MASBEDO. Madame Pinin

Palazzo Citterio presents the artwork by MASBEDO Madame Pinin (2017), a universal and Milanese story, devoted to Pinin Brambilla  Barcilon (Monza, 1925 – Milan 2020), the restorer who, between 1977 and 1999, with tenacity and skill,  restored a masterpiece that was thought to be  almost lost forever: Leonardo da Vinci’s Ultima Cena.

Exhibition project realised in collaboration with Museo nazionale dell’Arte digitale,  curated by Laura Calvi.

The question of time in this story has been crucial: the time dedicated to the meticulous restoration work on the fresco, over fifty thousand hours of her life, and the time that the artwork itself lives, stretched between the past that created it and the present that insists on preserving it. 

It is the story of an extraordinary woman who, against all odds, invested so much of her life in a highly utopian mission: to stop – at least for a while – the relentless passage of years on that symbol of Western art. These are recurring themes in MASBEDO’s poetics, which has always placed reflection on our relationship with the past at its center. As the renowned art historian Roberto Longhi taught, “the work of art is never alone; it is always in relation. To begin with: at least a relationship with another work of art” (Da Cimabue a Morandi, Einaudi, 1973), and this has always been demonstrated by MASBEDO’s artistic research, recovering stories from our past and giving voice to a profound collective memory.