Treasures from Portugal. Imaginary architectures from the Middle Ages to the Baroque

Palazzo Madama opens the summer season with an exhibition of works from museums, churches and private collections in Portugal, the result of a long process of research conducted by the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. A journey to discover the figurative culture of a region of Europe that through his explorations and his extensive sales network has done to bridge the cultures of North Africa , the Americas and Asia. 120 works including paintings, sculptures, illuminated manuscripts, jewelery, drawings and treaties that illustrate how the principles of architecture have since the Middle Ages, together with the design and creation of objects, enhancing the aesthetic and decorative values ??and emphasizing the symbolic meanings and social.

THE PATH OF THE EXHIBITION. The central theme of the show is how and with what eyes painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, embroiderers and designers have looked to the architectural vocabulary to create images of other worlds and to give shape to dreams and illusions.
The first section, The architecture as an idea, focuses on the mental process that leads to build architecture: from the imaginary visions of Giovanni Paolo Pannini to contemporary projects of Siza Vieira for Milan and Carrilho de Graça Benevento. To design the architecture focuses on texts that have provided the theoretical framework for the training of architects, treaties ranging from the classic to the end of the sixteenth century: from Vitruvio, Leon Battista Alberti, Serlio, Palladio, Francisco de Hollanda. The microarchitecture explores the fantastic dimension of architectural experimentation in the minor arts: reliquary monstrance and use the architectural design, becoming microesempi of imaginary architecture. Darting pinnacles, scrolls, pierced or niches inhabited by tiny statues. The section deals with architecture as a metaphor for the symbolic meanings of the architecture and the way in which its forms are used by artists to postpone the image of places and worlds of the Christian faith. The architecture presents the theme as an order of the delimitation of space narrated, given by structures that organize the scenes depicted . The sixth section shows the architecture as authorities stiffen architectural fees from the second half of the sixteenth century . Closing the show imaginary architecture , dedicated to the fantastic architecture : those of Baroque painting , and the ephemeral and the feast of the theater, which construct a different reality.

THE INSTALLATION. The installation in metal pipes construction with transparent windows, designed by N4 Studio in Turin, produces the spatial structure of the exhibition is also an architectural construction. The use of lightweight materials and flexible overlays to the existing space by changing the boundaries and interpreting the size of the Senate to the Senate. An imaginary architecture that helps to define the path as a drawing of rest and motion. A new architecture for service architectures in miniature of the treasures on display.

BUILDING AND MISTRESS MUSEU NACIONAL DE ARTE ANTIGA LISBON. The exhibition Treasures from Portugal is part of a partnership project that has as its objective the exchange of experiences and heritages. In the months in which the Portuguese collections will be on display in Turin, Lisbon is home to the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga the exhibition Os Saboias reis e mecenas. Turim 1730-1750 (The Savoy kings and patrons. Turin from 1730 to 1750, 17 May to 28 September) that brings the Portugal in the high profile of the artistic production of Piedmont in the period in which their Filippo Juvarra projects the culture of Turin in the horizon of European modernity.
The project was born thanks to new relationships promoted by the City of Turin with the Portuguese capital. Portugal and Italy renew as a secular dialogue he has seen, over time, even the centrality of Lisbon - Turin axis, mediated by the relationship between the ruling houses and major cultural exchanges.
Two cities and two exhibitions for a project that looks to the future. Today more than ever, museums must be engaged in research for the sustainability of a new culture, creating synergies capable of giving the maximum return on investment through the search for new audiences , identifying themes and areas of development can be shared on an international level .
The partnership project has involved also in Turin and the Piedmont Regional Office of the directors of leading institutions in the city, by the Superintendence for the Artistic, the Savoy Gallery, the National Library, the State Archives, to the University, which helped strengthening research and the writing of the catalog.
The works will cross the border, in a sign of a new policy that sees cultural exchange and international relations an important horizon of growth.

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