Orazio Gentileschi

 In full compliance with the regulations in force, the exhibition is suspended till further notice.

From the 22nd of November, for the first time, at Ala Ponzone Picture Gallery, you will admire, one next to the other, the two versions of  “Rest on the Flight into Egypt ”, two masterpieces by Orazio Gentileschi. An extraordinary exhibition promoted by Cremona Municipality and its Town  Museums, curated by Mario Marubbi.

Beyond these two great paintings, the first of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Wien and the second belonging to a privare collection, the exhibition proposes a selection of other paintings, sculptures, objects in ivory and engravings about the popular theme of the “Flight”, recounted only in the Gospel of Matthew and in the New Testament Apocrypha.

Two similar paintings, by Orazio Gentileschi, made one after the other and dedicated to the tale of  the “Rest on the Flight to Egypt". A theme which was wonderfully portrayed by Gentileschi and which attracted several purchasers. In fact, beyond the two versions in Cremona, there are other two paintings dedicated to this theme, one at Louvre and one at the Birmingham Museum. Paintings which are considered among the most interesting of the Italian production of the first part of the 17th Century.

The two versions exhibited at Ala Ponzone Picture Gallery date back to the moment when Orazio Gentileschi – probably the most precocious, intelligent and open-minded Caravaggesque painter – was enjoying a moment of enormous international fame. This fame increased in Paris, where he was called to the court of Maria de’ Medici, and then it was amplified in London where he was invited by George Villiers, first duke of  Buckingham.

The opportunity to see the two paintings simultaneously allows to analyze the iconographic theme of the Flight into Egypt and of the episodes connected to it, highlighting all the theological and iconographic aspects of the Stories of Jesus' Childhood throughout the centuries, starting from the Middle Ages.
In the exhibition, the two paintings by Orazio Gentileschi are accompanied by a very precise selection of ivory objects, sculptures, miniatures, paintings and engravings about this theme in its different iconographic nuances.

The tale of "The Flight into Egypt" recounted only in the Gospel of Matthew, is one of the most beloved by the artists and by their purchasers. An interest that then led to the production of a fruitful literature and spurred the production of an extraordinary series of paintings, inspired not only by the short description in the Gospel of Matthew but, more specifically, by the New Testament Apocrypha.