FG FINE ART LTD
HE.ART
TURIN, 2-6 NOVEMBER 2022
The theme of the 10th edition of Flashback is HE.ART, a term that comes from the elaboration of heart and which already magically contains the word art within it. The heart is a muscular organ, which constitutes the motor center of the circulatory system, the driving force to our primary passion: the Italian old masters.
This year's work linked to the city of Turin is a painting depicting Jael and Sisera by Domenico Guidobono which returns to be exhibited in Turin after being on show at Palazzo Madama ten years ago. The canvas had been made along with a pendant, Susanna and the Elders, now in the Louvre in Paris.
Domenico, together with his brother Bartolomeo, spent most of his career in Piedmont and in particular in Turin, where, among other commissions, in 1709 he started to work on the decoration of the new apartment of Duchess Maria Giovanna Battista di Savoia Nemours in Palazzo Madama. Here Domenico leaves the most convincing proof of his exuberant decorativism, giving life to a surprising catalogue of inventions, declined and combined in the different rooms, with inexhaustible inventiveness. Between 1708 and 1709 Domenico decorated the Chamber of Madama Reale, in 1714 he painted the ceiling of the Sala della Primavera.
Moving to Florence, we then find three roundels by Bicci di Lorenzo (Florence, 1373 - 1452). Represented in the act of leaving the tomb, Christ is covered in rivulets of blood that drip from the wounds of his side and hands, as if he had just been taken down from the Cross. Remnant of the Byzantine heritage, the representation of Vir Dolorum, was inserted in the Western devotional imagination during the Middle Ages.
Also from Florence is Agnolo di Domenico del Mazziere (circa 1466 - 1513) here represented by two paintings depicting St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, once attributed to the hand of Filippino Lippi. The two panels, with their fluid and quivering drapery, are rendered in grisaille, with shades of grey and yellow, to reproduce lights and shadows as if to create an illusion of sculpture.
