Scroll Down
Scroll Down
Scroll Down
Lighting design: Marco Miglioli ArchiLight Studio.
Client: Museo City Milano. Exhibition design: Luca Rolla and Alberto Bertini with Andrea Mologni and Andrea Tregnago. Curatorship: Paolo Biscottini and Annalisa Zanni. Scientific committee: Paolo Biscottini, Alessandro Morandotti, Giovanna Poletti and Annalisa Zanni. Structures: Paolo Bonfanti. Photographs: Andrea Ceriani Catalogue: Skira.
PALAZZO REALE | MILAN | ITALY
“Still Life”: still nature, silent but alive.
An exhibition wall inside a room on the main floor of Palazzo Reale
The exhibition displays the private collection of seventeenth century still lifes, as well as some pictures painted by Poletti himself, collector, art historian and painter.
Almost all art historians place the birth of European still life in Lombardy, no longer understood as decorative art but as an autonomous category: think of Campi, Arcimboldo, Fede Galizia, Figino and Caravaggio himself.
Still life painters do not only portray man and his events but they focus on the autonomous reality of nature and objects in their concrete individuality.
Objects come to life in a space defined by solids and voids, light and shadow and take on a meaning that goes beyond their practical function.
An exhibition wall-furniture in a corner of the “tapestry room”
The seventeenth-century still life anticipates the interest of impressionism and the twentieth-century avant-garde. Think for example of Van Gogh’s “shoes”, in which they do not represent their function of use but are the emblem of a peasant world made up of work and poverty; or to Morandi’s “bottles” which open to the theme of the relationship between form / volume / space.
The frescoed vault of the “tapestry room” slightly lit
A room in the “Prince’s Apartment” whose vault, frescoed with motifs inspired by the grotesques, is delicately lit
“Room 108”. Here, as in other rooms, art works and panels are more illuminated than an architecture that remains in dim light
The exhibition highlights the works as protagonists of their message, without the viewer being distracted by the presence of furnishings and decorations.
On the other hand, we wanted to remember their original and “familiar” location. Some unadorned rooms of the “Palazzo Reale” were therefore chosen for their arrangement, in which the lighting of the paintings gives maximum prominence to the works, allowing to half see the rooms, although very beautiful, just from a glimpse.
To obtain this effect, special light structures were designed, incorporated into the display blocks.
Diffused light was also used to reproduce a domestic interior atmosphere, as if the light were filtered through half-open shutters.