Exhibitions, at the Bper Gallery in Modena ‘Virtue and grace’, saints and seductresses in seventeenth-century painting

Virtue and grace is part of the research and dissemination process promoted by La Galleria BPER: a project that aims to make heritage not only visible, but alive, capable of communicating with the present and generating knowledge and awareness through the language of art. The Modena headquarters of La Galleria confirms itself as a driving force for research, care and exhibition planning: a space in which culture translates into encounters, knowledge and relationships. It also represents one of the pillars of the BPER Cultural Poles, a widespread heritage system that expresses the cultural governance of the Group through a model capable of networking historical locations, collections and skills, transforming the Bank’s heritage into an accessible public good.

Divided into five thematic nuclei, the works of Baroque masters investigate the female figure, through devotion, myth, power and feeling. The section ‘Saints, virgins and martyrs’ opens the itinerary, highlighting the role of women as a privileged vehicle of spirituality and introspection. From the intense representations of the Magdalene – a paradigmatic figure of the Counter-Reformation, as a redeemed sinner of seductive beauty – to the holy martyrs such as Saint Agatha portrayed by Guido Cagnacci, Baroque painting translates religious pathos into images of strong emotional impact, in which beauty and sensuality are intertwined with profound devotional meanings. Biblical episodes such as ‘Susanna and the old men’ or the figure of the prophetess Anna confirm the centrality of women as a moral and faith model. With ‘Dangerous Passions’ the journey moves to the terrain of myth and biblical narration, between love, deception and transformation. Ovidian Metamorphoses and the stories of the Old Testament offer an inexhaustible repertoire of episodes in which female beauty becomes both a cause of desire and an object of oppression, as in the Rape of Europa, in the story of Diana and Callisto, or in Jacob meets Rachel at the Grechetto well.

The ‘Seductresses and Heroines’ section brings to the stage strong and ambivalent protagonists, capable of embodying virtue and transgression. Judith beheading the tyrant Holofernes, Lucretia – in the canvas by Ercole Setti in the Civic Museum of Art of Modena – and the lustful Semiramis dominate the baroque scene with an intense dramatic charge, becoming complex symbols of justice, revenge and self-determination. In ‘The Darts of Love’, the feeling of love is revealed in its ambiguity, oscillating between passion and redemption. Eros, with its inexorable arrows, becomes a metaphor of a desire that can lead both to perdition and to salvation, while the great literary narratives return female figures suspended between seduction, heroism and conversion, as in the paintings Rinaldo and Armida by Alessandro Tiarini and Tancredi baptises Clorinda by Bartolomeo Manfredi. The itinerary ends with ‘The Allegory’, a perfect synthesis of baroque culture, where the female figure becomes the embodiment of abstract concepts and moral virtues. Through spectacular images rich in symbols, such as the Allegory of Abundance by Valerio Castello – from the BPER Collection in Genoa -, art becomes an instrument of wonder and reflection, capable of translating complex ideas into seductive visual forms, suspended between the celebration of beauty and a warning about the fleeting nature of existence.

The exhibition is accompanied by the publication of a catalog published by Sagep, containing essays by Lucia Peruzzi and Elena Fumagalli. The volume is available at the exhibition with a minimum contribution starting from 8 euros and is once again a driving force for solidarity: the funds raised will in fact be donated to the Fondazione Vita Independent Onlus of Modena, which since 2008 has been active with projects aimed at improving the quality of life of people with disabilities and increasing their housing autonomy, guaranteeing tools, experiences, specialized and professional figures capable of accompanying them towards effective, stable and safe independence.

To allow an increasingly wider audience to enjoy its exhibition projects, the BPER Gallery presents, also in this exhibition, two engravings produced in collaboration with the Francesco Cavazza Institute for the Blind of Bologna and created with the PIAF (Minolta) technique, which reproduce the works: The Rape of Europa by Domenico Piola and Rinaldo and Armida by Alessandro Tiarini. Again with this objective, the collaboration with the Collegio San Carlo Foundation was renewed, and in particular with the student group that animates Radio FSC-Unimore, for the creation of an audio guide accessible via QR code dedicated to the story of the exhibition. There is also a program of guided tours and educational tours, designed in collaboration with Civita Mostre, designed for schools of all levels and structured by age group, as well as opportunities to experience the exhibition spaces with initiatives designed to bring contemporary languages ​​into dialogue.

The public program that accompanies the exhibition broadens and deepens the themes of the exhibition itinerary, offering opportunities for meeting and participation aimed at different audiences. On Saturday 11 April at 5pm, from the collaboration between the Civic Museum of Modena and the BPER Gallery, a cultural itinerary is born with a visit to the exhibitions Virtue and Grace and Consonances, together with the curator Lucia Peruzzi. The route winds through the protagonists of seventeenth-century painting and opens up to a dialogue between visual arts, fashion and baroque music, offering an interdisciplinary reading of the period. The initiative is free, booking is recommended. On April 22, as part of the ARTalk cycle, a meeting dedicated to the relationship between art and well-being explores the regenerative power of cultural practices. Annalisa Banzi, researcher at CESPEB at the University of Milan-Bicocca, presents the results of the ASBA project, which highlight how guided museum experiences can contribute to the reduction of anxiety and stress. Alongside the scientific dimension, the curator Giovanna Zabotti talks about the experience of the Contenuti per cura exhibition (Palazzo Merulana, Rome), highlighting the role of art as a space for attention, listening and transformation.

Virtue and Grace is part of the Bank’s cultural programming as a significant stage in a process aimed at consolidating the role of the BPER Gallery in the modern and contemporary art system. Through exhibitions, meetings and research projects, the BPER Gallery strengthens its presence in the national cultural panorama, promoting a vision in which the valorization of heritage is intertwined with the production of content and with the activation of relationships with institutions, scholars and the public. In this context, the Modena exhibition project contributes to defining a model of cultural intervention capable of combining scientific quality, accessibility and openness to dialogue.