In a place of strong emotions such as the hospital, art has a disruptive energy. Even more if it wraps patients with life-size figures and landscapes in which to get lost, like in a dream.
It happens at the Humanitas Clinical Institute thanks to the “Brera in Humanitas” project, which brings 23 details taken from 15 masterpieces of the Pinacoteca di Brera into the waiting rooms and corridors of the hospital. Enlargements in maxi format, made starting from 680 million pixel reproductions, for a total of about 400 square meters of art.
Take a seat in the waiting room before being admitted and find yourself in the garden of “Un dopo lunch”, under the calm gaze of the women portrayed by Lega. Getting ready for the chemotherapy session in a 40 square meter garden filled with pumpkins, in the company of Campi’s “Fruttivendola”.
Rest among the blue brushstrokes of Raphael, in the shadow of the temple of the “Marriage of the Virgin” on a 12-metre wall in the Check Up area. Walking towards the nurses’ changing rooms, in the basement of the hospital, along 23 meters of woods and the bell towers of Bellotto’s Lombard panoramas. Getting lost in the placid waters of a landscape which, in Francia’s “Annunciation” constitutes the small background of the main scene and which now, in the hospital, becomes an independent 10 square meter work of art. Let yourself be carried away by Hayez’s “Il Bacio” on the 8-metre wall at the entrance. Or again, feeling the sweetness of the touch of the hands of “The Venetian Lovers”, by Bordon, in the waiting room of the Fertility Center.
These are some of the experiences that it is possible to have in the hospital thanks to the masterpieces of Bernardo Bellotto, Paris Bordon, Vincenzo Campi, Carlo Crivelli, Piero della Francesca, Filippo De Pisis, Francesco Hayez, Il Francia, Silvestro Lega, Lorenzo Lotto, Giulio Cesare Procaccini, Raphael and Simon Vouet.
The choice of details to be enlarged on a 1:36 scale (1 centimeter on the original painting now corresponds to 36 centimeters on the wall) focused on gestures of care, intense gazes and landscapes, in a game of parallels between art as care and care as art. This is how, for example, the delicate fingers of the woman holding Hayez’s “Vase of Flowers” recall the gesture of a nurse setting up a patient’s drip. This painting, among other things, is not currently exhibited in the Pinacoteca and can therefore only be admired in the waiting room of Humanitas Senology.
“Brera in Humanitas” is a new chapter of “La Cura e la Bellezza”, a project started in 2018 with “La Carrara in Humanitas”, which brought the art of the Accademia Carrara Museum to the Humanitas Gavazzeni and Castelli hospitals in Bergamo. Here the large installations have accompanied the most difficult moments of the Covid-19 pandemic, becoming a support for healthcare workers and patients.