The Municipality of Corinaldo presents the exhibition “Wonderful
in Marche: works and masterpieces, grafts and hybridisations, between public and private in the age of Ridolfi” edited by Andrea Bruciati, hosted by Civic Art Collection “Claudio Ridolfi” until 3 May 2026 with the aim of telling, through one of the prominent artists – Claudio Ridolfi – who worked in the municipality of Corinaldo, the happy historical period between the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the following century of an area of the Marche province considered marginal, but which is characterized by a precise and significant cultural morphology. Claudio Ridolfi (Verona ca. 1570 – Corinaldo 1644) was the last court painter in Urbino and proved to be very active and prolific throughout the Marche in the first half of the 1600s. Of considerable interest is the development and consolidation of a cultural matrix of Venetian ancestry, which remains alive and dynamic thanks to the constant dialogue with Verona, its city of origin, whose influence remains as an identity and intellectual reference. This persistence does not appear as a simple legacy, but rather as an active element capable of nourishing a fertile ground of exchanges, relationships and
contaminations. precisely at the moment in which the Venetian influences which had permeated a large part of the pictorial culture of the area since the fourteenth century gave way to the new Bolognese and Roman influences which had gained greater influence in the evolution of painting in the Marche.
In this context, Claudio Ridolfi’s contribution stands as the last, but no less important, piece 
of a broader cultural fabric and, 30 years after the last exhibition dedicated to him in 1994, today it is possible to give a renewed scientific reading of a painter defined as “transitional” who however is characterized by a high expressive quality combined with a feeling that reflects the counter-reformist spirit of the time.
The exhibition “Mirabilia Marche: works and masterpieces, grafts and
bridations, between public and private in the age of Claudio Ridolfi“, he explains forty worksputting Ridolfi’s paintings – preserved in Corinaldo at the Civic Art Collection named after him and in the churches of the city – into dialogue with other works from private collections, referring to an artistic-cultural context close to Ridolfi and to authors who refer to the time frame of the collection. The Civic Art Collection, therefore, serves only as the incipit of a journey that also exhibits the works of the Veronese artist still preserved in ecclesiastical structures in the area, highlighting the richness of a territory where beauty is widespread. Alongside them in the exhibition are works that integrate the themes of sacred subjects, dear to Ridolfi, such as landscape, myth and portrait through canvases and works on paper by authors from workshops active in the period, such as those of Bologna, Rome and Veneto. Among the many works never exhibited to the public, it stands out as being of particular interest a new canvas with Madonna, child and saints which is included in the corpus of the Corinaldese master, and then a moving portrait of Elisabetta Sirani, a nocturnal scene in Gethsemane in 
Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto, and a pre-romantic landscape by Rosa da Tivoli. The curator Andrea Bruciati says: «“Mirabilia Marche” is not configured merely as the illustration of a temporary exhibition, but is proposed as a critical and planning device aimed at reconsidering, in current and prospective terms, the role and configuration of the contemporary museographic space. In this perspective, the initiative aims to restore centrality and visibility to an artistic figure of significant relevance for the cultural history of the area, such as Claudio Ridolfi, by inserting him into a broader process of historiographical revaluation and reactivation of the local cultural heritage. The operation, although inscribed within a defined time frame, qualifies as a strategic opportunity to trigger a broader reflection on exhibition models and the function of places of culture in the contemporary world. It aims to regenerate the narrative methods through which the meaning of the museum space is constructed, contributing to the strengthening and diffusion of the paradigm of the so-called “widespread museum” – a peculiar and structuring dimension of the Italian cultural landscape – which finds one of its distinctive features in historical stratification, polycentricity and proximity to the territories. In this sense, Mirabilia Marche presents itself as a methodological and operational laboratory, capable of experimenting with integrated forms of valorisation, based on the interaction between tangible and intangible heritage, between permanent collections and temporary practices, between memory and innovation“.
Thus, much more than an exhibition was created, almost a re-arrangement of the rooms of the Pinacoteca in the desire to enhance the private collecting that characterizes these territories, apparently distant from today’s cultural debate, and the historical contribution of an artist such as Claudio Ridolfi to whom an exhibition has not been dedicated for thirty years.
Carlo Franza