By Reinhard Görner
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Embark on a visual journey into the heart of Italian architectural grandeur with Reinhard Görner's 2022 photograph, Sala dei Fiumi I. This breathtaking image captures the impressive "Hall of the Rivers" within the Ducal Palace of Mantua, a historic complex recognized as the sixth largest palace in Europe.
Built between the 14th and the 17th century by the noble Gonzaga family, the Ducal Palace of Mantua serves as a testament to Italy's rich architectural heritage and royal history. The palace complex, featuring an impressive assortment of more than 500 rooms, corridors, galleries, inner courts, and extensive gardens, spans an area of approximately 34,000 m2.
While the palace is widely recognized for Mantegna's frescos in the Camera degli Sposi (Wedding Room), the Sala dei Fiumi offers its unique allure. Created during the Habsburg rule in Mantua, this hall showcases distinctive wall paintings where the rivers of the Mantuan territory are anthropomorphized as giants.
Reinhard Görner's photograph is more than a visual delight; it's a historical journey into Italy's cultural past. Ideal for art enthusiasts, history lovers, and those with a keen eye for architectural beauty, this piece promises to enhance any collection. Allow the grandeur of the Palazzo Ducale di Mantova and the majesty of the Sala dei Fiumi to resonate within your space with this stunning image.
signed and numbered on label, verso
Reinhard Görner records cultural and industrial heritage through his series of photographs depicting contemporary and historical architecture, landscapes, parks, and plants. Best known for his photographs of libraries and reading rooms from around the world—in works such as George Peabody Library II, Baltimore (2017) and Riggs Library I, Washington DC (2017)—Görner captures the atmosphere of absolute silence and concentration the spaces embody while also revealing their almost cathedral-like sense of grandeur. Görner’s images have a vivid sense of depth and dimension that convey an impression of intimacy, as in Isaac Newton, Cambridge (2017), or monumentality via his precise and skilful use of framing and perspective.
Reinhard Görner, with his large format photographs orchestrates the monumentality of rooms.
An active architecture photographer since 1985, is a master of perspectives and precise spatial compositions, and he thus considers classical sculpture, in all of its possible facets, a special challenge.
"Görner’s photographs sometimes open the doors to another world and take the viewer with them on a journey through time. Here the palace is no longer a museum but both royal residence and a site steeped in history. The viewer does not have to share the halls with the masses of visitors; instead the images offer him exclusive impressions of the Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors) and the Galerie des Batailles (Hall of Battles) as even the king of France was probably never granted. The halls are empty of people, yet they seem to be able to unfurl their individual characters of their own accord. These places practically breathe history, and this aspect is also part of the essence captured in the photographs. King Wilhelm of Prussia was named German Emperor Wilhelm I in the Hall of Mirrors after France was defeated in 1870–1871 in the Franco-German War. The Treaty of Versailles following World War I was also signed there in 1919. In this sense, the architectural photographs of Versailles...
Category
2010s Conceptual Lambda Photography
