THE FABLE OF LATONA BY ORAZIO DE FERRARI

The return of a masterpiece
Palazzo Bianco - Via Garibaldi, 11 - Genoa
From March 23, 2016

Palazzo Bianco is hosting from March 23, 2016 the painting The Tale of Latona by Orazio De Ferrari (Voltri 1606 - Genoa 1657) long given up for lost. It all stems from the important discovery of the Voltri artist's masterpiece depicting a fable from Ovid's Metamorphoses: Latona turning the peasants of Lycia into frogs. The painting will be displayed within the exhibition itinerary and, in particular, in the room dedicated precisely to Orazio De Ferrari. The masterpiece, before coming to Giorgio Baratti, the Milan antiquarian who is its current owner and who supports the entire initiative by entrusting it to the curatorship of Anna Orlando, had been purchased in 2005 from the descendants of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar y Mendoza VII Duke of the Infantado by the Madrid antiquarians Jorge Coll and Nicolás Cortés, who published it in their catalog of that year's gallery exhibition, entrusting its description to Genoese art historian Elena De Laurentiis(Maestros del Barroco Europeo, Madrid, Galleria Coll&Cortés, 2005).

"Geography and history teach us that Genoa's position has always favored its relations with Spain, and the history of art has already for several years highlighted that within this trade flow a significant role was played by paintings, tapestries, silver and other artifacts transited in both directions. Orazio De Ferrari's painting The Tale of Latona had this fate, probably from the very beginning of its collecting history. Today, therefore, its display in the halls of Strada Nuova Museums - made possible by the generosity of Giorgio Baratti, who is its current owner, by the commitment of those who curated the exhibition, and by the active collaboration at various levels of the museum's management and the Culture Department - takes on the character of at least a temporary homecoming, but with the awareness that it also represents a valuable testimony to the great history of our city."(Carla Sibilla - Culture and Tourism Councillor - and Marco Doria - Mayor of Genoa).

Also presented on the occasion was the volume Orazio De Ferrari's Fable of Latona. The Return of a Masterpiece. With additions to the painter's catalog edited by Anna Orlando (Sagep Publishers). The book, in Italian and English, offers an important critical survey of the masterpiece, with essays by Raffaella Besta, Piero Boccardo, Agnese Marengo, Simona Morando and Franco Vazzoler and Anna Orlando. The study also presents a repertory of some 50 paintings by the painter largely unpublished and reappeared since the publication of Piero Donati's monograph, also published by Sagep in 1997. Twenty years after that catalog raisonné, Anna Orlando's reconnaissance thus offers a substantial update on the pictorial corpus of the artist, a protagonist of the season of early 17th-century Genoese naturalism.

Here is what curator Anna Orlando writes of the painting The Fable of Latona (Oil on canvas, 193 x 261 cm; signed on the farmer's staff at left HORATAT. FERRAR. GENO) exhibited at the Strada Nuova Museums, Palazzo Bianco.

This strikingly scenic as well as dimensional canvas is recorded in the poetic composition I Raguagli di Cirpo by Ligurian Luca Assarino, printed in 1642.

The description of the painting obliges one to believe that it is indeed our painting: "A canvas where one could see Latona who, outraged in the water by some villains, raised her eyes to heaven to demand vengeance, and they meanwhile remained little by little turned into frogs. It was inexpressible to see with what stupendous skill had the operatic hand been able to express the affections of the Goddess, and the confusion of those ill persons. With what industry in a single individual he had multiplied the essence of two very different animals, and with what ingenuity, by inserting in a human neck the head of a beast, he had succeeded in denuding another's foot, and shoehorning it with the paw of an aquatile monster."

We therefore know for certain that the work was executed by 1642 by Orazio De Ferrari, who signed it, thus suggesting that it was an important commission. But when was it painted? And for whom? The masterpiece, before coming to Giorgio Baratti, the current owner, is purchased in 2005 by Madrid antiquarians Jorge Coll and Nicolás Cortés from the descendants of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar y Mendoza VII Duke of the Infantado.

Research conducted on the provenance by Piero Boccardo, director of the Strada Nuova Museums, makes it reasonable to identify the canvas with that which in 1653 was in the collection of the late Manuel Alonso de Fonseca Fuentes de Zúñiga Acevedo (ca. 1590-1653), Count of Fuentes and VI Count of Monterrey, in whose inventory is described "un quadro grande de una fabula con una muger, dos ninos y un hombre conbertido en rrana," i.e., a fable with a woman, two children and a man turned into a frog, without a precise attributive reference, but with the exceptional estimate of 2,750 reales.

The Count of Monterrey had been ambassador extraordinary to Rome in 1621 and 1628, and then Viceroy of Naples from 1631 to 1637. He stayed in Genoa at the time of his arrival in Italy, probably by sea, in 1621, again in 1628, and then at the end of his residence in Naples in February 1638.

To him and to this year must be traced the circumstances of execution of the masterpiece exhibited here, which reappeared after centuries in the meanders of private collecting and exceptionally exhibited to the public in the city where it was painted.

Below is the presentation of the exhibition at Palazzo Bianco. Speeches by Councillor for Culture and Tourism Carla Sibilla, art historian Anna Orlando and Giorgio Baratti (from YouTube channel GenoaMunicipality).

Online press review

22/03/2016 - Palazzo Bianco, the return of the "Fable of Latona" (video from Repubblica.it)
22/03/2016 - Palazzo Bianco, the missing "Fable of Latona" returns (Repubblica.it)
22/03/2016 - Latona's Fable: a masterpiece by De Ferrari returns to Genoa (video from Il Secolo XIX.it)
23/03/2016 - Orazio de Ferrari's La Favola di Latona - The return of a masterpiece (presentation of critical study edited by Anna Orlando; Palazzideirolli.it)
01/04/2016 - De Ferrari's "La favola di Latona" returns to Genoa (Il Giornale dell'Arte.it)