Bracco is Culture Fifty acts of corporate patronage BRACCO IS CULTURE Bracco is Culture Fifty acts of corporate patronage CDI – Italian Diagnostics Center Milan, 6 December 2017 – 30 April 2018 Exhibition and catalogue by Businesses today are less and less the insulated, mere places D’Andrea, a Friulian artist and master of Symbolism, active Bracco Foundation of production they once were. These days companies are also in Milan in the period between the two World Wars. Image & Communication Direction Bracco Group actively engaged in society. Italian family-run businesses This is surely the spark of a passion which arose from a simple especially, large and small, are strongly connected to the and humane deed; something that then flourished in the Graphic Design territories where they set down their roots, and care about successive generations of the Bracco family, a dynasty of Dario Zannier being agents of the protection and promotion of our cultural entrepreneurs devoted to beauty and social responsibility, Copyright 2017 – Bracco Foundation and artistic patrimony. My family has made a creed out of presently coming into its fourth generation with Fulvio Renoldi supporting culture. We have always felt a strong need to give Bracco. back to the communities in which we operate, a part of what After Elio, this love of culture was first passed down to his we have received as a company. son, Fulvio Bracco, who in 1934 began his career in the Diana Bracco company and transformed it, year after year, into a company with a strong relationship with its national territory, writing an important page in the history of Italian industrial development. This book recounts not so much the story of a family, nor that An enlightened businessman, a music enthusiast, a La Scala of a global business leader in the technologically advanced devotee, and a creator of scholarships for young, deserving sector of imaging diagnostics, but rather the value of a candidates, Fulvio Bracco involved his wife Anita and their patronage that could be defined as Ambrosian in the most daughters Diana, Adriana and Gemma in this passion for universal sense of the term. Expressing and encouraging philanthropy which would stay with him all his life; so much talent to grow through areas such as Music, Painting, so that Gemma Bracco Baratta is today a poet with various Architecture, Archeology, Theater, Dance, Literature and noteworthy publications to her name. And Diana Bracco, the others means acting as the bearers of a constructive message current President and CEO of the Group, has turned these in all respects. principles into a life’s purpose and a concrete philanthropic Elio Bracco, founder in 1927 of the still family-owned practice. company, belongs to these ranks, and over the course of his In order to pass on these values to new generations, in life had always dedicated his attention to culture and social 2010 she created the Bracco Foundation, an organization commitment. Among his numerous vicissitudes – as irredentist that has realized a great number of international projects in patriot initially caught up in the Austro-Hungarian repression three macro areas – Art, Social, Science – with a particular during the First World War, or his subsequent exile from Istria focus on young talents and women. In her fifty years at the - emerges an episode that warrants telling because it is truly company, being celebrated at the same time as the Group’s emblematic. In 1942, despite the trying times, Elio Bracco, an 90th anniversary, Diana Bracco has time and again proven her art enthusiast, decided to save the entire works of Angiolo sensibility and the fact that “Bracco is culture.” Moreno Gentili Contents 8 The Quirinal Palace: restoration 34 When Italian music inspires the world 58 Constantine, Helena and religious tolerance 84 Excellence on display: the La Scala Theater of the Pope Alexander VII Chigi Gallery Academy’s young talents 36 Water in Mike Goldwater’s shots 60 Chailly and Muti for science 10 Lorin Maazel at the Italian Embassy 86 The Exedra of Palazzo Arese Borromeo in the United States 38 The rediscovery of Janello Torriani 62 The Etruscans and the hereafter in Cesano Maderno with masterpieces and virtual reality 12 Giuseppe Garibaldi’s letters 40 Leonardo da Vinci and the 88 “The rule of talent”. to the workers of Milan “Codex on the Flight of Birds” 64 “Search Me”: a film to promote the culture An exhibit on Italian know-how of scientific research among young people 14 Riccardo Muti’s return to the La Scala Theater 42 “Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and the Renaissance 90 “Cinderella” and the magic of the ballet of Venetian painting” 66 “Musical Evenings” 16 The 150th anniversary 92 “Logbook”: Torviscosa’s rebirth of the Museum of Natural History 44 Two concerts for the Year of Italian Culture 68 “Folli50.0”: a wellspring of creativity in the United States in the heart of Lambrate 94 Remembering a great factory-town 18 The Pollaiolo Ladies at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum 46 From the Brera Art Gallery to the Metropolitan 70 A “Vortex” against ocean pollution 96 From Scopinich to Sandri, 20 “Living Fountains”, from North to South Museum: The consecration of Fra Carnevale at the side of contemporary art 72 “Entre Siempre y Jamás” at the Venice Biennale 22 Giorgio Strehler: “A man for Milan, 48 Outstanding music in Vienna 98 Angiolo D’Andrea: a master between Symbolism a theater for Europe” 74 The restoration of the Guastalla Gardens and the 20th Century 50 “Lions and bulls from ancient Persia to Aquileia” 24 Lovers, victims and fallen women 76 Heal the body, nourish the mind 100 Puccini’s Prima Donnas 52 In São Paulo, between music 26 “Giuseppe Verdi, the Man, the Work, the Myth” and social responsibility 78 The enchantment of Science 102 “The Beauty of Imaging” in Felice Frankel’s photographs at the Milan Triennale Museum 28 “Venice. Canaletto and his rivals” 54 Alongside the Lombard journalists at Palazzo Serbelloni 80 The triumphant tours of the La Scala 104 30 years of “Poesia” 30 The La Scala Philharmonic Philharmonic between America and Asia at the Universal Exposition in China 56 Joseph in the tapestries of Pontormo 106 A journey “Inside Caravaggio” and Bronzino 82 X-rays reveal the magic of shells 32 Art Masterpieces: the “pride” of the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2015 6 7 ROME 2007 | 2011 The Quirinal Palace: restoration of the Pope Alexander VII Chigi Gallery For the first time a private partner is received by the Presidency of the Republic The restoration of the Pope Alexander VII Chigi Gallery at the Quirinal Palace brought one of the most extraordinary treasures of the Italian historic-artistic patrimony back to its original splendor; a pictorial recovery project in a place that is a cornerstone of Italy’s institutional history. Indeed, the Pope Chigi Gal- lery is located inside the official residence of the President of the Republic and the restoration has highlighted all of the unique characteristics of the time, namely the evocative power of the seventeenth-century wall decoration and their original luminosity thanks to the reopening of the windows looking onto the court of honor. The three halls of the Sista Wing at the Quirinal – the Yellow Hall, the Augustus Hall and the Hall of the Ambassadors – were historically part of one single, large gallery seventy meters long, painted by a group of artists under Pietro da Cortona and commissioned by Pope Alexander VII Chigi. The President of the Republic himself, Giorgio Napolitano, regarding the proj- ect wrote: “Following a ten-year restoration of the paintings made between 1655 and 1656 by Pietro da Cortona and his disciples in the Alexander VII Chigi Gallery, the President of the Republic returns a pure jewel of Roman Baroque to the Italian and world heritage. This restoration is the result of an exemplary collaboration between the Secretariat General of the President of the Republic, the Superintendent for the Polo Museale of the City of Rome and the Bracco Foundation, which financed the final part of the works in the Hall of the Am- bassadors. Thanks to the combined efforts of these institutions and a private Foundation, the Quirinal, the home of all Italians, rediscovers one of the most glorious pages in its centuries-old history.” View of the eastern wall decoration of the Hall of the Ambassadors, Quirinal Palace 8 9 WASHINGTON 17.III.2011 Lorin Maazel at the Italian Embassy in the United States An extraordinary concert for the 150th anniversary of Italian Unification in Washington Washington is a special city and, for many, it even represents the capital of the West. With the aim of promoting the power of Italian talent in art and music also in the United States, the Bracco Foundation sponsored an important concert in 2011 to launch the commencement of official celebrations for the 150th anniver- sary of Italian Unification in the United States. For this celebratory event, the Bracco Foundation worked together with the Ital- ian Embassy as an institutional partner, lending its contribution in organizing this symphony concert conducted by Maestro Lorin Maazel, with the Petruzzelli Foundation Orchestra of Bari. On the program were the best pages of Rossini, Verdi, Puccini and Respighi. The event was held at the Italian Embassy in the USA and was attended by prestigious figures from American and international institutions. The concert belonged to a series of initiatives titled: “La dolce DC” (Sweet DC), which the American capital dedicated to our country throughout 2011; a varied program that involved all of the arts inspired by the Italian “Dolce Vita”, which still today makes the entire world dream. This distinguished event joined a long history of collaboration between Bracco and Washington, which began in 2006 with an exhibition on Giorgione, Bellini and Titian held at the National Gallery of Art and was followed in 2011 by the Venetian Vedutism exhibit, to which we dedicate specific pages in this book.