In Urbino, my ideal city as always, a place where I spent my youth and discovered the beauty of living surrounded by art without being suffocated by tourists like in Venice or Rome, with the same cultural level but immersed in a landscape that it has always remained the same since the Renaissance. For some time I had been wondering, after the passing of Carlo Bo, rector of the local University for more than fifty years, and a brief period of Vittorio Sgarbi as councillor, who could in some way ideally take the reins. The city, after all, has always had a duke. This Arcadian place, where the stereotypes of the perfect courtier, of the ideal beauty had been longed for, a cultural topos where the most beautiful minds had gathered over the centuries, has always needed a leader. This is why I thought of interviewing Luigi Gallo, the tireless director of the National Gallery of the Marche in Urbino, and of many other museums scattered throughout the regional territory. He welcomes us kindly in his beautiful office inside the Palazzo Ducale, surrounded by works by Claudio Ridolfi
Lorenza Cappanera : what emotion does a small but still attentive court give you? What sensation does it give you?
Luigi Gallo: a huge emotion. I remember very well the day I received the nomination, four years ago: I felt very honored to have been chosen to lead Urbino and the national museums of the Marche. The Marche is an extraordinary land rich in culture, and therefore the feeling I felt was an enormous sense of pride and at the same time the need to be accepted in an environment to which I hoped and hope to be able to give voice and interpret the needs of this region, of this territory, of these cities. Over these four years I have felt the need to interpret the great history of this land. I hope I have been adequate and that the work continues with the necessary attention that a land rich in culture like this deserves.
Lorenzo: How is the transition from the metropolis to the Duchy?
Cock : I confess that it was a transition made very complex by the fact that I took up service in the midst of Covid, so I remember that moment as a moment of national panic: red zones, white zones, yellow zones. I had the impression of living in a bubble, but beyond this I feel extremely honored by this assignment. I confess that sometimes I miss traffic lights a bit! Because I was born a citizen, but I miss them less and less. In recent years I have learned to appreciate the silence of Urbino, the song of the owl that is heard in the evening, as a gift that fate gave me. I live here in Via Puccinotti and you can hear this song in this metaphysical square. I therefore learned another beauty and how much this beauty nourishes and makes us feel more in touch with history and certainly less alone.
Lorenza : and in my opinion Federico's presence is always felt and in any case I don't know why.
Cock: well, because it's written everywhere: Federico Conte, Federico Duca! Even if you want to ignore it, it's not easy. But there are many voices in Urbino, there is not only Federico, there are voices of scholars, the voices of the Della Rovere Dukes, especially of Francesco Maria II who I love very much. A figure that fascinated me. There are many voices and the task is to get everyone to speak. In ten days (about 18 July) we will open an exhibition on Paolo Volponi who is another of the voices of Urbino, twenty days ago we opened an important exhibition on Federico Barocci, the first to be held in his hometown. I'm trying to get a lot of people to "talk".
Lorenza: this multi-voiced choir is beautiful. Indeed, the thing that intrigued me is that you highlighted the works of an artist like Barocci who essentially never left Urbino. He was in Rome for a short period and then at the age of thirty he returned to Urbino.
Cock: but much earlier actually. He was only in Rome for two years.
Lorenza:…
Rooster:….. we need to leave Urbino, just as we need to return there, in the sense that I believe that each of us, wherever we were born, I was born in Rome in Trastevere, must leave our cradle to understand what the world is made of, at least the more likely. I have traveled a lot and lived outside Italy, I have crossed South America on foot: perhaps mine is a voracious curiosity, less so now because I am getting older, but one must leave one's cradle, perhaps to find others. In life we take paths so that every now and then we enter ports where we perhaps stay longer. I believe that life is a long search to return home, the hero who, in my opinion, best represents the journey of a lifetime is Ulysses. We need to travel: our life is a long journey back home.
Lorenza: Right now I'm reading a book by James Hillman, "Essay on Pan" where he says that instead of the Bible you should read the Iliad and the Odyssey, in fact......I wanted to ask you: what difference do you find between the National Archaeological Museum of the Marche in Ancona and the National Gallery of the Marche in Urbino. Here in Urbino I see many people and a certain liveliness, despite it being a weekday. In Ancona I live near the Archaeological museum and I can't say it's the same thing, despite it being an amazing museum...
Cock: we start from the assumption that each place is a reality in itself, therefore comparisons cannot be made. I believe that the Archaeological Museum of Ancona is one of the most beautiful archaeological museums in Italy, on which we are working a lot, in these four years I have made more projects for Ancona than for Urbino. Projects that are slowly being put into practice: the Roman section is beautiful, the staircase under restoration is extraordinary: we will start with big projects for the seismic adaptation of the building. Ancona, moreover, is a different reality from Urbino, in the sense that Urbino is a city of art so those who come there, given the difficulty of transfers to get there, have the sensation of being on an island. You are aware that you have arrived on an island of 'beauty'. Ancona is different, it is a medium-sized city with its own internal balance, it is still the regional capital, so it has many realities. The role I am holding in Ancona is to create a real network of museums, I am always in contact with the Municipality. They also gave me this honorific position of Scientific Director of the Art Gallery which is now closed, but our idea is to present it as a city also of art, which is certainly not the primary vocation of Ancona, in the sense that there is politics, logistically the port and I believe that our role is to try to transform this thing. After that, the logic of a museum cannot be only numerical, a museum does not work only based on the number of visitors. We have to do the best and in any case the Archaeological Museum is the most visited museum in Ancona, the Art Gallery attracts fewer visitors.
Lorenza: I'm talking about it as an Ancona native who spent several years outside, I returned with Covid and in the solitude I also saw the solitude of a city, which seems like a peninsula left a bit to itself, between commerce and traffic, while it would need , in my opinion, more appealing. In my opinion it suffers from a real communication strategy through art and for this reason it is less lively, but I don't feel like Urbino is alone. How can we begin through culture, first of all, to rediscover ourselves but also to re-propose the rediscovery of the Marche through the values of culture? What is the key to the problem? What should we do according to you who is an important voice for us….
Cock: I think that the Marche region is identified in the plural by its name, so you must immediately think that there are many paths: sometimes they intersect and intertwine, sometimes not. Therefore we must think of a land in the plural, a land of cities but cities with their own identity, with their values, their social structures and codes. It is no coincidence that every city in the Marche region has a theater and identifies itself with that theatre. They are realities for which there is a real identity of representation for each one. And this is the first point to take into consideration: declining it in the plural. And, in my opinion, we need to understand the uncontaminated beauty of this land, its extraordinary variety, in the Marche, so that we perceive a unique richness made up of paths and crossroads. The Marche is a border land, it is the southern border.
Lorenza: the land of Francesco Maria II Della Rovere.
Cock: yes, he is a character that I really like, the last Duke, he particularly fascinates me.
Lorenza: and can I ask you why?
Cock: because it is the story of a reverse canon: a prince of Renaissance Europe, of the second half of the sixteenth century, winner of Lepanto. Handsome, everyone describes him as handsome. And from the portrait of Federico Barocci, which can be admired in the exhibition, emerges a beautiful young prince with this brilliant and shiny armour. A successful character. And then the story went somewhere else, he himself went somewhere else. He is a person, how to say…. today we would define it as melancholic. Little by little he retreats more and more, the court had gone to Pesaro, perhaps closer in some way to the routes, in this Europe that was changing. In the second half of the sixteenth century this Duchy becomes more and more marginal and although it is perhaps still the most refined court in Italy, even with the most requested manufactures, majolica, silks, papers are still the objects of the elite, he leaves Pesaro and he moved within the Duchy, increasingly towards the mountains, attracted by hunting, by books, by this highly refined court in which Torquato Tasso was trained. This world that applies this fuga mundi, as a space for individual growth, where interest in the world is made of a detachment from practical life. I am fascinated by this prince who is then forced to return to power when his son dies, to even sign the devolution of the State to the Papacy. He is the winner of Lepanto who knows that he must devolve his state, and therefore this luminous trajectory that almost goes in the other direction of history, fascinates me a lot.
Lorenza: that's life.
Cock: for some, yes.
Lorenza: it struck me because I instead like the winning figure of this Duchy: Federico da Montefeltro. When I was a student and I read his biography I was completely in love with him. I would have married him!
Cock: well….. Federico is the first and Francesco Maria is the last: so there is this time span which is the span of the Renaissance. It's a period that draws a historical arc: so I find this final figure poignant, very romantic, but I'm very romantic.
Lorenza: I am too, I love romance. However, this is perhaps more decadentism than romanticism.
Cock: the end of things is also needed to give new beginnings.
Lorenza: that's enough for me, I wanted to know this. Thank you director for your magnificent work.
