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Count Primoli's fascination with the East
#Exhibitions

An erudite and cultured man, Count Giuseppe Primoli was a Napoleonic and had a great passion for the art of Japan and, more generally, of the Asian continent, as was fashionable between the 19th and 20th centuries. His living room was frequented by men of letters and intellectuals. Over the course of his life he put together a rich collection which can be admired today in the beautiful exhibition set up at the Napoleonic Museum. Documents, photographs, books, objects and artefacts of oriental taste, theme or manufacture, among which fourteen kakemono stand out - traditional Japanese painted rolls of paper or fabric - that belonged to the Count. It is a nucleus with important documentary value, as well as historical and artistic value, whose particularity also lies in the collector's habit of asking those who frequent his living room to use the unpainted spaces of the kakemono to sign and write thoughts, poems and sentences. In the kakemono therefore appear autograph compositions, signatures and dedications of French writers - including Zola, Claudel, Valery, Loti, Anatole France - of authors and performers of theatrical works or of exponents of the royal houses of Europe.

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