"EX VOTO" SECTION
This section is being prepared. It is the aim of the Museum's
Direction to acquire a significant collection of antique
paintings representing littorals, portraits of sailing ships,
steamships and warships of the XVIII and XIX century.
It is a difficult task, considering that an invaluable
historical and ethnographic treasure is lost. Apart from
the "ex voto", i.e. "offerings" (temperas, water-colours
and oil paintings, etc.) representing a particular sailing
iconography, the recovery/salvage in this section has become
extremely problematic, because, in the last fifteen years
or so, the phenomenon of collecting has created a specific
interest for this type of decorative and technical painting.
The artists who carried out these fine works of
art were often using the same backgrounds and landscapes
(in many paintings you can see the lighthouse of Genoa, the
Vesuvius or docks of arsenals) with the purpose of consigning
their picture to a captain or shipbuilder, or else to the
wardroom of a warship in the shortest possible time. In Italy,
the most prestigious and famous names, especially for the
perfect rendering of the ships form and for what can be easily
defined as one of the most important testimony of the heroic
age of sailing, are: Gavarrone, Arpe, Fedi, Luzzo, Roberto,
Fondo, De Simone, Papaluca, etc. Outside of Italy, amongst
the most important names are those of: Camillieri, Roux,
Dutton, Chapell, Jacobsen, Petersen, Adam, Walters, Tansen,
Spencer, Clerck, and among the still living: Tom Wells, Chapelet,
Jurgen, all ex captains of Cape Horn.
The Museum
offers a discrete collection of works by these artists, especially
Roux, Roberto, Papaluca, Wells and Jurgen. These painters
always created works of value, where nautical precision goes
hand in hand with picturesque significance and with the ability
to render perfectly the livid hues of a tempest, the breakers,
the clouds carried by the mistral, the fatal and menacing
moments of a shipwreck. Wodden votive tablets, tempera works,
water-colours, etc. are an effective evidence of the tragic
aspects of an era of courage, sacrifice, faith and labour
during three centuries of life at sea.
