“Le Signore dell’Arte” exhibition

With the exhibition "Le Signore dell’Arte. Storie di donne tra ’500 e ’600’" (The Ladies of Art. Stories of women between 1500 and 1600) Milan Palazzo Reale, from March 2021, the art and the incredible lives of 34 female artists are rediscovered through more than 130 works, demonstrating intense all-female creative vitality, in a singular account of passionate stories of women who were already “modern”. Bracco Foundation, always attentive to the world of art and science with a strong focus on the female universe, supports the exhibition as Main Sponsor.

The exhibition recounts not only the compositional mastery of these painters but also the social role they played in their time, some successful in the great international courts, others entrepreneurs, all capable of measuring themselves with their ideals and with different lifestyles.

Among the heroines on show at Palazzo Reale the most celebrated is Artemisia Gentileschi: daughter of Orazio, an icon of awareness and revolt, artist and entrepreneur. Then the Bolognese painter Elisabetta Sirani, on show with powerful canvases that represent female courage and rebellion in the face of male violence; Ginevra Cantofoli, with Young woman in Oriental clothing; Fede Galizia with the iconic Judith with the head of Holofernes (1596); Giovanna Garzoni, another very modern woman who lived in Venice, Naples, Paris and Rome, on show with rare and valuable parchments.

Curated by Anna Maria Bava, Gioia Mori and Alain Tapié, the works selected for the exhibition come from 67 different sources, including the Uffizi galleries, the Museum of Capodimonte, the Brera Pinacoteca, the Castello Sforzesco, the National Gallery of Umbria, the Borghese Gallery, the Marseille Musée des Beaux Arts and the Muzeum Narodowe in Poznan (Polonia).

Bracco Foundation, in addition to supporting the exhibition, has started a scientific project in collaboration with several Milan universities which highlights a work present in the exhibition with diagnostic imaging, a sector in which Bracco is world leader: it is the portrait of Carlo Emanuele I Duca di Savoia by Giovanna Garzoni, a 17th-century miniaturist from Ascoli, and oil on parchment owned by the Turin Musei Reali.

The exhibition is part of the “talents of women” programme, promoted by the cultural section of the Milan Metropolis, and with Bracco Foundation as Main Partner, and until April 2021 will focus attention on women, their works and competences.