An Alfa Romeo as a work of art that resists fashions and an expression of Italian taste and creativity. And an art exhibition entitled “An Italian Creation” that accompanies the international presentation of the new Giulia, an expression of Alfa Romeo’s own creativity and traditions. Visitors to the Museo Storico Alfa Romeo in Arese – due to reopen to the public on the 30th of June after major rebuilding and refurbishment – may admire, in a room in the Administration Centre, a painting by Antonello da Messina and a number of precious illuminated manuscripts from the 15th Century. Works that come from two Turinese cultural institutions, Palazzo Madama and the Biblioteca Reale, and pay tribute to the city of Milan where 105 years ago one of the most famous marques in automotive history was founded.
Portrait of a Man by Antonello da Messina (1430-1479) is one of the most celebrated works in the history of art and represents the fusion of the spatial innovations of Italian renaissance painting and the marvels of nature expressed in northern culture. The subject is a man set diagonally in space, the head rotated slightly while the gaze follows the observer with an enigmatic smile and an intense, almost challenging expression that lends allure and mystery to the panel. Created in 1476, the small painting (37.4x29.5 cm), formerly in the Trivulzio Collection in Milan, is a masterpiece that still surprises today with the modernity of its idiom and the profundity of its execution. Man is at the centre of everything, with his artistic genius and his innovative force. And it was for precisely this quality that the painting was chosen to accompany the debut of the Alfa Romeo Giulia, the highest expression of the “mechanics of emotion”, which encapsulates over a century of Italian stylistic and technological excellence. A true work of art in movement” with which the marque returns as an ambassador of Italy’s finest style and creative spirit.
With the authorisation of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, the exception exhibition in Arese also boasts three precious illuminated manuscripts associated with the Visconti and Sforza families and loaned by the Biblioteca Reale in Turin: In Rhetoricam ad Herennium commentaria by Francesco Filelfo (1467), the Libro d’ore secondo l’uso di Roma (15th Century) and the Ufficio della Croce e dello Spirito Santo (1490-1505).
The three 15th Century manuscripts, illuminated with fine miniatures, are particularly significant in that they reproduce the emblem of the Viscontis, the Dukes of Milan, that undulating serpent that features in the Alfa Romeo badge, the so-called biscione. Legend
has it that the symbol represents the suppression by Umberto Visconti of the ferocious dragon Tarantasio that terrorized the people of Milan. Historically, the symbol dates back to the Second Crusade, during Ottone Visconti defeated the Saracen Voluce whose emblem was a serpent devouring a man.
