Dalla scoperta all’acquisizione da Luigi Magnani: sulla provenienza della Sacra Conversazione Balbi di Tiziano

Among the artworks displayed at Magnani-Rocca Foundation (Mamiano di Traversetolo) is a Virgin and Child with Saint Catherine, Saint Dominic and a donor, that scholars acknowledge as a painting by Titian, from his young age. Isolated in Marquises Balbi’s collection in Genoa, it was mostly ignored by studies, apart from a few brief mentions in guidebooks from the 18th and 19th centuries and in monographs by important authors that knew very little about it, or had not seen it at all. Art historian Antonio Morassi (1893-1976) rediscovered it while he was in charge of the safeguard operations as Monuments and Fine Arts superintendent in Liguria during World War II, and he published it in the prestigious journal «Emporium» in 1946. This paper aims to give Morassi credits for being the first scholar to publish images of the painting, especially considering that fragile context, and to reconstruct the transfers of ownership that brought it to Luigi Magnani’s collection, through archival documents, academic papers and catalogues of exhibitions involving the “Sacra Conversazione Balbi”.