Searching, interpreting and exhibiting cultural, material and immaterial heritage with the participation of the community is one of the essential roles of a museum. And more than ever of a civic museum. On these bases Palazzo Madama – Civic Museum of Ancient Art of Turin dedicates a great exhibition to an extraordinary, but still little known, history of Piedmontese excellence.
On the occasion of the celebration of the 270 years since the birth of Count Ignazio Alessandro Cozio of Salabue, the spaces of the medieval court host an exhibition organized together with the Association Il Salabue and curated by Giovanni Accornero and Duane Rosengard, who intends to promote and spread to the general public the figure of this singular Piedmontese protagonist, born in Casale Monferrato on March 14, 1755. Count Cozio was the most important of collectors and enthusiasts of arched tools of the past, following later as the first scholar capable of understanding the value of Italian classical violinie – in particular the Cremonese one – and the importance of the secrets of “knowing how to do with hands”, a heritage that was already gradually disappearing at the time. Unlike other collectors of the time, moved by purely aesthetic principles, Cozio distinguished himself for a conscious and systematic approach, inspired by criteria of historical and scientific research. The Count did not limit himself, in fact, to collect precious tools: he investigated its origin, studied its construction characteristics, compared luthier schools, noted observations on the techniques of the authors, contributing to the definition of a knowledge that anticipates, in some way, the modern organological approach.
The exhibition develops through the fascinating, adventurous and in some ways incredibly “modern” biography of the noble and forward -looking collector, through the selection of 20 arched tools, between violins and violets of exceptional historical relevance, of which 12 belonged to Count Cozio and many of whom exposed for the first time to the public.
The tools come, for the most part, from private collections and institutions, therefore difficult to access to the public, supported by other tools, not only in arc, which enrich the corpus Main of the works on display, offering the visitor a wider perspective on the historical, cultural and musical context of the time.
The exhibition. For the first time in history Two important violins belonging to the virtuosos of the Royal Theater arrive in Turin: the violin Antonio Stradivari built in Cremona in 1718 (which Cozio described in his correspondence) belonged to Giovanni Battista Viotti and the violin Giuseppe Guarneri “del Gesù”, created in Cremona in 1736, which belonged to Gaetano Pugnani. Both are presented with the respective original custodies and accompanied by the portraits of the two famous violinists. Among these stands out the extraordinary portrait of Viotti performed by the well -known French portraitist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, considered dispersed in the early twentieth century and recently reappeared on the antiquarian market, for this reason exposed for the first time to the public.
The most significant section of the exhibition is dedicated to the exhibition of Twelve tools belonging to Count Cozio: six violins and two Violets of Guadagnini made between 1773 and 1776, the violin “Ames” by Antonio Stradivari (1734) and the famous “Salabue” of his son Francesco (1742), a violin by Nicolò Amati (1668) belonged to Carlo Francesco Cozio, father of the Count, and inherited from him, and finally the magnificent violin of Carlo Bergonzi, Known today as “Cozio-Tarisio”, made in Cremona in 1733, the tool preferred by the Count among the five specimens of Bergonzi in his possession.
Two violins of the Celoniato brothers (Giovanni Francesco and Giovanni Giuseppe), four violins of Chiaffredo Cappa, a violet of Giacomo Rivolta, three mandolins and a guitar made by the children of Guadagnini: Giuseppe, Carlo and Andrea, complete the exhibition.
The exhibition itinerary is enriched by an interactive 3D installation entitled “The shape of the sound”, which allows visitors to explore in detail every component of the famous “Salabue-Berta” violin, built by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini in Turin in 1774 and present on display. Thanks to the organological annotations drawn up by Cozio himself, it will be possible to enter the heart of historical violinie and fully understand the technical characteristics of this iconic tool.
Also on display objects and tools from the “Stradivarian Fund” and original archive documents from the “Carteggio Cozio” who will deepen little known aspects of the figure of the Piedmontese nobleman and the musical environment in which he lived and developed his passion for arched tools.
The count Cozio of Salabue
Cozio’s activity represents one of the first cases in which collecting has taken on a high cultural dimension, based on selection and conservation criteria, consistent with a historically informed and scientifically oriented vision. His passion, engaging EE intense, was lived and developed in parallel with a frenetic activity of commercial arc tools, inseparably linked to a dense network of relationships with merchants, musicians, scholars and luthiers of the time, among the latter, mainly, Giovanni Battista Guadagnini whose patron was. To have a clear dimension of the stature and the importance of this character, it is emblematic the fact that in his collection, among the numerous violins of Antonio Stradivari, the famous and legendary “Messiah” was present. Made in Cremona in 1716, this extraordinary tool, now kept at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, is still considered one of the most famous and better preserved masterpieces of the great Cremonese master.
From an organological point of view, Cozio proved to be an authentic visionary for the time. In 1775, at the age of twenty, he bought from Paolo Stradivari, son of Antonio, the entire bottom of the shop: an invaluable value that included the forms, tools, cartoons and preparatory designs used by Stradivari to build his tools. This precious heritage of information proved to be indispensable for his studies, helping to preserve a fundamental part of the historical memory of the Cremonese Lutaria tradition. Thanks to the foresight of Count Cozio, this heritage is now kept at the Cremona violin museum.
Carlo Franza