often used to indicate the life parables of some famous people who, very popular in places other than their native soil, enjoy a more modest fame in their countries of origin.
The painter Corrado Giaquinto, born in Molfetta in 1703 and who became one of the most sought-after artists of the period, is probably not the most fitting example of this saying: all the people of Molfetta, since childhood, have a memory of the works he left behind Molfetta and which are engraved in the imagination of the celebrations in the Cathedral and in the Church of San Domenico.
But Giaquinto is not only the altarpiece on the Assumption of the Virgin from 1747 or the painting of the Madonna del Rosario with San Domenico from 1762-1765; the artistic vein of the painter from Molfetta crossed the borders of the city to reach the most powerful courts in Europe, in particular the Spanish one, and this meant that his works are scattered throughout the churches, palaces and museums between Naples and Turin, Rome and Cesena, up to Paris, the United States, Ireland, London and Argentina.
Giving back to Molfetta some of this imaginative abundance is the meaning of the exhibition event on Corrado Giaquinto which, from 11 May, took place in the Municipal Library of the Fabbrica di San Domenico and which will close its doors on Sunday 16 June.
There are 23 works on display, all collected from the last twenty years of the twentieth century to the early 2000s and passed into the collection of a well-known Apulian antiquarian, Dr. Michele Bonasia from Bitonto, who entrusted the organization of the event to the association “Partenope – Cultural Artistic Association for the dissemination of southern art of Molfetta”. The association is made up of voluntary members who have been working for years in the field of art and the organization of artistic, musical, literary and historical events; the exhibition catalog was edited by prof. Gaetano Mongelli, art historian and profound expert on the life and works of the painter from Molfetta.
Alongside Giaquinto’s works, there are some paintings by Francesco Solimena, former master of the local artist, which passed from the Bonasia collection and are now also in private collections.
The canvases embrace a time span that occupies the first half of the 18th century, in particular the years from the 1930s to the 1950s, and range in type of subject between the sacred, the allegorical, the profane and the mythological, helping to reconstruct an idea quite precise about Giaquinto’s style and his workshop.
The painter, as a son of his time, adopts a style in line with Rococo, the ornamental movement of the seventeenth century which, born in furnishing and decoration, also erupted in painting and sculpture, favoring scenes with a sweet, harmonious, quiet breath and quiet, but also full of details, details and mainly curved shapes.
Giaquinto’s bodies are therefore soft, almost plump, especially in the representation of the inevitable cherubs and angels. The colors are soft and embroider flowers, leaves, shrubs, but also small animals such as lambs and sheep typical of Christian symbolism: to break up these harmonies in shades of ocher, mustard and brown, there are always flashes of red and blue intense ones that draw the viewer’s eye to the center of the scene, often corresponding to the figures of Christ or the Madonna draping themselves in cloaks of those colours. But the color red is also worn by the strong-willed Medea or by the personified virtue of Roman Charity, or by the allegory of Temperance, precisely to testify to the great variety of subjects of the artist from Molfetta.
More painful and emotionally charged are the paintings of Solimena who appears in this collection with the painful Martyrdom of San Lorenzo, but also with the poignant gaze of his Madonna Addolorata.
The objective that the organizers had set themselves with this exhibition therefore appears to be fully achieved: that of opening a passage of color and light that illuminates the talent of Corrado Giaquinto, bringing together in his Molfetta many of his works in possession of different collectors and therefore usually located in places geographically distant from each other.
The exhibition will be open until June 16th in the Municipal Library of the Fabbrica di San Domenico, from 10.00 to 13.00 and from 17.00 to 21.00, admission is free.
Wednesday 12 June 2024
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