ROME.- The Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica at Galleria Corsini in Rome is hosting Robert Mapplethorpe. The Sensitive Lens, curated by Flaminia Gennari Santori, Director of the Gallerie Nazionali Barberini Corsini.

By interweaving the past and the present, the show continues the dialogue that began with the exhibition Parade by Picasso in 2017 and Eco e Narciso in 2018; this dialogue became one of the key features of the strategy of the museum.

Robert Mapplethorpe. The Sensitive Lens, displays forty-five works and focuses on some of the themes distinguishing the work of Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989): his study of still lifes, landscapes, classical sculpture and Renaissance composition.

Flaminia Gennari’s decision to organise an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work was inspired by the artist’s habit of collecting: he was an avid collector of historical photographs, a passion he shared with his partner, Sam Wagstaff, whose photography collection — composed largely of portraits, figures and landscapes — is an extraordinary resource for the photography department of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

This exhibition is unique because, according to Flaminia Gennari, “On many occasions his photographs have been compared to the works of artists of the past — Michelangelo, Hendrick Goltzius, Auguste Rodin — through surprising and revealing dialogues; however, this is the first time they have been exhibited in the context of a collection of eighteenth century paintings.”

The photographs have been selected and arranged in Galleria Corsini with several different aims: to highlight the aspects of Mapplethorpe’s work that resonate particularly with Galleria Corsini, a space — in both physical and conceptual terms — dedicated to collecting, in order to forge a new relationship between visitors, the works and the areas within the gallery.

Flaminia Gennari writes that, “Mapplethorpe never visited Galleria Corsini; yet he certainly would have found its rooms interesting as they are still arranged according to the taste of Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini (1685–1770), who created the collection and lived in Palazzo Corsini from 1738 until his death. In the eighteenth century, paintings were arranged on the walls according to the criteria of symmetry, eurythmy and variety of composition, which encouraged visitors to identify similarities and differences among the works, thereby training their eye. These are the same principles that guided Mapplethorpe’s lens over the course of his career. By introducing his photographs — black and white magnets attracting the eye within the colourful backdrop of paintings covering the walls — visitors are invited to explore Galleria Corsini as if they were eighteenth century connoisseurs, searching for similarities, symmetries and differences.”

The itinerary of the exhibition, which winds through all the rooms in the museum, starts in the Antichamber, where Winter Landscape, a rare landscape from 1979, is displayed beneath Rinaldo and Armida by Gaspard Dughet.

The exhibition continues into the First Gallery, where we can already see how Mapplethorpe’s aesthetic resonates with this place. Ken and Lydia and Tyler (1985) and Self Portrait (1988) are contemporary interpretations of the balance between the classical theme of the Three Graces in the first photograph and the brutal honesty of his 1988 self portrait, where Mapplethorpe, who knows he is going to die soon, is looking out at us from the darkness, gesturing in a way that is both powerful and ancient. However, photographs like Italian Devil (1988) highlight Mapplethorpe’s passion for collecting, for example small bronzes representing satyrs and devils. The series of four prints entitled Ajitto (1981) draws visitors’ gaze towards works at Galleria Corsini that otherwise might escape their attention, such as the small bronzes on the eighteenth-century console tables.

In the Cardinal Gallery Puerto Rico, Woman a portrait of a woman taken in 1981, is gazing at the sixteenth century Portrait of an Old Woman by a student of Jan Van Scorel, while Lisa Lyon (1980) is lying languidly next to two small mythological scenes by Francesco Albani, Jupiter sends Mercury to Apollo and Venus and Cupids.

In the Fireplace Chamber Mapplethorpe’s Marcus Leatherdale has been placed near Adonis and Diana by Antonio Montauti, becoming a character from Ovid’s Metamorphosis: the young man returning from the hunt. In the same room, Samia (1978) and Catherine Olim (1982) are displayed alongside one of the paintings for which the collection is known, Salome with the Head of John the Baptist by Guido Reni, and the splendid Head of a Man by Pieter Paul Rubens.

It is especially striking, in the display in the Alcove of Christina of Sweden, how much Bernine (1978) resembles portraits by Lorenzo Lotto and the sixteenth-century masters from Lombardy. Lisa Lyon (1981), the bodybuilder immortalised by Mapplethorpe in hundreds of photographs, is placed next to a saying by the Queen: “I was born free, I lived free, and I will die freed,” a sort of declaration of physical and intellectual freedom. This portrait is also placed in relation to three oval paintings by Guido Reni, The Sorrowful Virgin, Christ with the Crown of Thorns and St. John the Evangelist.

Then in the Green Room, Guy Neville (1975) is displayed next to a much older paradigm of elegance, Cardinal Neri Corsini Senior, a portrait by Giovan Battista Gaulli from 1666. Whereas Harry Lunn (1976) and the portrait of the cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici by Alessandro Allori bear a striking resemblance to one another.

Apple and Urn, taken in 1987 and displayed in the Green Room between still lifes by Christian Berentz (1658–1722), uncovers the deep resonance between Mapplethorpe’s photographs and seventeenth-century painting. Here, opposite some of the gallery’s most important works — St. John the Baptist by Caravaggio and Venus and Adonis by Jusepe de Ribera — we find Black Bust and Apollo, both taken in 1988, where Mapplethorpe achieves the perfect balance between light and shadow, hard and soft.

The famous portrait from 1976 of Holly Solomon is being shown in the Red Room along with the portrait of Carol Overby from 1979, next to a sequence of photographs focusing on the themes of classical sculpture and the pursuit of geometry in light and some images that have been rarely exhibited: Texas Gallery (1980), New Orleans Interior (1982) and Marty Gibson (1982). In a small, adjoining room, a few explicit works are displayed next to photographs of flowers.

Robert Mapplethorpe. The Sensitive Lens gives visitors the extraordinary opportunity to look at his photographs from uncommon points of view and explore the gallery’s collection in a more contemporary light.

2019 is the thirtieth anniversary of Robert Mapplethorpe’s death and this initiative, organised in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation of New York, is part of a series of exhibitions dedicated to this artist, including a large retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and one at the Museo Madre in Naples, Italy, uniquely focused on the intimate performative matrix of his photography.