Poor Art Museum

The Poor Art Museum in Sogliano al Rubicone, in the province of Forlì-Cesena, was established in the 2000s within the fascinating setting of the eighteenth-century Palazzo Ripa-Marcosanti.There are over a thousand artistic properties: it is all art erroneously defined as secondary, and which at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries occupied the representation of postcards as well as newspapers that at that time dealt with art.The chromolithography printing (chromocolor, lithopietra, grafiastampa), represented a beauty that was in the dreams of all social groups. It is not surprising that in a very simple cardboard - practically a postcard - a magnificent drawing of Mucha, Klimt, Kiernerk, Grasset, Dudovich, Vucetich, Cambellotti, Kirkner and many others is depicted.Another sector of the Museum of Arte Povera is that of artfully packed books: here they can admire facsimiles. The public is delighted by the beauty and uniqueness of these two art volumes whose cover is a piece of carved Carrara marble. Here one can tell the work of Canova, in the other that of Michelangelo.Unlike most international museums, the Arte Povera museum allows the visitor to consult the documents on display in white gloves. An emotional journey back in time under the expert guidance of Roberto Parenti, the main soul who has given identity - with works of art he owns - to this fairytale dream within the walls of a palace, which preserves priceless masterpieces of art international.On one occasion, the emeritus director of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci, was struck by the history of the place and his works, defining the collection of the Museum of Arte Povera "a small Malatesta Library".Let yourself be enveloped by this atypical Romagna adventure with a visit to the Museo d'Arte Povera, where you can admire masterpieces that have narrated artistic movements such as Liberty, Art Nouveau, Futurism and Art Deco for images.

France, 1865. The historic rue de Sèvres, one of the oldest Parisian streets, is a lively and everlasting merry-go-round of passers-by, a shouting crowd directed at a fast pace towards the Au Bon Marchè, the historic department store owned by the good old Aristide Boucicaut. A composite clientele, of course, but, above all on Thursday, a battalion of corpulent housewives with offspring emerge. Not a random day on Thursday, given that, at the time, the young students could enjoy an afternoon of vacation from the school desks. It is precisely on one of these Parisian Thursdays of 1865 that the modern history of figurines had its beginning. It is among the shelves full of goods from the Au Bon Marchè warehouses that the typical expression Celò, I miss, may have been pronounced for the first time. Collectibles were born. The idea of ​​the shrewd Boucicaut, a corpulent merchant in one piece, was in fact somewhat simple in his genius: increase visits to his warehouses by leveraging on that group of customers, the children, more corruptible. Every Thursday afternoon, any purchase was accompanied by the gift of a colored figurine, with the promise of adding a new one the following week. Success. Boucicant's example immediately found a large group of imitators, among which, to emerge, the Liebig's extract of meat company, a company specialized in the trade of canned meat that immediately gave the most famous and long-lived collection of stickers in history such. Born in 1872 and ended in 1975, it can count the beauty of eleven thousand published subjects, with some series listed today at more than decent prices. Elevated. It's Italy? Despite some haggard specimens exported from France and Germany as early as the end of the nineteenth century, it will take a few decades to witness the explosion of the phenomenon. Only in 1937, Italy would in fact be crossed by a real figurine obsession. The hunt for Ferocious Saladin could be said to have begun."The satire contained in this kind of musical grotesque has now lost most of its relevance, following the equalitarian dispositions on the figurines and therefore has a historical flavor. But the memory of the saladinic fever that crossed the peninsula a year ago is still like this I live that those who were affected, will not fail to taste the references to the epidemic with which the film is full "So wrote the journalist Sandro De Feo in his commentary on Il Feroce Saladino, the '37 film shot by Mario Bonnard and with Angelo Musco in the lead role. A grotesque comedy about the emptiness of success and the inevitable fading of fame and youth. Forced to quit the role of artist, the illusionist Pompeo Darly finds himself selling chocolate, candy during those theatrical performances that had once seen him in the guise of undisputed sovereign. In the chocolate packs sold by him, however, some examples of Ferocious Saladin come out, giving way to the abandonment of any inhibitory brake by the public present. Not a mere cinematographic fantasy, but pure truth, a fragment of a life really lived ... As pointed out by De Feo, Italy, in that 1937, had been really crossed by a full-scale figurine hunt ... A collector's frenzy that would have been difficult never again unleashed. The epic of Ferocious Saladin began with the radio program I Quattro Moschettieri. Written by Aldo Spagnoli, the broadcast was nothing more than a radio play, sung and recited, committed to bringing on stage a rather original version of The Three Musketeers of Dumas. Original because stuffed, with a clear comic intent, with an avalanche of other characters who had never had anything to do with the great classic of literature: from Harlequin to Stanlio and Olio, from Pierino to Friend Giorgio. The first example of a sponsored program, The Four Musketeers had had the support of Buitoni-Perugina, a large Italian food company that had tied a competition based on the collection of a hundred stickers distributed within its product packs. Collected all one hundred, sent to the appropriate album, the user could then choose four articles as a gift:- An illustrated book, The Four Musketeers, based on the adventures of the radio program of the same name.- A kilo of Perugina cocoa.- A box of chocolates, almonds or Perugina candies.- An assorted pack of Buitoni specialties (for pasta lovers, of course).But the offer did not end here. Just for nothing. With a hundred and fifty complete albums, the prize would have gone far beyond the simple food package. No more candies, chocolate and spaghetti, but a Mickey Mouse in rubber and sheet metal, that model of Fiat 500 made its debut in dealerships just the year before, the '36, and immediately became part of every Italian's dream. The legend would have delivered about two hundred of them. And the Ferocious Saladin? Due to a delay in the delivery of the sketches by Angelo Bioletto, designer of the entire series, only a few copies of the figurine had been printed. Finding the Ferocious Saladin thus became more unique than rare ... So rare and sought after that the police forces had even found themselves forced to hunt down real counterfeiters supported by compliant printers. No longer counterfeiters of banknotes, but of stickers ... The Buitoni-Perugina collection had enjoyed such vast success that its stickers had even been used in some cases as a bargaining chip for normal daily shopping ... Another look at the Bonnard film, and everything now seems more sensible. It was the Italy of Ferocious Saladin.While in '37, in response to the chaos accrued following the rarity of the Ferocious Saladin, the Ministry of Corporations found itself forced to promulgate a special law that required to print the same number of copies for any other possible future competition, The four musketeers exhaled the last breath of life. It was March. In fact, the fascist regime seemed no more than the idea of ​​enduring that radio transmission which, in his opinion, was so little nationalist and contrary to the spirit of autarky, inclined as it was to bring on stage all that parade of characters who went to fetch beyond the Alps , with an eye to those musketeers literary cornerstone of a France that had just voted (and wanted) the economic sanctions against an Italy by the international community just punished for its expansionism in Ethiopia.The hunt for Ferocious Saladin, with its folkloristic parables of an all-Italian madness, is one of the last regurgitations of carefree and superficial vitality of a people who, after three years, will be violently pushed into the arms of a bloody and useless war . The Ferocious Saladin will really have something to unsheathe the saber.Article courtesy of "Casa del Cappellaio Matto"

It is an ancient proverb of the Venetian peasant tradition and reaffirms the ancestral Anglo-Saxon belief that in mid-February the birds chose their partner to nest together ... And since February 14 is the day that marks the middle of that month, and the liturgy Christian assigned that day to the cult of Valentine's Day, the saint in question found himself ex officio, loving protector of lovers without a shot being hurt. The festival that celebrates love is equally ancient and has its roots in the times of imperial Romanity, in the Lupercalia: the miracle ceremonies of the spring transferred to female fertility therefore to love, which were celebrated on February 15th and were originally dedicated to Pan, the shepherd god and the Luperco faun.The ceremonies of the Lupercalia implied a special one dedicated to Juno consisting of drawing lots of names of pueri and puellae designated to form pairs that would remain so for the following year, which according to the Roman calendar began in March. The couple would have exchanged pawns of love and he would have filled her with careful and loving protection throughout the year. At the end of the Middle Ages, Valentine's Day and his rite in love were already well established in England where there was a use among "lovers" to exchange gifts for the occasion which were obviously called valentines. At the court of Queen Elizabeth i of England (1558-1603) the valentines for the ladies were gifts above all of gloves and socks, still devoid of malicious connotations at that time and Valentine was called the more or less designated amorous suitor, who could give like valentine the promise ring. At the end of the eighteenth century, and more precisely around 1760, the expensive gifts for the Valentine's Day were gradually replaced by symbolic gifts, by loving letters and sonnets and by engraved, watercolored, carved sheets of canivet - the secularization of devotional holy pictures also carved in parchment - always artifacts and manuscripts.From these descend the valentines that have become very popular in England and Holland, set sail for America and for the English colonies, increasing the romantic feelings of the English-speaking populations, two centuries later, they would constitute the refined topic of a specialist paper collection. The golden age of their production and their spreading spans from the mid-nineteenth century until about the thirties of the twentieth century - especially in the United States later - following the evolution of the paper industry, of the figures in chromolithography, punches for openwork papers and when, in the nineties of the nineteenth century, the technique for the production of pop-up books was also developed - the publisher Schreiber in Germany was the first to publish, in 1887, Der Internationaler Circus, by Lothar Meggendorf - they spread like wildfire, fantastic pop up valentines, dishes when closed that open like a theater with up to five very ornate and colorful wings. The first local and secret distribution - the girls were at home and the young men left their tickets in the special box left outside the door - expanded exponentially when in 1840 the issue of the 1 penny stamp by the United Kingdom post office allowed the mass shipment of anonymous love messages in the days immediately preceding the fateful date. And still in the middle of the Victorian era, when the valentines reached the peak of popularity, kept in equally decorated envelopes they ceased to be the privileged heritage of lovers to become the loving thought to be sent, on February 14, to all members of the personal affective sphere. With parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, with more or less extended kinship, but also with the friend of the heart, the classmate, the girl next door, they exchanged, on Valentine's Day, to keep testimony of the circumstantial affection. In Italy the affectionate celebration of Valentine's Day, previously practically unknown, was imported in the second post-war period of the twentieth century when it came into connection with the American custom. Although there was no lack of ritual traditions and allusive procedures for declaring and exchanging loving feelings, there was then some publisher, of which Mondadori is remembered here who, from that time, published greeting cards for the love anniversary, following a formulation suitable for taste and to the design of the time and also inspired by the designs of Raymond Peynet (1908-1999), the last singer of lovers and the inventor of the amoureux filiforms that crossed the second half of the twentieth century as a couple. The museum preserves very rare and numerous Valentie, boasts about 300 copies without considering the three-dimensional love cards.

The Museum of Arte Povera preserves a precious collection of Almanacs, Lunari and perfumed calendars from not only from Italy but also from France and England. The characteristics of these objects are first of all the small size and a precious graphic and editorial layout. The oldest almanac preserved in the Museum dates back to 1666. PHOTOS The paper used and the cover are very poor, the printing of the decorations is very simple and only one color is used. Leafing through the almanac, it is easy to see how the printing characters are of different heights, testifying to a print made with the first movable characters. The decorations, made in woodcut or with the use of punches, are strictly monochrome.For the low cost and for the information they provided, they also entered the houses of the popular classes and, indeed, for many families they constituted the only relationship with the printed paper. The almanacs spread widely in the eighteenth century. The eighteenth-century almanac is the result of the evolution and fusion of recurring elements in three types of annual publications, very different in content and destination, born in previous centuries. First of all the prognosticon or iudicium: widespread from the Middle Ages to the 17th century it was intended for an educated public. Drafted initially in Latin and later in the vernacular, it contained the ephemeris tables, a speech on the dominant planet in the year, the conjunctions of the planets over the seasons with their consequences on climate and disease. The most interesting part concerned the predictions related to wars, natural disasters, the horoscope of the powerful: this was the field of the so-called "judicial astrology", ie the application of the interpretative categories of astrology to the field of politics. The kalendarium was instead intended for the clergy, written in Latin and published in the cities as bishopric for use by the whole diocese. Its structure, which remained stable from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, included the list of mobile parties, the four temples, the days when the wedding could not be celebrated, the calendar of the saints, the indication of the sacred texts and the colors of the vestments to wear for each celebration. The last type of publication that inspired the Almanac are the lunars that spread in the mid-sixteenth century, booklets that reported the calendar with the phases of the moon and the newspaper of the saints. The lunars were even simpler than the almanacs, they constituted an important phenomenon as they were perhaps the first printed books to have a popular diffusion. From the union of these different typologies was born the common almanac, which had its heyday in the eighteenth century. It contained some fixed sections: the newspaper of saints, religious holidays, lunations, the tables of sunrise, the list of fairs, the tariff of coins, the departure and arrival of the post office, the birth dates of the princes of Europe, the list of Archbishops, bishops and abbots and also provided advice on the cultivation of vegetable gardens and gardens. The rubrics were introduced by a general discourse on the year and seasons which contained forecasts on the climate and diseases formulated on the basis of natural astrology. Instead, the horoscope of the powerful and the forecasts of wars and catastrophes, severely opposed by the Church which condemned the belief that human events were determined by the stars, had disappeared. Instead, natural astrology continued to be tolerated, that is, the principle that stars could influence atmospheric events and diseases, even if in the century of the enlightenment the exponents of high culture opposed it as a source of lies and superstition. The almanac evolved in the second half of the eighteenth century when some printers decided to turn to a more demanding public who was not satisfied with simple predictions, but who expected information and news from the almanac. Thus were born the almanacs with compendium, which aimed at scientific popularization; they proposed real treatises published in installments year after year, printed in files that could later be separated from the almanac and tied together to form a small encyclopedia. They dealt with astronomy, meteorology, agronomy, medicine, geography, history. Leading exponents of Enlightenment thought turned their attention to this sector, not forgetting to compile almanacs which for their diffusion were one of the most effective tools for the education of civil society. However, there are almanacs dedicated to literature, to relaxing themes full of curious anecdotes, comedies of poetic compositions that exalted the qualities of beauty. During the nineteenth century there was a further specialization of the categories: if on the one hand the publication of naive continued almanacs with proverbs and recipes to try their luck at the lotto game, the model of the literary almanac with educational and pedagogical intent was consolidated. Together with almanacs and lunars, the calendarietto is born which represents the simplification of the peasant lunar of the nineteenth century, in turn derived from the wall almanacs. With the development of printing, calendars became annual and spread in two different forms: the pocket calendar-booklet and that of the wall sheet, the pocket calendars were composed of 16 to 20 pages. The most sought-after are those that have an irregular shape, but cropped, those with relief motifs on the cover or gold backgrounds. The pocket calendars are the most available, born as an advertising vehicle especially for perfumes, cosmetics and soaps, given in men's and women's barber shops and perfumeries. In the men's field, in fact, razors and safety razors did not yet exist and, moreover, current fashion was linked to characters with flowing mustaches and beards, so the only way to keep them in order and to shave was to attend the barber . The "salon" became, therefore, a real place of social contact in which relationships and business were tightened, chatters and confidences were exchanged and the managers were therefore particularly interested in keeping the customers to whom, at the end of the year, they gave these little ones booklets - with their own advertising - to be kept in the wallet. Their practical usefulness was linked to the opportunity to always have a calendar at hand that would allow you to know immediately which holidays and working days were in a society now increasingly active in trade. Being mostly intended for a male audience, a constant presence is that of the "little women", first as an exclusively decorative and subsequently erotic fact. An interesting fact of costume, therefore, from which one can document history, customs and habits, not least of which is women's fashion. The main companies in the sector that used calendars are Migone, Bertelli, Cella and Sirio perfumery, many then those in the confectionery sector and finally a large number of "salons" created ad hoc calendars for their customers. A particular case is that of Bemporad and Son of Florence who obviously did not produce perfumes. The themes treated in the calendars have been innumerable, the R. Parenti Collection preserves a large number of specimens with different themes and above all with more or less rich finishes. It starts with calendars with a regular structure with calendars with punched and perforated covers, real objects of art craftsmanship. One of the predominant themes is female charm and beauty followed by calendars dedicated to important historical events, sports, great opera works to the great masters of art and music to the great colonial enterprises to wars to the stars of cinema. The other great sector is that of accordion calendars, that is, made up of a cover from which the pages full of images flow in sequence and unfold. Among the rarest calendars kept at the Museum, those with a star, fan or palette shape, dated 1902 1903, are worth mentioning. A separate sector is that concerning the half-yearly calendars, that is, composed of a folded leaflet containing the inside the two semesters of the calendar. Although generally the figurations of the calendars were entrusted to not prominent artists, who made "naif", easily "legible" representations, many were the great refined and prolific illustrators, who engaged in the realization of these small objects. Obviously these are the calendars most sought after by collectors, especially those representative of Art Deco and Liberty, with golden or silver backgrounds, scrolls, floral motifs and very decorated or those in the "twentieth century" style. The custom of giving calendars still remained alive in the following years and, although no longer producing pieces of both graphic and content value, those of the 50s and 60s, dedicated to cinema and a little risqué young women, can be considered interesting and pleasant. still of good invoice. Considerable interest was then given to football fans.

 »The art book and the facsimile, a cultural enterprise dedicated to the most ancient traditions. A new way of investing in culture. The museum becomes an avant-garde library. "The Museum of Arte Povera, between the sections in which it is divided, houses a rare and rich collection of facsimile works or more precise works reproduced in a totally faithful way to the original. These masterfully reproduced works allow everyone, therefore not only illustrious scholars and researchers, to benefit from a heritage that is difficult to consult. The precious "original" manuscripts, from which the beautiful specimens exhibited in the Museum are reproduced, present in libraries and archives all over the world, are usually, for security and conservation reasons, enclosed in beautiful display cases and armored safes inaccessible to the public of curious or simple enthusiasts of the manuscript and illuminated book, the purpose of the Museum is to create an Avant-garde Library where the beautiful reproduced manuscripts can be studied, admired and consulted by everyone. A path where beauty is within everyone's reach and which wants to enhance beyond the beauty and craftsmanship of the past art, also the artistic and artisan tradition of our country thanks to the companies, which still today, by winning cumbersome bureaucracies and waiting for very long times , manage to faithfully reproduce priceless works.The manuscripts reproduced and preserved in the museum represent the artistic splendor of all past centuries, from 200 AD until about 1650, from manuscripts and chorales commissioned by ancient monasteries and very important popes, to the beautiful Breviari, made on the recommendation of great patrons, to illustrious artists and illuminators of the greatest Italian courts. The collection also consists of Salteri, gold books, missals, herbariums, a cultural heritage, normally inaccessible, but today thanks to the dedication of the museum director, all to be explored. Our Journey to discover the inaccessible beauty starts, citing only some specimens, from 200 AD with the papyrus of Edizia origin, Beati Petri Apostoli Epistulae papyrus Bobmer VIII, containing Letters of St. Paul the Apostle, the original copy of which is kept in the Apostolic Library Vatican and continues with the Codex Purpureus Rossanensis made between the beginning or the middle of the sixth century. Coming from Asia Minor made in Syria or Palestine preserved in the Museum of the Archbishopric of Rossano Calabro up to, to name a few, the Book of Kells dated around 800, to the Gospels of Lorsh about 810; The Psalter of San Ruperto built at the end of the ninth century; the Code of Medicine and Pharmacy of Federico II made in the 13th century and subsequently purchased by Cosimo de Medici the Elder for the Medici Library of Florence; The Histori Plantarum, herbarium built at the end of the 1300 from the court of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, a work of excellent beauty created and attributed, according to one of the most illustrious historians of 1900 Pietro Toesca, to the school of Giovannino de Grassi, identified as the precursor of the Gothic international, he worked at the construction site of the cathedral in Milan in 1391 highlighting himself for the carvings and the meticulous processing of the capitals, in 1370 he illustrates 50 sheets of the Offiziolo by Gian Galeazzo Visconti with scenes of fairytale and naturalistic landscapes very close, for their style to the decorations present in the History Plantarum; The De Lisle Psalter, made in the first half of the 1300s from England, containing biblical stories; The Borso d’Este bible made in the last half of the 1400s, coming from Ferrara or Modena, commissioned by the Duke of Ferrara made by one of the most important miniatures on the national scene, Taddeo Crivelli together with Franco dei Russi. Taddeo even if, pupil of Pisannell, his art receives the influences of Andrea Mantegna, he works in the court of Borso d’Este in Ferrara and his first work was the precious Bible of Borso d’Este. Crivelli himself, in addition to numerous paintings, created the first printed map of Italy after his transfer from Ferrara; Concluding our quick journey, we mention The Code remains, a work that becomes the tangible symbol of the ideal shared by the intellectual of the 1700s with the ideal path constituted by the Museum of Arte Povera. Antonio Resta has collected original drawings, sketches, studies, miniatures of the greatest artists contemporary to him or who had preceded him. Resta brought together this extraordinary collection in a volume that he himself called "Portable Gallery", a real itinerant museum in which it is possible to follow the traces of the styles and artists that had characterized the previous ages and that especially marked the seventeenth century. A path, the one that wants to cover the entire arc of Italian art from Giotto up to his days, offering an anthology of drawings by the "heads of the four ancient, ancient and modern Roman Florentine schools.