GEORGES DE LA TOUR. A MASTER OF LIGHT EXHIBITION IN MILAN

The Seventeenth-century Painting, the transalpine è the protagonist of the new exhibition of Palazzo Reale, with a name of respect, or Georges de la Tour.

From February 7 to June 7, 2020, in the rooms of the ground floor of the museum in Piazza Duomo, it is possible to observe from close up the masterpieces of one of the greatest artists of the Seventeenth century european, which has been rediscovered only in the last century. Curated by Francesca Cappelletti and Thomas Clement Salomon, assisted by a scientific committee of relief, the exhibition è organized and promoted by the Municipality of Milan, Palazzo Reale and MondoMostre Skira. Exhibitions in milan

THE EXHIBITION

this Is the first exhibition in italy dedicated to the French painter, certainly the daughter of this success, in 2011, by exposure of two of his paintings at Palazzo Marino during the Christmas holidays. Through the sixteen works of the master (fifteen più a attributed, but almost certainly by his hand), the exhibition aims to trace a path between l’artistic experience of De la Tour and his contemporaries, among which the Dutch Gherardo delle Notti, and Paulus Bor, but also the venetian Carlo Saraceni. Surely these artists had a’s net influence on the pictorial production of De la Tour, in view of the knowledge of their works in the French area, even if you do not know, for certain, if Georges has ever known.

Actually, Georges de la Tour, little is known about, especially the biographical. We know, for certain, who was born in 1593 in Vic-sur-Seille, in Lorraine, to a family of humble bakers. As a result of the marriage, was granted the title of nobility. His life was marked by his temper, greedy, and violent, at the bottom a little’ as our Caravaggio, so much so that già the contemporaries began to look at him with distrust. Was the father of eleven children, and lived, often surrounded by her many dogs, often stray. A character turbulent, in short, but that rivelò a true master of light, able to switch between spiritualità and realism, night scenes and daytime, always studying the effects of the light sources, obtained with the model in the style of caravaggio. We do not know, for sure, if you've ever been to Rome, but, since 1639, when Louis XII, wanted him to Paris as court painter, surely he had a way to get closer to the ways of those painters, especially the Dutch, as Gherardo delle Notti, or Hendrik Terbruggen, who had lived in the City, in close contact with the caravaggism of the heirs of the master, such as Carlo Saraceni and Bartolomeo Manfredi. The caravaggism of de la Tour was born in this way, through a contact with artists in the nordic came from Rome, and, for this reason, define the lorraine “painting” is an understatement, becauseé was a true master of light, who knew how to mix the light of the derivation of the Italian, the devozionalità typical of his Land, the cradle of Catholicism in French, and the vibrancyà of genre scenes, definitely of German ancestry, flemish and Dutch. De La Tour was a bridge between different ways of Painting, but the critics put him aside since his death in 1653 in the cityà in which the passò a large part of his life, Lùneville. In the following centuries, Georges de la Tour was almost forgotten, also due to the wars that shook his Lorraine, disputed between France and Germany, which is why we lost it too many testimonies the archival of her life. It was in 1915 that startò the revaluation of the character of the painter, De la Tour, thanks to a German critic, Hermann Voss, who dedicò an essay. Starting from that date, the lorraine began to fascinate generations of scholars and enthusiasts of the Seventeenth century, Roberto Longhi, up to Vittorio Sgarbi.

De la Tour was, basically, a realist, parallel to Caravaggio. The protagonists of his paintings were not idealised figures, the daughters of the manuals of iconology and iconography, but real people, taken from the street, among ordinary più downs of the companyà, the dispossessed, the homeless or beggars, but also the children of the people, of those men and women who carried out the work più humble. De la Tour are definitely a group of forty works, of which sixteen in the show. For the più it is of small-format works, often intended for private devotion, but also to the purchasing noble: not è a case that many of his masterpieces were executed between 1635 and 1645, to the horse of those years in which he was called to Paris. Net, in the show, is the contrast between the vitalityà of the day, with the figures marked by poverty; and from the daily grind, and the touching intimacyà of the clubs, constantly sprayed by the candlelight that is his trademark, together with the skull, moralisticamente intended as a warning of imminent death (“memento mori”).

Among the masterpieces are the Royal Palace stands the beautiful penitent Magdalene (1635-40), the National Gallery of Washington, which portrays a woman in meditation, in profile, in the fight with the ghosts of his past, while the candle it outlines the contour of the face and highlights the long black hair. In quest’work, you canò place side by side, in the representation of the night, the Young man blowing on an ember (circa 1640), Museum of Fine Arts of Dijon, a work exceptional in its realism, in which the light of the firebrand outlines the traits of the face of a guy blowing to extinguish the fire by inflating the cheeks. Between the religious themes of the new testament, worthy of note è the Denial of Peter (1650), Museum of Nantes, in which mingle the sacred, in the figure of the first Pope, and the profane, exemplified by the game of dice that the soldiers are playing in the foreground, but with a high symbolic value, that is, l’an allusion to the division of the garments of Christ and the Passion.

De La Tour was one of the greatest representatives of european Painting “restaurant”, with depictions of fights, gambling dens and clubhouses of intense realism. Perfect example of this is the Brawl between the musicians of beggars (1625-30), the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, his youthful masterpiece initially attributed to Caravaggio, the intense vitalityà and from the raw realism of the faces marked by poverty; and from old age. It is an episode of the road, probably an attempt to grab a corner to ask l’almsgiving, which leads to a battle with strokes of lemon splashed into the eye, to expose the fake cecità against the’weapon fire is going to shoot. A cut is also comic, in the end, his drammaticità, obtained with effects of light and grotesque typical of’universe of Caravaggio, as well as tried from the horizontal format loved by Merisi. Milan exhibition

Georges was also a talented portraitist, as evidenced by that great Player of the hurdy-gurdy in the Museum of Bergues, of 1625 about. It is a representation of raw, an old man, probably a tramp, accompanied by his dog, with the desperate eyes of those who can't find a cozy corner to play his instrument and earn a piece of bread. It almost looks like the portrait of those homeless people who, three and a half centuries later, would be described by the lyrics of the songs of Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson. Work unusual for the vertical cut, and of large dimensions, the canvas represents the best of the early studies of De la Tour on the light source side. Among the portraits there is also evidence, from the character, represented by means of busts of the Apostles, painted for the cathedral of Albi, which are the counterpart of some of the subjects are similar of the’Dutch Frans Hals.