“THE 15TH CENTURY IN CAMERINO. LIGHT AND PERSPECTIVE AT THE HEART OF MARCHE”
By Andrea De Marchi
The exhibition “The 15th Century in Camerino. Light and perspective at the heart of Marche” wanted to be an occasion to experiment. An attempt to demolish certain preconceived schemes that built the history of perhaps the more important century of the Italian Art, the 15th Century; starting exclusively from the coastal cities and from their absolute hierarchies and not from the complex network that suffered infinite re-workings, the same vitality of the doubtless capitals of the time. You try to go through History in the inverse sense and then you verify, strangely, that Camerino can help to understand Florence and Padua, because it’s the centralism, the dialectic between big and small cities which makes the 15th Century important and exciting.
The art in Camerino, from the late gothic splendour to the decline of the school of the perspective, in the painting of the proto - Classicism but no only in it, constituted then a privileged observatory to reconsider with new eyes the whole aspect of figurative motifs in this and the other side of the Apennines.
The first scheme of which to get rid off was the one referred to a rigid dividing line between Marche and Umbria in order to substitute it for the fusion of the interior valleys, Potenza and Chienti, and the Valley of Umbra and Spoleto, Foligno, Perugia. The Umbri Carmertes are in fact in the summit and avoid banal classifications.
The second obstacle to surpass was the invincible complex of inferiority that prevented to the provinces in appearance more arrogant to recognize the authentic force of the own values, expressed throughout history, yes, but rich in outstanding episodes.
The exhibition has tried to emphasize the quality, since this one is the main line of any speech on the history of Art. The works gathered in the rooms of the ex-Convent of Saint Dominique have a dialog among them in a sequence, sometimes narrow sometimes wide: the counterpoint between the presented paintings and the turned volumes of the statues, but also between compact and luminous works like the unforgettable series of the paintings of Boccati or the room where they’re confronted, one next to the other, four sublime Crucifixions (Brno, Camerino, Castel San Venanzio, Sarnano) of the middle of the century, the greater protagonist of the perspective and luminous painting of Camerino, Giovanni Angelo d’Antonio, and of his not less extraordinary companion of difficulties, died young, the Master of the triptych of 1454. I believe that nobody who has seen a room like that it can be indifferent to the force of a tough impression or to getting healed by the luminous splendour of a painting that caught the most rude truth of the subtly geometric and intellectual art of Piero della Francesca.
One enters thus into the center of the problematic of this exhibition. It’s been said that this was a too much specialized exhibition. From the moment that it hasn’t been a public failure it must be vindicated without false modesty: yes, it was and it wanted to be a specialized exhibition, with rigor, without concessions of no type. But even the stricter specialized reasoning can be pronounced always with coherence and transmit its diversity with respect to messages more or less overworked, taken for granted and foreseeable. I think, or at least I hope, that the exhibition has known how to transmit, indeed by the own force of the visual impact and the attempts of approaches, even to the common visitors and that has stimulated them to know more. Nowadays exhibition proposals persecute in a laborious way to simplify more and more the messages, leaded mainly by the marketing interests (Van Gogh and the impressionism!, against the minimum sensible understanding of the history), that perhaps has impact but that always finishes in the recognition of the already given ideas, and finally not urging in fact new curiosities and own reasoning.
The ambition of this exhibition, and the intense and choral work that’s been behind it, was to conjugate scientist researches and a wider sensitivity. The objective is to present an historical and artistic geography of a rich and at least unsuspected complexity, in the hope of a positive relapse to make mature a new sensitivity that sees in the trusteeship and diffusion of the patrimony (what a beautiful expression more and more in disuse!) not only an old instrument, but a source of human and moral resources. The rural party of Camerino conserves dozens of monumental vestiges that hope to be saved from forgetfulness and destruction: the fresco paintings of the oratory of Baregnano, of the church of the Cross in Pioraco, of the Virgin of the Calcinarios in Sero, of the church of Copogna, from Villanova di Fior di Monte, and so many others. Something has been done, mainly as a seed in the conscience. The exhibition must be a first step so that this ample circumscription discovers again and, therefore, defends the extraordinarily varied own identity.
The second point is the more scientist one. In this case it’s said that the numerous proposals of new interpretations or identifications, nothing less than of the most important protagonists of this time of the art of Camerino (Olivuccio di Ciccarello, the author of the triptych of 1454; Giovanni Angelo d’Antonio of Bolognola, author of the Virgin of Macareto, etc.) carried on often with problems, aren’t dictated by a simple “furor novitatis” but are born almost from the necessity of an objective delay of the studies in this sector. Almost no foreign studious has studied the 15th Century of Marche; only Crivelli is known and loved universally outside Italy. It’s incredible to verify it. At the same time these common places have been repeated for decades until the debilitation, without an authentic revision which started from reliable data, from a more seasoned scrutiny of the archives, from searches on the land, from a careful reading and bring up to date of the stylistic aspects, based in ample knowledge and verifications, not only on purely rhetorical majorities. I hope that the material that has been put on the table, with the concurrence of so many diverse competences, that will provoke animated debates and that it will lay the way to new investigations: in such case, the exhibition and the initiatives that have accompanied it (the agreement in October 2001, the Christmas gift of 2002 of the Bank of Marche about the painters in Camerino in the 15th Century) would have obtained its greater goal. |
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