Exhibition | Grezler’s Choices: Work from the ITAS Collection
Now on view at the Castello del Buonconsiglio:
Grezler’s Choices: Work from the ITAS Collection, 1500–1900
Le scelte di Grezler: Opere antiche della collezione Itas al Castello del Buonconsiglio
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento, 5 December 2015 — 1 May 2016
Bernardino Nocchi (previously attributed to Pompeo Batoni), Vulcan Delivering the Weapons of Aeneas to Venus, second half of the eighteenth century
Claudio Grezler, well known in Trento as having been president for over twenty years of the insurance company ITAS (Istituto Trentino Alto Adige per Assicurazioni), was also distinguished as a passionate art-lover. Over the years, this passion translated itself in the accumulation of a rich and varied personal collection of paintings. For the most part consisting of pictures by Italian and Flemish artists from the 1500s to the 1800s, his collection included outstanding works along the theme of the sacred and profane, of portraits, battles, and landscapes. By his own wish, his collection was merged with that of ITAS on his death and, in 1981, was exhibited in the prestigious setting of Buonconsiglio Castle. Claudio Grezler expressly wished that his collection, built up “with time, effort and sacrifice” should not be divided up and should instead become a public heritage.
Today, in gathering together this important patrimony, the Buonconsiglio Castle museum and ITAS have worked in harmonious synergy to pay homage to this important figure through a new initiative in appreciation of his collection. After assiduous research and a painstaking restoration process, the paintings are presented to the public in an exhibition that is further enriched by other exquisite works that Grezler, during his time as president, had added to the insurance company’s own collection.
Among the works exhibited are many that have only now, thanks to research conducted especially for this occasion, emerged from anonymity and been associated with their legitimate authors. We can, for instance, now admire Antonio Giuseppe Sartori’s baroque relief featuring the figure of Saint Florian, the patron saint of fire-fighters which is ideally suited to the insurance activities of ITAS. Present, too, is a delicate representation of Holy Conversation attributed to Nicolò de Barbari, alongside a sumptuous painting by Antonio Marini and an equally vivacious Bacchanalia from the Flemish school.
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