In Illegio the exhibition of destroyed, stolen or lost masterpieces. Visible again thanks to new technologies

From July 4 to Dec. 13, 2020, the exhibition Nothing is Lost will be held in Illegio created through a collaboration between Sky Arte, Factum Arte and Ballandi Arts.

The aim of the exhibition will be to display works that are no longer visible because they have been destroyed or lost or stolen or destroyed due to devastation and misunderstanding.

On display will be seven priceless masterpieces that were lost forever but have been brought back to light thanks to the technologies of Factum Arte directed by Adam Lowe. Through the efforts of a team of historians, artists, restorers and 3D software experts, the seven works have been rematerialized to restore every detail of the vanished originals, including the three-dimensionality of the brushstrokes on the paint surface: Johannes Vermeer ’s Concert of Three (stolen from the Isabella Stewart-Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990), Franz Marc ’s The Tower of the Blue Horses (seized by the Nazi who attempted to succeed Hitler, Hermann Göring, and disappeared in 1945), Tamara de Lempicka ’s Myrto as her self-portrait in the late 1920s in the Paris to which she had moved (later kept in a Paris villa where it was allegedly stolen by the Nazis in 1943), Vincent van Gogh ’s Vase with Five Sunflowers (destroyed in the bombing of Ashya, near Osaka, Japan), Gustav Klimt ’s painting dedicated to Medicine for the ceiling of the University of Vienna (burned in 1945 by the now-defeated Nazis in Schloss Immendorf in Austria), one of Claude Monet ’s large Water Lilies ( charred in a fire that broke out at the MoMa in New York in 1958), Graham Sutherland’s Portrait of Sir Winston Churchill (had it destroyed by Lady Clementine Churchill).

In addition to these works, two other paintings will be rematerialized: the St. Matthew and the Angel by Caravaggio that vanished in flames in May 1945 in Berlin. The artist Antero Kahilaha carried out personal research between 2003 and 2008 on Caravaggio’s technique and language to succeed in rematerializing the lost St. Matthew, philologically, brushstroke by brushstroke. In the Illegio exhibition, moreover, the work will be displayed side by side with the two huge reproductions of the Vocation and Martyrdom of St. Matthew, both works Caravaggio completed for the Contarelli Chapel, like St. Matthew and the Angel.

In addition, the stained glass windows of the main façade of Chartres Cathedral, rematerialized in the San Bellino workshop in Rovigo by Sandro Tomanin and his collaborators: these have not disappeared or been destroyed, but because of their architectural location they can never be displayed in an exhibition.

Original works of art, long forgotten and recently found, will then be exhibited. Among them, the two carved and gilded wooden sculptures by Domenico Mioni known as Domenico da Tolmezzo, depicting St. Vitus and St. Maurice, made between 1492 and 1498 for the wooden altarpiece of the Pieve di San Floriano in Illegio, but stolen in 1968, reappeared on the antiques market in Bonn in 2018 and now returned to their country.

Finally, a last work of inestimable importance, whose existence and part of the story was known, then lost sight of for centuries, finally identified and accompanied by studies will be exhibited in Illegio: made by one of the greatest artists of all time, it will be announced a few days before the opening of the exhibition.

For info: illegio.it

In Illegio the exhibition of destroyed, stolen or lost masterpieces. Visible again thanks to new technologies

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