The Mark of a Genius.
100 drawings from the XV to the XVIII century from the Ashmolean Museum / Oxford
May 14 1991 / September 14 1991
Roma – Palazzo Ruspoli (100.000 visitors)
Catalogue – De Luca
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- Gian Lorenzo Bernini Autoritratto
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- Giovanni Battista Tiepolo Testa di uomo barbuto con copricapo di pelliccia
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- Guido Reni Il matrimonio mistico di S. Caterina
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- Leonardo da Vinci Fanciulla con unicorno
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- Hans Holbein il giovane Giovane donna inglese
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- Raffaello Sanzio Autoritratto
On May 14, 1991, the President of the Italian Republic Francesco Cossiga and Lord Roy Jenkins, Rector of the University of Oxford, inaugurated the exhibition “THE SIGN OF GENIUS. LEONARDO, MICHELANGELO, RAFFAELLO… ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES FROM OXFORD,” promoted by Fondazione Memmo at Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome.
During the ceremony, the President of Fondazione Memmo, Lawyer Roberto Memmo, presented Lord Roy Jenkins with a check for $500,000 earmarked for the restoration of Italian artworks in Oxford. For the first time in Italy, a wide selection of drawings from the Ashmolean Museum’s collection was presented, spanning various periods from the 15th to the 18th century. The collection featured works by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, Guido Reni, Tiepolo, Canaletto, and others, including Bruegel. The selection was curated by the director of the Ashmolean Museum, Christopher White, along with Giuliano Briganti, with the intention of tracing, through drawing, the initial moment of artistic creativity – the first act that led to the greatest masterpieces in art history, the distinctive “sign” of genius. Examples, among others, are in this regard especially the preliminary studies of Michelangelo for the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel