Mirabilia Marche: masterworks and hybrids, between public and private realms in the Ridolfi era. A exhibition at the Civica Raccolta d’Arte “Claudio Ridolfi” in Corinaldo

A exhibition at the Civica Raccolta d’Arte “Claudio Ridolfi” in Corinaldo, curated by Andrea Bruciati, from October 18, 2025 to May 3, 2026

Corinaldo — The Municipality of Corinaldo presents, at the Civica Raccolta d’Arte “Claudio Ridolfi,” the exhibition Mirabilia Marche: masterworks and hybrids, between public and private realms in the Ridolfi era. The initiative, curated by Andrea Bruciati, aims to recount a complex historical moment, from the late 16th to the early 17th century, in a portion of the Marche region often considered peripheral but rich in a dense and vibrant cultural morphology.

The show examines, through Claudio Ridolfi (Verona, ca. 1570 – Corinaldo, 1644), the last court painter in Urbino and a key figure of a transitional painting that developed within a network of exchanges across Veneto, Verona, Bologna, Rome and Marche. Forty works are displayed: Ridolfi’s paintings, kept in Corinaldo at the Civica Arte collection and in the city churches, are juxtaposed with loans from private collections, offering a broad reading of a context of patronage, influences, and iconographic experimentation.

At the center of the itinerary are themes dear to Ridolfi—sacred subjects, landscape, myth, and portrait—recontextualized through works by other artists active in the period, including but not limited to Bologna, Roman and Venetian workshops. Among the highlights are a Madonna with Child and Saints, a new Ridolfi canvas placed within the Corinaldo corpus, and evocative portraits such as Elisabetta Sirani; a nocturnal Getsemani by Alessandro Bonvicino, the Moretto; and pre-Romantic landscapes by Rosa da Tivoli.

Curator Andrea Bruciati describes Mirabilia Marche not merely as a temporary exhibition, but as a critical and progettuale device aimed at rethinking, in contemporary terms, the role and configuration of the museum space. The initiative seeks to restore centrality to Ridolfi within local cultural history, within a broader process of historiographical revaluation and activation of local heritage. The event presents a strategic opportunity to trigger reflections on exhibition models and the function of cultural spaces in the modern era, contributing to the reinforcement and diffusion of the so-called “diffused museum” paradigm, a distinctive and structuring dimension of the Italian cultural landscape, found in historical layering, polycentrism, and proximity to surrounding territories. Mirabilia Marche is framed as a methodological and operational laboratory capable of experimenting with integrated valorization forms, based on the interaction between tangible and intangible heritage, between permanent collections and temporary practices, between memory and innovation.

Thus, the exhibition extends beyond a mere display; it is a reconfiguration of the rooms of the Pinacoteca to valorize private collecting influencing these territories, and the historical load of an artist like Claudio Ridolfi, who has not had a dedicated show for thirty years. In addition to Ridolfi’s works, the show includes pieces from ecclesiastical contexts in the region, highlighting the wealth of a territory where beauty is widely distributed. Works that address sacral themes, such as landscape, myth, and portrait, are interwoven with paintings and works on paper by artists from Bologna, Rome, and Veneto workshops. Among the many works seldom seen by the public, notable is a new canvas with Madonna, Child and Saints; a moving portrait of Elisabetta Sirani; a nocturnal Getsemani by Moretto; and a preromantic landscape by Rosa da Tivoli.

The exhibition invites rethinking the category of “artwork” in relation to the museum context: not a mere collection of pieces, but a system of relationships between public and private, between regional collections and pathways of valorization that point to a broader territorial dimension. In this view, Mirabilia Marche serves as a laboratory to redesign the function of cultural spaces, supporting a lively museum concept open to historical contexts and contemporary conservation practices.

“Mirabilia Marche” stands as a significant cultural and scientific milestone: a critical reconnoitering of Claudio Ridolfi within a transitional period of Marche painting, and an opportunity to reconfigure interaction between public and private collecting. A project that reinvigorates local artistic memory and proposes an open, participatory, and dynamic museological narrative.