A fire has swept through the Galerie Canesso, on the rue Laffitte in central Paris, causing significant damage and destroying part of its library, documents and offices. The fire took place on Sunday December 7th at the gallery which specialises in Italian Old Master paintings from the Renaissance to the Baroque. It has since been determined that the fire was caused by an electrical fault.
“This was a great loss for us but fortunately no paintings were damaged,” stated Véronique Damian, an art historian who works with the gallery’s founder Maurizio Canesso in a telephone interview with the Art Newspaper.
Luckily the gallery’s paintings were protected in a secure safe, and were left unscathed by the heat of the fire, although the gallery walls were left blackened.
Maurizio Canesso inaugurated his Gallery in 1994, after 15 years of dealing in Italian Old Master Paintings. The gallery holds a wide range of works from the Renaissance to the 18th century, principally that of Italian artists, but also artists of other schools who worked in Italy. The Gallery offers a considerable choice of subjects from Religious and Mythological to Still life, Landscapes and Portraits and, for the most part, newly discovered and unpublished works – none of which were effected by the fire.
The Galerie Canesso will continue to operate from offices next door to the gallery while its premises are restored, said Véronique Damian. After recently showing at the Old Master art fair Paris Tableau which the gallery’s director Maurizio Canesso helped found, Among the works Galerie Canesso brought to Paris Tableau last month was Francesco Albani’s (1578-1660) ‘Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene’. The gallery will be at Tefaf Maastricht in March, as usual, regardless of its recent calamity, Damian added.