Giovanni Giani (1866 - 1937)
The royal armory of Turin
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated lower right: Giani 92
150 x 95 cm
Label: n ° 484 (Retrospective exhibition of the Promoting Fine Arts Society of Turin, 1892)
Following the creation of the great European museums, many collections were open to the public throughout the 19th century. Whether in old palaces or in buildings built for this purpose, curious people of all kinds can therefore come and contemplate the quintessence of human production.
Certain artists, seeking to collect the lessons of the past there, left us an interesting testimony of these places, source of pride and identity for the cities or the states which shelter them.
In this context, it is quite naturally that Giovanni Giani, genre painter, decides to present, on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition of the fiftieth anniversary of the company promoting the Fine Arts of Turin of 1892, a view of a collection emblematic of his hometown: the Royal Armory. Created by Charles Albert of Savoy in 1837, it brings together one of the richest collection in the world of weapons and armor.
Trained mainly in the studio of his father Giuseppe (1829-1885), our artist developed a taste for interior scenes. He chooses here to represent a restorer working on an armor; symbolic junction between the vestiges of the past and the contemporary world.
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