Milan, Diocesan Museum celebrates its 20th birthday with many initiatives

The “Carlo Maria Martini” Diocesan Museum in Milan will celebrate its 20th birthday on Friday, November 5, 2021, and to mark its first 20 years the institute is offering the public an important series of initiatives. The history of the Milan Diocesan Museum began on November 5, 2001, when Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini inaugurated it, completing a project to which some of the greatest Milanese archbishops of the 20th century made decisive contributions. In fact, the origins of the museum go back to an initial intuition of Blessed Ildefonso Schuster in 1931, later taken up by Cardinal Montini in 1960, who indicated as the site of the new museum the cloisters of Sant’Eustorgio, one of the pivotal places for the history of Ambrosian Christianity. It was finally up to Cardinal Martini, in the 1980s, to take on the difficult task of beginning the reconstruction work on the cloisters, entrusted to the Belgiojoso studio, which had been severely damaged by bombing during World War II.

The first event is the arrival of the Annunciation painted by Titian Vecellio around 1558, a work of the full maturity of the Venetian master, characterized by vibrant luministic research, coming from the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples, on deposit from the church of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, heritage of the Fondo Edifici di Culto administered by the Ministry of the Interior. It will remain on display from November 6, 2021 to February 6, 2022. The large canvas (measuring 280 x 193 cm) is the Masterpiece for Milan 2021, an initiative now in its 13th edition and accompanying visitors throughout the Christmas season.

TheAnnunciation comes from the Neapolitan church of San Domenico Maggiore, the only one in the world to have preserved paintings by Raphael, Titian and Caravaggio together.It was painted by Titian for the Pinelli family, bankers and merchants of Genoese origin who had moved to Naples, for their chapel in the church’s transept, dedicated to the Virgin Annunciate in 1575 by Cosimo Pinelli. Signed “Titianus f” on the kneeler, the work constitutes one of the cornerstones of the artist’s maturity and represents a rare episode of Venetian painting in 16th-century Naples. Executed in the late 1950s, the canvas reveals the highest achievements of the mature Titian evident in the extraordinary luministic effects, particularly in the shimmering robes in the angel, in pink and silver damask, woven with gold threads, in the rendering of the glow that intrudes on the pictorial material and in the freedom of the composition. The space is dominated by a single architectural presence, the imposing column behind the Virgin, while in the background, to the left, is a glimpse with an autumnal landscape, with brown and red tones standing out against the blue of the sky. The figures in the foreground present a color scheme played on tones of red and gold: the Virgin humbly gathers with her arms crossed over her chest, while the angel reaches out to her with a dynamic gesture and a beam of light descends from the sky surrounded by a swirl of angels.

On thecontemporary art side (the Diocesan Museum has shown itself to be open to the different artistic expressions that make up the contemporary creative universe, with the aim of creating a dialogue with significant artists of international prestige), the institute will entrust Orticanoodles, a reality composed of authors who have been protagonists on the urban art scene since the early 2000s, with the creation of a large mural on the exterior wall of the museum, along the side that faces Parco delle Basiliche and Corso di Porta Ticinese. The project, titled ICONS. A Participatory Mural at the Museum, carried out with the support of Fondazione di Comunità Milano onlus, stems from the desire to celebrate the museum in the year of its 20th anniversary as a place deputed to welcome and enhance the history of the Ambrosian diocese. The face of Carlo Maria Martini, the founder of the Milanese museum, after whom it was named in 2017, is flanked by portraits of St. Ambrose and St. Charles Borromeo, prominent figures for Ambrosian Christianity. These “icons” are interspersed, jagged and integrated, with some of the masterpieces in the museum’s permanent collection, thus depicting on the outside what is inside. The work thus becomes a story in images, which directly relates the museum collection, its history and the citizenry, illustrating the close connection between the protagonists of Ambrosian Christianity, the outcomes of art history in the diocesan territories and, last but not least, the genesis, growth and future of the museum itself. The work is realized in a “participatory” mode through a “school-to-work alternation” (PCTO) course, which aims to convey to the students of a class IV of the “Sacro Cuore” art high school in Milan the complexity and challenge of a mural painting production. The same students participate in the realization of educational activities, workshops and campuses for children and youth oriented to urban art, organized on the occasion of the mural by the Museum’s Educational Services.

Again, from Nov. 24, 2021 to Feb. 6, 2022, the museum will present its major new acquisition, one of Milan’s 18th-century masterpieces of sacred art: the Londonio Nativity Scene, composed of about 60 characters, painted on shaped paper or cardboard, which constituted at least three distinct “paper nativity” cores. Most of them were painted by Francesco Londonio (1723-1783), one of the most important Lombard artists of the 18th century, who specialized precisely in nativity scenes, country scenes and depictions of animals. The work, acquired in 2018 by the Diocesan Museum of Milan, thanks to a donation from Anna Maria Bagatti Valsecchi, comes from the Cavazzi della Somaglia collection in the Villa Gernetto in Lesmo, and is one of the few eighteenth-century Lombard nativity scenes of this type. The nativity scene was originally intended to be set up during the Christmas season in a hall of Villa del Gernetto in Lesmo, Brianza, purchased in 1772 by Count Giacomo Mellerio (1711-1782), at which Londonio used to spend long holiday periods. During the 19th century, the Mellerio heirs, when the importance and rarity of the complex was clear, had the silhouettes mounted within oval or rectangular frames that were used as stable decorations for the halls of the Brianza residence. The Gernetto Nativity, known to critics, is mentioned in historiography and in all publications dedicated to Francesco Londonio and the nativity scene in Lombardy.

Finally, on the occasion of the Twentieth Anniversary, the ground floor wing, usually dedicated to photographic exhibitions, will display a selection of contemporary artworks usually kept in storage, by authors such as William Congdon, Guido Pajetta, Remo Bianco, Beppe De Valle, Claudio Olivieri and Valentino Vago.

“We are pleased to celebrate our first 20 years,” says Nadia Righi, director of the Diocesan Museum, “with new initiatives that are strongly identity-based and indicative of the path taken by the museum since its founding. On the one hand, contemporary art, in this case declined in a street art project, with which we weave a dialogue between the museum and the neighborhood, in a participatory art project involving school children. Then the exhibition of Titian’s Annunciation, as part of the ”A Masterpiece for Milan“ initiative, an appointment always highly anticipated by our public. And then the presentation of an important acquisition, the Londonio nativity scene. Occasions such as these are meant to be a reflection on the Hope we need in order to restart.”

Milan, Diocesan Museum celebrates its 20th birthday with many initiatives

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