From March 15th the Napoleonic Museum hosts an exhibition dedicated to the collection of oriental and Japanese art: Giuseppe Primoli and the charm of the East, in conjunction with the Ukiyoe exhibition. The floating world. Visions from Japan underway at the Museum of Rome in Palazzo Braschi.

The exhibition is promoted by Roma Capitale, Department of Culture, Capitoline Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and is curated by Elena Camilli Giammei , Laura Panarese and Marco Pupillo . Zètema Organization Project Culture .

At the center of the exhibition itinerary is a rare collection of 14 kakemono belonging to Giuseppe Primoli, rectangular strips of paper or fabric of various lengths to hang vertically, painted in watercolor and ink with classic subjects of Japanese painting of the "flowers and birds" genre : compositions that portray flowers, branches with leaves and fruits, birds, owls, cranes, herons, butterflies, lake landscapes. Nine of these artefacts, usually stored in the Napoleonic Museum, have recently undergone restoration and are visible to the public again after a few years; the other five kakemono in the collection, also recently restored, come from the nearby Primoli Foundation.

The peculiarity that makes this collection unique consists in the signatures, dedications and autographed compositions that poets, writers, prominent figures of the Italian-French cultural scene of the time, up until the 1930s, placed on the surface of the kakemono: Anatole France , Guy de Maupassant , Marcel Prévost , Émile Zola , Stephane Mallarmé , Paul Valery , Paul Claudel , Henry Bergson , to name a few, and, among Italian men of letters, Giosuè Carducci , Gabriele D'Annunzio , Cesare Pascarella , Arrigo Boito , Giovanni Verga , Matilde Serao , but also theatrical performers, actors and actresses of excellence, such as Eleonora Duse , and also politicians and numerous exponents of royal houses throughout Europe. In fact, the count used to ask those who frequented his lively social salon to leave a memory, a trace, a thought or a phrase on the unpainted spaces of the kakemono, thus constituting a precious corpus of historical and literary interest alongside the truly artistic one. of the paintings.