The Ministry of Culture, declaring the year 2014 as the Year of Greco, decided to organize a series of honorary exhibitions and events, which have been taking place from the summer of 2014 until the spring of 2015. In the context of this tribute, the Benaki Museum in cooperation with the Historical Museum of Crete organized the Exhibition “Greco between Venice and Rome”.
The historical figures that were presented in the exhibition were Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, Fulvio Orsini – Dominico Theotokopoulos’s orderer and mentor during his stay in Rome – as well as micrographer Giulio Clovio.
The Exhibition’s foci were two paintings by Theotokopoulos, Baptism of Christ [I Vaptisi tou Christou] and View of Mt.Sinai [I Apopsi tou Orous Sina], that decorate the Historical Museum of Crete.
Zosimaia’s participation
Considering that the Exhibition aimed at presenting a rare, for greek standards, view of the work of El Greco, information that consider Greco’s stay in Rome was presented, as well as artwork and engravings of important 16th century artists, but also archival material from museums, foundations and private collections from Greece and abroad.
Our Library had the joy and honor to participate in this grand Exhibition, upon the invitation of Mr. Aggelos Delivorias, Director of the Benaki Museum and Mr. Nikolaos Chatzinikolaou, Professor Emeritus of the Department of History& Archaeology, of the University of Crete and Honorary Consul of Spain in Crete, with a very rare artefact.
The artefact is “Imagines et elogia virorum illustrium et eruditor ex antiquis lapidibus et nomismatibus expressa cum annotationibus ex bibliotheca Fulvi Ursini ” of Fulvio Orsini, 1st edition in Rome by Ant. Lafrerij formeis in 1570 (date of book MDLXX). This unique known publication among the Greek Collections, is an iconography book of El Greco’s patron in Rome, Fulvio Orsini, created in Palazzo Farnese for two years (1570-1572). The “Imagines et elogia virorum illustrium et eruditor …” contains a rich collection of engraved images of ancient era figures, which Orsini compiled from multitude ancient sources (mostly busts, statues, stones, or coins). He used mostly carved precious gemstones from his private collection, as well as material from the collection of the Farneze family. Fulvio Orsini particularly developed the art of iconography. Based on his systematic research and the scientific method of autopsy, he managed to identify a lot of, unknown at the time, portraits, which are not contested to this day. For this reason, this book remained for two centuries the most important fundamental work in its field. Zosimaia Library’s publication that framed the important Exhibition “Greco between Venice and Rome”, comes from the Collection of Spiridon Lambrou.
