Curated by Lucia Peruzzi and supported by the Municipality of Modena, the exhibition Virtue and Grace presents a significant collection of 17th-century paintings from the BPER Group’s collections, complemented by prestigious institutional and private loans. Located in the heart of Modena, the Galleria offers a thematic journey centered on the female figure. Saints, virgins, martyrs, heroines, and seductresses emerge as protagonists in a visual narrative that spans Baroque painting, highlighting the diverse and complex facets of the female image in the 17th century. The exhibition aims to emphasize the unprecedented and central role women assumed during this period, reflecting the spiritual tensions and social transformations of the Counter-Reformation era.
Woman as a Privileged Symbol of Virtue and Courage
The women featured in the exhibition are not merely depicted in their sensual physicality but are elevated to emblems of their virtue. They are protagonists of legendary stories rooted in myth and Christian historiography. Their narratives often involve suffering and sacrifice, repentance and conversion, thus acquiring emblematic value, particularly within the context of the Counter-Reformation, while also resonating with contemporary viewers’ emotions. The exhibition is divided into five sections, each illuminating a specific aspect of the female figure as a virtue. A unifying thread throughout the exhibition is the sensuality of the female body, rendered with Baroque sensibility, where sensuality and spirituality merge. The corporeality of women in these paintings is never reduced to mere carnal dimension.
Curator Lucia Peruzzi introduces the project by stating, “The female figure blossoms particularly in Baroque art, as a symbol, a bearer of virtues, of moral values, and thus through figurative art that lives of everyday reality, but also lives of exuberance, of feelings, of sensuality.” She emphasizes that the female figure, depicted with Baroque sensitivity, becomes a vehicle for conveying the values of antiquity, which remain deeply relevant. Peruzzi further adds that classical culture and myth should continue to serve as teachings, countering the general tendency to reject the past without attempting to re-examine it through our contemporary sensibility to fill our own voids.
Saints, Virgins, and Martyrs
This section opens with Mary Magdalene in Meditation by Lucio Massari. She is a redeemed saint who, after experiencing sin, undergoes a long journey of penance to find the light of conversion and live a life of silent prayer. Mary Magdalene is presented as the heroine of the 17th century: from youth’s luxury and pleasures to repentance, then contrition and renunciation. Despite her connection to worldly pleasures, as a sinner, she participates in all phases of Christ’s life. What is striking is the coexistence of religious fervor and the vibrant sensuality of the female body’s gestures and forms that permeates the entire exhibition. Her magnificent red hair cascades down her shoulders and breasts, attempting in vain to cover them.
Despite the avoidance of depicting overt female nudity, great sensuality emanates from Guido Cagnacci’s portrayal of Saint Agatha. Recognized by the attribute of her severed breasts on a platter, a reference to their violent removal with pincers, the light illuminates the young woman’s face and neck, caressing her parted lips and pulsing throat. Quoting Professor Daniele Benati, who attributed the Saint Agatha canvas to Guido Cagnacci, “ecstasy is not manifested through the negation of the body, but soul and body form a single entity.”
Dangerous Passions
It is within the universe of myth, rich with love, desire, tragedy, and metamorphosis, that Baroque painters found an inexhaustible repertoire of emotions and suggestions, translating narratives into an immediate and pathos-laden visual language. The primary source of inspiration is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where the overwhelming and passionate love between gods becomes the catalyst for ill-fated episodes, penances, and transformations into various animals. However, this section focuses on women from mythology, protagonists of dramatic stories and victims of the gods’ will. Europa, the beautiful daughter of the King of Tyre, is abducted by Jupiter, who, to satisfy his desire for her, transforms into a magnificent white bull. The most tragic moment, when the maiden adorns the bull with garlands and is then dragged into the sea towards Crete, is sublimated by the painter Domenico Piola, a representative of the Genoese school, who captures the tragic instant of the abduction. Ovid’s verses are thus transmuted into a vibrant and dynamic image, animated by the movement of hair and drapery that billow, evoking the impetuous force of the sea wind.
Also a victim of Jupiter’s desires and ambitions, who devises deceptions and stratagems to fulfill his impulses, is Callisto, the subject of Sisto Badalocchi’s 1610 work. In a less dynamic composition than The Rape of Europa, this painting narrates the Ovidian tale from the second book of the Metamorphoses, depicting the moment Diana discovers the nymph Callisto, with whom Jupiter had united by taking the goddess’s guise, is pregnant. Callisto is surrounded by handmaidens holding a white cloth to conceal her pregnancy. Juno, jealous of her husband, transforms her into a bear, but Jupiter himself saves her from the dogs along with her son Arcade, making her a constellation.
Seductresses and Heroines
A further aspect of the female figure emerges in the exhibition’s third section. No longer passive recipients of male actions, but perpetrators of valorous and ruthless deeds, the women in this group of paintings are depicted as determined and possessing inherent authority. The image of the maiden, a victim of Zeus’s torments, is overlaid by that of a wise, strong, and aware woman capable of feats traditionally considered male. The figure of Judith, one of the most emblematic in the Old Testament, is consecrated as an archetype of powerful and dominant femininity in the work of Giacomo Cavedoni (1577-1660). Lucretia, violated by Sextus, son of the King of Rome Tarquinius Superbus, is depicted by Ercole Setti (1530-1618) in a pose of noble bearing, like an ancient sculpture, in the act of stabbing herself following the offense. She is portrayed as a woman affirming her moral integrity, raising the dagger like a sacrificial victim on an altar.
Darts of Love
The feminine model outlined by Baroque painting inevitably connects to the theme of Eros, central to the grand theater of 17th-century art. In visual art, the immediate recognition of Eros is based on a layered iconographic tradition rooted in Greco-Roman antiquity, which experienced renewed and widespread favor from the Renaissance onwards. In Alessandro Tiarini’s (1577-1668) painting Rinaldo and Armida, the pointed dart takes on symbolic and tragic weight, becoming an instrument of mortal wound for the lover, testifying to the emotional intensity with which Emilian artists of the 17th century interpret love episodes. Commotion and torment are evident in the posture and expressiveness of the protagonists, reflecting the dramatic sensibility of the time, which projects onto the viewer. Finally, the scene depicted by Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582-1622) in the 1620 painting Tancred Baptizing Clorinda is poignant. The warrior, stunned after discovering he caused the death of his beloved Clorinda, pours baptismal water over the head of the dying young woman in a dramatic gesture laden with piety. The time separating Clorinda from death seems to suspend, crystallizing the image of the two lovers exchanging a gaze filled with affection and compassion. In this image, Eros does not manifest through cupids or symbolic elements but is embodied in spiritual pathos, sealing the human drama within a dimension of intense and moved sacredness.
Baroque Allegories
Allegory is a fundamental element in Baroque art and literature. It is to female figures that the task of giving visible form to virtues, Christian or secular values, is entrusted. An example is Valerio Castello’s Allegory of Abundance, another protagonist of the Genoese Baroque period. A young woman, surrounded by angels and dressed in elaborate richness, dispenses gold coins, while beneath her left elbow, an overturned cornucopia spilling fruits symbolizes Generosity. These two allegories are to be read together, indicating that there can be no abundance without generosity, a concept that resonates with our contemporary world.
