(by Patrizia Vacalebri).
Culture Minister Dario
Franceschini on Thursday announced a three-year partnership
between Rome's Borghese Gallery and luxury fashion house Fendi,
which will fund a new Caravaggio Research Institute, a digital
platform and exhibits on the master of the 'chiaroscuro'
technique in venues worldwide.
Franceschini hailed the partnership between the private donor
and the public museum as being "thanks to a reform of the museum
system that has brought us closer to European standards".
Under the three-year sponsorship, the Rome-based fashion
house will be funding exhibits held at the Borghese Gallery and
abroad.
The first show will be inaugurated on November 21 this year
at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which will host for
the first time three Caravaggio paintings that are part of the
Gallery's collection: Saint Jerome Writing, Youth With a Fruit
Basket and David With the Head of Goliath.
Fendi will initially allocate 1.3 million euros, its CEO and
President Pietro Beccari announced Thursday, together with the
director of the Borghese Gallery Anna Coliva.
The new institute will be dedicated to the work of Italian
painter Caravaggio, including identifying his genuine paintings
The center vies to become a key reference point in research
on Caravaggio.
Its work will be published on an online platform to form a
comprehensive database on the painter, who lived from 1571 to
1610.
Fendi is heavily involved in the art world.
It has sponsored, among others, an exhibition of works by
Italian avant-garde artist Giuseppe Pennone at the Palazzo della
Civiltà Italiana in Rome, its newly renovated headquarters, and
in Largo Goldini, as well as the renovation of the Italian
capital's iconic Trevi Fountain.
The fashion house also footed the bill for the restoration of
the Quattro Fontane (Four Fountains) complex in Rome's historic
central district.
"So far all this has cost Fendi approximately 10 million
euros", said Beccari.
The first exhibit to be funded by Fendi at the Borghese
Gallery will be dedicated to Gian Lorenzo Bernini in
continuation of celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the
museum's reopening in 1997.
The show will open on October 31 and will run through
February 4, 2018.
It will showcase masterpieces from the collections of, among
others, the Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery and Victoria
and Albert Museus in London, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in
Madrid, the Staatliche Museum in Berlin and the Metropolitan
Museum in New York.
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