Art Gallery
L’ORIGINE ART AND CULTURE HALL
L'ORIGINE AND CONTEMPORARY ART
L’Origine: Art and Culture Hall located in the historic heart of Acqui Terme!
Bruna Rapetti’s idea, as a painter, to give life to a space for Art and Culture could not have been more appropriate and more fortunate. The highly apt term “L’Origine” encloses, in a clear conceptual synthesis, both the first heartbeat of Acqui’s historic heart and the epicentre of artistic creativity, right there, at the top of the ancient “Via dei Calderai”, which from the Bollente leads to the Cathedral.
We are at the corner of Via Cardinal Raimondi 36, at whose turn, on the right, the evocative ascent appears, at whose summit stands the majestic Cathedral, founded by Saint Guido in 1067.
In the Sacristy of the Cathedral a Triptych by Bartolomé BERMEJO is preserved, the most important painter of the Spanish Quattrocento, who signed himself in Latin, Bartolomeus Rubeus. On the central panel is depicted the Virgin of Montserrat with the Child and the donor, one Francesco Della Chiesa, an Acqui native then resident in Spain.
The corner of “L’Origine” thus has an artistic vocation, as the cornerstone of every creative Spirit!
Why visit the L’Origine Art and Culture Hall?
Prof. Sergio Rapetti President of “Scientific and Cultural Promotion” writes:
“History teaches that the ennoblement of the idea passes through artistic forms, in particular those of the Figurative Arts, that is to say the aesthetics most closely linked to the pleasure of sight.
Human happiness lies in the ideality of beauty!
Those, therefore, who spontaneously enter the L’ORIGINE Art and Culture Hall, in Acqui Terme, are driven by a most gentle intuitive, productive and voluntary form.
Just as one enters the goldsmith’s, to choose the jewel that satisfies material wealth, one equally enters the splendour of L’ORIGINE, to choose the ecstatic beauties of ART, for the wealth and happiness of the SOUL!”
...a bit of history
- 1538
Along Via dei Calderai passed, on 7 May 1538, the pontiff Paul III, heading to Nice Marittima. At the height of “L’Origine”, the historian Blesi recounts, the pontiff “was publicly harangued by a maiden named Ginevra, most versed in the Latin tongue as well as in canon law and eloquence.” Returning home the Pontiff said: “Aquis tria mirabilia vidi: aquas bullentes, herba circa eas viventes et mulierem sapientem!”
- 1796
On 30 April 1796, near “L’Origine”, Napoleon Bonaparte also passed, on his way to the Civic Hospital to plunder 20 thousand lire in gold, never to be returned.
- 1814
On 19 March 1814 Pius VII also passed, who, rather “poorly”, leaned against the walls of “L’Origine” and, with difficulty, they pushed him up to the Cathedral. He fed on one hard-boiled egg a day!
- "Storia D'Acqui"
We have gathered this information from the “Storia D’Acqui” by Giacinto Lavezzari, erudite Acqui historian, published in 1888
- Today
Today in the rooms of “L’Origine” are hosted:
Solo and extemporary exhibitions, also spread in the most evocative places of the spa town of Acqui, in the UNESCO Heritage land.
All this thanks to Bruna Rapetti, a natural daughter of Acqui Terme and adoptive daughter of Turin, an inspired painter who honours our fertile land. She, with the invaluable assistance of the world-renowned Art Critic Mattea Micello, gives to the city of Acqui and to the entire Acqui area the impulse towards the greater glory of Art and Culture.
