Gallino crucifix
The Gallino crucifix (last name of the antique dealer from Turin, who sold it to the Italian state in 2008) is a small wooden sculpture made of limewood (41.3 × 39.7 cm). It depicts the crucifixion of Jesus without a cross , dates approx. 1495 - 1497 , and is attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti . Despite the first hint of linden wood , the object is most likely made of poplar.
The crucifix, intended for private devotions, was in the possession of the Turin antique dealer Giancarlo Gallino before it was ascribed to Michelangelo . An attribution that also reflects the opposite opinion of some experts. The professionals have in fact divided themselves into opposing extremes, between those who consider it to be the work of the Tuscan sculptor and those who, with an opposite assessment, consider it the serial or semi-serial work of a woodcarving workshop that operated in Florence during the Renaissance period. The decision of the Italian state to provide a substantial amount of money for its acquisition has therefore given rise to considerable concern and investigations by the Court of Auditors and the criminal justice system. In February 2012, the case prompted the Court of Auditors to indict the then Director General of the Ministry of Cultural Goods , Roberto Cecchi, the Superintendent of the Polo Museale Fiorentino, Cristina Acidini , and four officials from the Ministry.
The Court of Auditors ruled in the case (No. 643 of 2013 of the Lazio Section) in September 2013 and acquitted the defendants of the charge of "tax damage" because, in the opinion of the Judges' Commission, the damage to the treasury was not precisely quantified. However, the behavior of the people who were involved in the proceedings prior to the acquisition of the crucifix by the state was criticized on several points, and the method for assessing the actual attributability of the work to Buonarroti was judged to be inadequate.
The crucifix was entrusted to the Polo Museale Fiorentino. Since October 2011 it has been in the Bargello , where since April 4, 2012 it has found its final place in a shrine in the Podesta Chapel.
history
The work does not seem to have come to light until the 1990s , when the antiquarian Giancarlo Gallino brought the crucifix to the attention of a great Michelangelo expert.
Alleged origin of Corsini
In a statement made on the television news of December 21, 2008 during an appearance in a RAI television studio, Roberto Cecchi, Director General of the Historical-Artistic Heritage, referred to an unspecified but certain Florentine origin. From this allusion has emerged a fascinating tale, born from the inheritance of an ancient family, the Corsini, so famous that they found a pope in the 18th century ( Clement XII ) and a saint in the 14th century ( San Andrea Corsini ). A depiction of the latter, in a painting by Guido Reni , further enriched the story. The crucifix can be seen in the painting by Guido Reni from the first half of the 17th century . In reality, both the twentieth-century appearance out of nowhere and the suggestive history of belonging to a famous patrician family have been torn apart by journalistic investigations as well as the Carabinieri investigations , which left room for further speculation. As it turned out, the crucifix was an object that had been circulating in the art market for some time. Giancarlo Gallino had bought it at the Florentine antique market from another antique dealer in Via Maggio, while the sculpture had previously been offered on the market in New York, where the same antique dealer from Via Maggio had bought it for a modest amount «corresponds to approx. 10,000 euros ».
The assignment of the Gallino crucifix to the crucifix in the picture by Guido Reni is therefore a completely arbitrary and forced allusion, which is also based on stylistic reasons. The Christ on the cross by Reni is considered to be "a typical invention of the Bolognese painter, which opens the way to the Christ by Alessandro Algardi and Gian Lorenzo Bernini ".
First museum exhibition
It was first presented to the public in 2004 at the Museo Horne in Florence and received positive votes on the attribution of Giancarlo Gentilini, Antonio Paolucci , Cristina Acidini , Umberto Baldini, Luciano Bellosi, Massimo Ferretti (the latter subsequently intended to clarify his position and defined the handling with the name Michelangelo as unsafe). The scholar Arturo Carlo Quintavalle and, in a cautious and differentiated way, Vittorio Sgarbi , adhered to this ascription, which was made in newspaper articles . After the exhibition, the work was confiscated and placed under the Ministry of Cultural Property and Tourism .
Previous attempts to sell
In 2006 the work was offered for sale in an initial request from the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze at a price of 15 million euros. Given the caution of the experts consulted by the bank (in particular Mina Gregori), the owner reduced his claims to 3 million euros, a move that did not serve to induce the bank to buy.
Purchase by the Italian state
On July 5, 2007, Giuliano Gallino proposed the sale to the Ministry, then under the direction of Francesco Rutelli , at a price of 18 million euros.
Following the opinions of the Committee on Historical Works of Art, the Ministry's technical-scientific body and the conclusion of negotiations, the matter was closed in 2008 when the head of the department was replaced by Sandro Bondi . On November 13, 2008, Roberto Cecchi, the head of the General Directorate for Historical-Artistic Heritage, submitted a formal purchase offer for 3,250,000 euros. The offer was accepted by the seller on the following day and provided for the acquisition of the work of art by the Italian state. The crucifix, which was exhibited in the Italian embassy at the Holy See and later in the Camera dei deputati and elsewhere (such as the Castello Sforzesco in Milan ), was available to the Florentine Soprintendenza for some necessary restoration work and for further studies, which was also responsible Computed tomograph was used. It received its final location on October 25, 2011, when it was exhibited in the Bargello, in the shrine in the chapel of the Podesta.
Attribution
The attribution of the work was rated positively and negatively by many experts. In particular, a direct comparison was suggested with the crucifix of Santo Spirito , considered to be Michelangelo's youthful work, in which a sweet, gentle and religiously composed style prevails, so different from the titanism of the works of his maturity, but in which one is already an extreme Observance of the anatomy that Michelangelo was able to study on corpses in the Augustinian monastery of Santo Spirito . The Gallino Cross also shows an extreme attention to detail, which is clearly visible in the tendons of the feet or in the knee joint, which has no comparison with the works of other masters of this time. Also the expression, silent painful but not torn, is reminiscent of the work in Santo Spirito and responds perfectly to the aesthetic canon represented by Savonarola , with a focus on the harmony typical of the Renaissance (the proportions of the body are in a circle perfectly describable, like Leonardo's Vitruvian Man ). The dating then takes place between around 1495 and 1497.
Favorable opinions
Giancarlo Gentilini
Before 2004 , Professor Giancarlo Gentilini, Professor of Modern Art History in Perugia , together with Umberto Baldini and Luciano Bellosi, promoted the hypothesis of the attribution to Michelangelo by focusing on sources and similarities. Gentilini strongly doubts that the colorful wooden cross can be an example of "series production", above all because "the strong inclination of the head [...] was conceived during processing, while in the other [crucifixes] it was The result of a resumption of an already known model is ". In addition, "that the posture of the Turin crucifix, with the head down on the right shoulder, the stretched and elongated body, the distinctive chest, the contracted and thinned stomach, is completely in line with a formal design, is very important to Michelangelo and clearly shows its identity with the "design" of a crucifix from the Casa Buonarroti museum in Florence, also made of linden wood and even smaller (27 cm), which is now considered to be an autograph work by Buonarroti, and which is based on a few letters from 1562- 63, which testify to how the "divine" master was busy carving "a wooden cross" for his nephew Leonardo on the eve of his death - two irrefutable and really moving testimonies to a practice of carving small crucifixes for domestic devotion, although they did were omitted from the sources for obvious reasons, but certainly not with the realization of the famous Crucifix of Santo Spirito was finished. Finally, Gentilini adds that "such a scenario is also confirmed in Vasari's biography, which mentions that a certain Menighella, a mediocre craftsman from Valdarno but" a very pleasant person ", who, as some letters from 1518 testify, from Michelangelo very much It is estimated that Buonarroti had "a model of a beautiful crucifix" made, successfully replicated in paper mache for the local market ".
Marco Fioravanti
Professor Marco Fioravanti, professor of wood technology at the Faculty of Agriculture in Florence , had already established during his first observations in 2004 that “the figure of Christ is not made of a single piece of wood”, but it is the result of “assembling at least two separate parts with very different dimensions ”. In addition, “In the lower half of the head there is a wooden wedge-shaped insert” which “gave the dying Christ a different and more precise incline”. After all, “none of the previous comparisons of sculptures of comparable size from the time of Michelangeslos has shown similar structural features”. In the second phase of the studies, which were carried out in December 2011 in a laboratory for digital image processing in Careggi (Florence), the use of special software succeeded in practically removing the surface colors and the layers of the preparation and thus making it possible to see the Carved wood that reveals and confirms the high quality through “refined and truthful reproduction of the body muscles that the artist intended to reproduce”, recognizable “not only on the painted surface, but also on the modeled wooden surface”. You can say that it can't really be a serial work.
Massimo Gulisano
Professor Massimo Gulisano, Professor of Human Anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery at the University of Florence , together with Dr. Pietro Antonio Bernabei carried out the anatomical examination on two “certified” works by Michelangelo: the wooden crucifix from Santo Spirito in Firenze and the David in the Galleria dell'Accademia . By comparing the various analyzes, Gulisano drew a number of analogies about the crucifix on display in the Bargello, thanks to which he was able to confirm that Michelangelo “knew human anatomy perfectly from direct and long experience and had a great ability to represent it precisely, starting with Identification of individual characteristics until the work is carried out ”. Not only: “He used the anatomical-functional knowledge of the musculoskeletal system to depict the inertia or movement of the body, its devotion to gravity or its contrast to it. Even artists with excellent practical knowledge of anatomy do not work with these operational and conceptual sequences. "
Further
Other experts have come out in favor of being assigned to Michelangelo: "If it's not Michelangelo, then it's God" (Federico Zeri, statement in Il Giornale dell'Arte , May 2004); "I had seen the photos and was curious, but when I had it in hand I was blinded by its overwhelming beauty, like St. Paul on the way to Damascus ." (The sentence is by Umberto Baldini from the article Il "calvario" del Cristo di Michelangelo (The "Passion" of Christ by Michelangelo) , " Il Giornale ", December 3, 2004, also quoted in a paper by Antonio Paolucci in 2008 ); «Such a lively formation of the" chest ", the hips and the stomach, such a wise and continuous flow of complex joints into one another, such a mobility of extravagant and poignant beauty of the surfaces, seems to me to correspond to an idea of the human body that is so high is that it supports the reference to the great artist who offered so many unforgettable interpretations of this aspect of humanity. " (Luciano Bellosi in Il Giornale dell'arte, May 2004); “This athletic and almost androgynous beauty also characterizes the Bargello crucifix: the legs are long and tapered and continue into soft, almost rounded, very feminine sides, but the waist is narrow and the chest is broad and strong. The muscles of the thighs and abdominal muscles appear stressed. As in some drawings by Michelangelo before 1503, the reverse is very well studied »(Sergio Risaliti in Il corpo della fede (The Body of Faith), " Corriere Fiorentino ", April 15, 2012).
Opposing opinions
Margrit Lisner
The attribution to Michelangelo is instead rejected by Margrit Lisner, "leading expert on Florentine crucifixes of the Renaissance ", to whom we owe the attribution of the crucifix of Santa Spirito to the young Michelangelo: she believes that the small Gallino cross is the work of Sansovino is.
Stella Rudolph
Stella Rudolph, who studied painting of the 17th century and in particular Maratta, has instead proposed an attribution to the Florentine Legnaiuolo Leonardo del Tasso. According to the expert, the small Gallino cross resembles a Saint Sebastian in a carved wooden altar that is located in a niche on the left wall of the Church of Sant'Ambrogio in Florence.
It also highlights the inconsistency in the price. It is downright ridiculous for a handwritten sculptural youth work by Michelangelo, which even fetched a price of € 10,200,000.00 for “the drawing of a mother of sorrows in an auction at Sotheby's in 2001”. This price would instead become a "disproportionate" price if it relates to a serial work or to a dubious attribution.
Paola Barocchi
Paola Barocchi, professor emeritus at the Scuola Normale di Pisa and one of Michelangelo's key specialists, adopted a similarly negative stance when she expressed herself on the crucifix with these terms: “A series work. There is nothing from Michelangelo, not even the school. Instead, we are faced with a good carver and his workshop companions from the late 15th century. They created around ten works, which were exhibited in an exhibition at the Horne Museum in 2004, together with the incorrectly attributed Christ to Michelangelo ”.
Francesco Caglioti
Francesco Caglioti, a specialist in Renaissance sculpture, expressed the same view, stressing the inadmissibility of the stylistic approximation to the great crucifix of Santo Spirito . In his opinion, the work is in the tradition of the high artistic craft of the Florentine wood carvers, whose level of quality, well known to professionals, guarantees a real artistic priority in Florence. Attributing the Gallino crucifix to the unrepeatable work of Michelangelo at any cost would be to question the high quality of this Florentine artistic tradition, unparalleled in the Renaissance .
Mina Gregori
The academic of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei Mina Gregori commented negatively about the authenticity and the attribution and hoped that the state would examine the possibility of a return to the seller. It was the same scholar who had prevented the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze from buying it, even though the object had been offered for an even lower price.
Giovan Battista Fidanza
Giovan Battista Fidanza (collaborator in the history of modern art at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" and scientist for the relationship between material and formal elements in modern wood sculpture.) Michelangelo wrote an article as a wood sculptor in the journal Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte (2010 ), in which he finally removes any reference to Michelangelo's small wooden sculpture. The essay particularly emphasizes that Michelangelo could not fall back on the tools of the typical wood carver (such as the wedge inserted in the neck for the effect of the retractable head), which are clearly visible through the diagnostic examinations carried out on the work ( primarily the CT scan, which also makes the modeling thickness of the preparatory layer visible, in some cases even to the naked eye).
Further
Alessandro Nova, Vice-Director of the Art History Institute in Florence , has shown astonishment at the way in which "the government, with all the problems that exist, invests in such work" and a little of the "risky battle for this work". In a similar comment, Claudio Pizzorusso from the University of Siena emphasizes "absurd price in a difficult context, [...] for a simple hypothesis, not for a real Michelangelo" to which counterpoint, again after Pizzorusso, the general indifference for "many Works of great value but less present ». A partial correction was also voiced by Massimo Ferretti , who was initially listed among the followers but made it clear that he hadn't done it «I said it's from Michelangelo. Actually, I didn't know how to match the circle of attribution, and in the end I put a question mark ».
In some art critic circles the fact has also been the subject of a certain irony: “ Did the Italians lose $ 4.2 million on a forged Michelangelo cross? », As it was pointed out that there is no documentation of the work in the biographies of the time.
credentials
- ↑ Marco Fioravanti: Relazione sull'esame alla tomografia computerizzata dei tre crocifissi . In: Giancarlo Gentilini (Ed.): Proposta per Michelangelo Giovane ... ' 2004, Appendice I a, p. 65 .
- ↑ a b Tomaso Montanari : A cosa serve Michelangelo? Einaudi, 2011, ISBN 978-88-06-20705-2 (Italian).
- ↑ Stefano Luppi: Per il Crocifisso attribuito a Michelangelo la Corte dei Conti cita in giudizio i responsabili dell'acquisto . Il Giornale dell'Arte, February 20, 2012 (Italian, ilgiornaledellarte.com ).
- ↑ a b Montanari, page 27
- ↑ The origin from an unspecified Florentine family is also mentioned by Valeria Merlini, curator of the exhibition of the crucifix in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan (April-May 2009). il CROCIFISSO ritrovato di Michelangelo . chiesadimilano.it.
- ↑ a b c d Montanari, page 28
- ↑ a b c d Maria Cristina Carratù: Il Crocifisso delle polemiche . Ed .: la Repubblica. February 25, 2009 (Italian, repubblica.it ).
- ↑ Il Giornale del Piemonte (ed.): La qualità è molto alta ed è complicato immaginare un altro scultore che possa aver realizzato un'opera di questo genere . April 23, 2004 (Italian).
- ↑ a b c Montanari, page 5
- ↑ a b c d e f Stella Rudolph: Incauto acquisto . Ed .: ambasciatateatrale.com. (Italian, ambasciatateatrale.com ).
- ↑ Montanari, page 6
- ↑ a b Montanari, page 7
- ^ Donata Marrazzo: Lo Stato acquisisce il piccolo crocifisso di Michelangelo . December 12, 2008 (Italian, ilsole24ore.com ).
- ^ Barbara Antonetto: Se non è Michelangelo è Dio! In: Il Giornale dell'Arte . No. 232 , May 2004 (Italian, ilgiornaledellarte.com ).
- ↑ Il Crocifisso del Buonarroti ( it )
- ↑ Luciano Bellosi: L'emozione di accostarsi a un capolavoro . In: Il Giornale dell'Arte . No. 232 , May 2004 (Italian, ilgiornaledellarte.com ).
- ^ Margrit Lisner : Osservazioni sulla nuova "Proposta per Michelangelo giovane" al Museo Horne di Firenze: opera di Michelangelo o di Andrea Sansovino? In: Arte cristiana . No. 825 , 2004, pp. 421-426 (Italian).
- ↑ Simone Innocenti: Michelangelo, inchiesta sul crocifisso . Ed .: Corriere Fiorentino. December 13, 2009 (Italian, corriere.it ).
- ↑ Montanari, page 10
- ↑ Marco Gasperetti: Giallo Michelangelo: "Il Crocifisso non è suo" . Ed .: Corriere Fiorentino. January 23, 2009 (Italian, corriere.it ).
- ↑ a b c Francesco Caglioti: L'opera al Diocesano: "Quel Crocifisso non è di Michelangelo. Vi spiego perché » . Ed .: Corriere del Mezzogiorno. September 17, 2009 (Italian, corriere.it ).
- ↑ Maria Cristina CARRATU, Orazio La Rocca: Crocifisso di Michelangelo, è giallo. June 5, 2009 (Italian, repubblica.it ).
- ^ Tommaso Montanari: Il vero Michelangelo per sdoganare quello falso: ma è solo propaganda . Ed .: Corriere del Mezzogiorno. September 16, 2009 (Italian, corriere.it ).
- ↑ Matthew Perpetua: Did the Italians Blow $ 4.2 Million on a Fake Michelangelo Crucifix? Ed .: New York Magazine . April 22, 2009 (English, nymag.com ).
literature
- Giancarlo Gentilini (Ed.): Proposta per Michelangelo Giovane. Un Crocifisso in legno di tiglio . catalogo della mostra, Firenze, Museo Horne, 8 maggio-4 September 2004. Umberto Allemandi & C., Turin 2004, ISBN 978-88-422-1289-8 (Italian).
- Giovan Battista Fidanza: Reflections on Michelangelo as a wood sculptor . In: Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte . No. 59 , 2010, ISSN 0083-9981 , p. 49-64 .
- Tomaso Montanari: A cosa serve Michelangelo? In: coll. Vele . Einaudi, 2011, ISBN 978-88-06-20705-2 (Italian).
- Claudio Giunta: Come si diventa "Michelangelo". Il mercato dell'arte, la retorica, l'Italia . Donzelli, Rome 2011, ISBN 978-88-6036-559-0 (Italian).
