Sponsored by Sondrio Culture Council office

Guest:Prof. Rossana Bossaglia

Thanks to numerous documents we recovered, the Ligari (Pietro and Cesare, who were from a small village, situated in the surroundings of Sondrio) are two of the most famous painters of the XVIII century. We can almost completely reconstruct the corpus of their works, thanks to contracts, ledgers, letters and inventories, which are kept in the Museum of Sondrio. In addition to such documentation, we also recovered hundreds of sheets, exceptionally detailed testimonies showing the complex relation existing between invention and realization. We own the great architectonic plans by Pietro Ligari, among which those of the Church and its bell tower are particularly interesting, as well as various elegant and precise sheets dedicated to the applied arts. Copies of the letters the artists wrote inform us about the preliminary agreements between the purchasers and the masters and about the instructions craftsmen who realised the plans were given. The accounting books report consistency, destination, dimensions expressed in the local unit of measurement, date, price of each work. Pietro was much more active than his son, Cesare, was. He experimented the most various genres, ranging from the architectonic big-sized works (altars, marble altars, choirs, fountains, fishponds with great patricians) to gratings with gilded bronze leaves, to sacred and secular furnishings (monstrance, reliquaries, coats of arms, stoves, furniture and organs). Giuseppe Gianoli's heirs mostly donated the sheets of the Sondrio civic collection. Giannetta Navaro Bonadei, the last descendent who lived in Ligari's ancient house, sold the sheets together with the study furnishing.

On the exhibition in Sondrio, the volume "PIETRO LIGARI o la professione dell'artista" will be presented. The book, edited by Luisa Giordano, professor of the Pavia University, is meant to illustrate the results of a long research work, promoted by the Museum management and carried out by a team of scholars. It also presents the complete catalogue of the Ligari's architecture designs.

For further information
Museo valtellinese di storia e arte - Sondrio
Phone 0342.526269 - 0342.213258 fax 0342.526270
Credito Valtellinese Gallery Phone 0342.522738
creval@creval.it