Categories: ArtCulture

Milan art in 16th century

The art of the second half of the sixteenth century in Milan developed, here as elsewhere, on several lines and styles that can be summarized in mannerism, counter-reformed art and classicism. These currents divided the urban art scene often undergoing mutual contamination.

The Milanese scene of the second half of the sixteenth century must therefore be analyzed considering the particular position of the city: if for the Spanish Empire it represented a strategic military outpost, from the religious point of view it was at the center of the conflict between the Catholic Church and the Reformed Church. Consequently the greatest contribution was given by religious art in the face of a lower artistic and architectural civil production.

In adopting the mannerist style, the clients and the urban artists had as their reference experiences of Central-Italian derivation, the position of the city near the Protestant Switzerland made Milan one of the main centers of flowering and elaboration of counter-reformed art, thanks to the capillary action of St. Charles Borromeo.

Painting
The Milanese painting of the second half of the 16th saw the collaboration between the local school linked to the late Lombard renaissance and external artists, especially from Cremona, which would have greatly influenced the future Milanese pictorial scene. To a painting of religious mold and strongly controlled by St. Charles, then it has to counterbalance a strong naturalistic component, which precisely because of the strong control of the ecclesiastical authority could not fully develop: Caravaggio, maximum exponent of Lombard naturalism, had in fact greater fortune outside the confines of the duchy.

The contemporary presence of artists from different traditions of central and northern Italy was fundamental in the formation of Caravaggio, who could use a master of a Venetian school mitigated by controriform pictorial, contact with Cremonese artists importing a tradition linked to the Emilian school, and lastly, a Lombard school of Leonardo’s inheritance, depending on the case, more or less influenced by journeys of updating on the models of Central Italian Mannerism.

Local school
Among the major interpreters of the Milanese school we certainly find Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo: trained in Giovan Battista della Cerva’s workshop, in turn a student of Gaudenzio Ferrari, he began learning by studying the models, as well as Ferrari, by Bernardino Luini. To the formation on the Lombard Renaissance models, the Lomazzo enriched its formation with a trip to central Italy, where it was able to compare itself with Tibaldi and the works of Michelangelo; from this his journey he draws his style that fuses the Lombard tradition, mainly Gaudenzian, with a Central Italian mannerist language. If his first works are for the most part lost, he still does not have a large production because of the illness that led him to blindness in a few years: among his paintings we remember the Crucifixion (1570) for the church of San Giovanni in Conca, commented by the painter himself in one of his treatises for color rendering and for the particular luministic modulation; however, to be considered the greatest work of the Lomazzo is the cycle of frescoes at the Foppa chapel.

The work of the Foppa chapel in the church of San Marco, including the Gloria Angelica in the apsidal basin, the Fall of Simon Magus on the left wall, a lost Saint Paul resurrecting Eutic on the right and the altarpiece of the Madonna and Child represent a summa of the attempt of the painter of the recovery of the Lombard Leonardesque tradition. The pictorial outline is a clear reference to the dome of the Sanctuary of the Beata Vergine dei Miracoli in Saronno by Gaudenzio Ferrari, with the characterization of the characters of Leonardo da Vinci; the choice of the themes of the work finally indicates an anti-thematic and counter-shaped choice of the painter. The importance of the work of Lomazzo is evidenced by the numerous reproaches of the scheme of the work, including those of Carlo Urbino or Ottavio Semino.

In the last years of his career the canvas of the Oration of Christ in the garden for the church of Santa Maria dei Servi is significant, in which the change of the painter’s register is noted. If the work shows a characterization of the typical characters of the first Milanese Leonardo, there is a chromatic play of light and shadows given by the night scene taken by Correggio and Albrecht Dürer, similar to the work of the Campi brothers in the church of San Paolo Converso.

After the conclusion of his most important work, Lomazzo gradually lost the use of sight until he became blind due to the degeneration of a disease in his eyes: this prevented him from continuing his career as a painter, however he allowed him to devote himself to various literary works including the treatise of the idea of the temple of painting, or a compendium on painting in the footsteps of Vasari ‘s work. Among the conclusions that Lomazzo draws in his work, there is the use of “different ways” to achieve a perfect style, praising the design of Michelangelo, the color of Tiziano and Correggio, and the proportions of Raphael: just by the painters to reach the right way is the comparison of painting to a temple, supported by seven governors as columns to support it: in addition to the artists just mentioned are added Leonardo, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Mantegna and Gaudenzio Ferrari. The author also gives a judgment on the most noble type of painting, considering the fresco as the most precious work, and compares the painter’s work to the work of divine creation.

The Lomazzo then goes beyond a guide on painting to flow into almost philosophical aspects, judging painting as the sole source of knowledge of the “beauty of all things”, from which then an inventory of the things in which beauty would be formed, from “women and children” to “dragons and monsters”, commenting on the most disparate details, such as “the shadow under the fish”. Finally, the text concludes with a commentary on the fashion of the wunderkammer era, symptomatic of their variety and invention of the art of the time.

Famous for his bizarre compositions, Giuseppe Arcimboldi, commonly known as Arcimboldo, was trained in his father’s workshop and began his career as a cartoonist for the stained glass windows of the Duomo of Milan. In 1562 he already had enough fame to be called to the court of Prague of Rudolph II, where he carried on his particular taste on the themes of his works and worked as a consultant for the wunderkammerEmperor; he returned to Milan only in 1582 where he continued his activity as a painter, while maintaining close contacts with the Prague court. The style of the Arcimboldo portraits, made by the composition of fruits and vegetables to give anthropomorphic elements, was one of the most particular of the period and his style was often imitated: in the past it was sometimes difficult to identify the painter’s autograph work with confidence. so many were the works in the style of the painter. Among the most famous works we find the Four Seasons, The Four Elements and Rudolph II in the garments of God Vertumnus. The bowl of vegetables and the head with fruit basket are rather particular, which are part of a series of works which, depending on the inverted or not arranged layout, take on the appearance of a portrait or a simple still life.

Giovanni Ambrogio Figino was a student of Lomazzo, but ended his training on a journey of updating between Genoa and Rome, where he concentrated his studies in particular on Michelangelo and Raffaello: this Roman stay definitely influenced his style much more than he had done with his teacher. Lost many of his early works, at the young age of the painter can be traced the paintings of San Marco and San Parolo for the church of San Raffaele and the Madonna della Serpe for the church of San Fedele, which was inspired by the same subjectthe Caravaggio. However, the painter’s fame reached the end of the eighties, with the paintings of the Madonna and Child with Saints Giovanni Evangelista and Michele Arcangelo (1588) for the college of jurists and Sant’Ambrogio on horseback (1590) for the chapel of the provision. Il Figino also ventured into portraiture, which is reminiscent of the portrait of Lucio Foppa, also described by chronicles of the time for the attention to detail of the objects of the painting such as the reflections of the armor and the particular rendering of lace. At the height of his fame, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, he was called to the court of the Savoy to paint the Great Gallery of the Royal Palace of Turin.

A special speech must be made for Aurelio Luini, son of the most famous Bernardino from whom he inherited the shop and the commissions for the church of San Maurizio to the Maggiore Monastery, where from 1555 he signed the frescoes of the Stories of the Deluge, some lunettes of the apsidal wall and above all the Adoration of the Magi for the counter-façade, in which the painter already shows a language full of tension and inspired by Leonardo’s drawings that insert Aurelio Luini among the heirs of the Milanese Leonardeschi together with Lomazzo. However it was forbidden to the painter’s profession in the city by Archbishop Borromeo for reasons never fully clarified until the latter’s death. Among his most famous works, there is the shovel for the Duomo of Milan by Santa Tecla, which shows a high compositional tension already found in the Martyrdom of St. Vincent for the church of San Vincenzo alle Monache, a pictorial style that is thought to be was the basis of the enmity with Cardinal Borromeo.

Finally it is worth spending a few words not on an author in particular, but on the theme of still life. This theme found in Milan and Lombardy in general one of its first places of diffusion, favored among other things by the Leonardesque heritage. Among the first still life producers we find the Milanese Ambrogio Figino, Fede Galizia and the Cremonese Panfilo Nuvolone: in this early period still lifes are often painted in a melancholic perspective of a transient beauty and a corruptible nature from the passage of time; however there are no symbolic or mystical references, a symptom of a residual ecclesiastical control over art. Caravaggio, so inspired by the naturalism of Lombard tradition, did not remain completely unrelated to this phenomenon, by venturing into the Fruit Canestra, the only autonomous still life of the painter.

External schools
The school most present in Milan after the local school is certainly the Cremonese school of artists, then in a period of flourishing because of the construction sites of the cathedral of Cremona. The two schools, however, often came into conflict, especially the comparison between the Milanese Giuseppe Meda and Giuseppe Arcimboldo in the 1563 and the Cremona Bernardino Campi and Carlo Urbino in a competition for the design of the gonfalon of Milan and in 1564 always between the Meda and the brothers Bernardino, Antonio and Giulio Campi in a competition for the drawings of the doors of the Milan Duomo organ, both won by Milanese interpreters.

The first to arrive in Milan was Bernardino Campi in 1550, called by the governor Ferrante Gonzaga who commissioned him a series of portraits of his daughter Hippolyta thanks to his reputation as a portraitist, which was followed by a large number of commissions of all the Milanese nobility. Il Campi introduced a painting inspired by Parmigianino’s style in the Milanese art scene, in clear antithesis with the Leonardesque and Gaudenzian heritage painting until then in vogue in the city, also with the help of many helpers including Carlo Urbino: if the painting of the Campi was decidedly refined and elegant, the painter did not have an equally high level of creativity in models and solutions, for which he often resorted to the help of the Urbino, a valid painter, but an excellent composer of themes and models for the most varied works. The fame of Bernardino Campi increased in the following two decades to such an extent that the commissioned work was so numerous that some of his work was directly performed by his collaborator Urbino: the altarpiece of the Madonna with Child and Saints (1565) for the church of Sant’Antonio Abate, signed and painted by the Campi of which the preparatory models of Carlo Urbino are available.

In addition to this prolific collaboration, Carlo Urbino obviously painted on his own, experimenting with paintings of more Lombard tradition such as Pentecost for the chapel of St. Joseph in the church of San Marco, which incorporates the scheme of the Gloria Angelica del Lomazzo painted in the same church in Cappella Foppa: nevertheless the collaboration with Bernardino Campi and his subsequent works alone contributed to introducing in Milan a mannerism more attentive to the experiences of Emilia and Central Italy that marked the definitive entrance of “foreign” commissions in the Milanese nobility. In this sense, Carlo Urbino worked between 1557 and 1566in the decoration of the church of Santa Maria near San Celso and for paintings commissioned by Isabella Borromeo.

The fame that Bernardino Campi had obtained favored the arrival in Milan of other protagonists of the Cremonese school, including the Giulio Campi brothers, for a Crucifixion (1560) in the church of Santa Maria della Passione, and Antonio Campi with the canvas of the Resurrection of Christ (1560) for the church of Santa Maria at San Celso, where we see the combination of illusion and prospective luminismo then taken up in the works of St. Paul Stories for the homonymous church, where the two brothers worked together: between The most significant achievements of the cycle are the Conversion of St. Paul(1564) in which Antonio Campi is inspired by the characters in the background at the work of Giulio Romano in the Sala di Troia of Palazzo Ducale in Mantua and the Decollazione del Battista (1571), which for the poor environment and the luminous effect of the torch which interrupts the obscurity of the scene in the central group did not fail to influence the young Caravaggio. In the church of Sant’Angelo always by Antonio Campi are the paintings of the Martyrdom of Saint Catherine (1583) and Santa Caterina in the prison visited by the empress Faustina(1584), painted in dark environments with the presence of multiple sources of light, thanks to which Campi tried his hand in a clever play of chiaroscuro from which Caravaggio would have learned so much in the use of the effect of “grazing light” [119 ]. Finally, in the church of San Paolo Converso there is the major realization of Antonio Campi, with the collaboration of his brother Vincenzo, of the fresco decoration of the vault with the Assumption of Jesus (1586-1589) in which the brothers ventured into a rare example of quadratic illusionism inspired by the Mantuan solution by Giulio Romano, in which we note the adherence to the prospective treatise of the Two Rules of the practical perspective of Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola: the church, run by the nuns from the Sfondrati Cremonese family, was fundamental in breaking the closure of the Milanese school to other experiences, entrusting almost all the commissions to Cremonese artists.

Despite the heated rivalry between the Cremonese and Milanese schools, the painters from Cremona and in particular the Campi brothers did not fail to influence the Milanese art in the coming years, perhaps even more than they influenced Cremonese painting itself. The formation of the two younger brothers took place in the workshop of his brother Giulio, a follower of a Emilian school Raffaella: Antonio Campi instead, will import in the city a painting influenced, as well as the style of his brother, from a particular attention to the models of Camillo Boccaccino and Parmigianino.

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Vincenzo Campi, the youngest of the three brothers, was the one who developed the most peculiar style among all: the casual use of luministic effects and greater attention to naturalistic painting sometimes make him label as an exponent of “precaravaggism”. In addition to the fruitful collaborations with the brothers, Vincenzo is also known for having ventured into genre painting, as in the works of the Pescivendoli or Pollivendoli, which combines a painting inspired by the Flemish tradition of Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer with an eye for every detail of the typical scene of Lombard naturalism

The Crema Giovanni da Monte, still tied to the Cremona school, debuted in Milan in the church of Santa Maria at San Celso return from a stay in Vilnius and Venice with the work of the Resurrection of Christ, then passed to the brothers Campi. Having ventured into various activities such as drawings for ephemeral apparatuses, he is remembered in Milan for the organ doors of the Basilica of San Nazaro with the Saints Nazarius and Celso in which he fuses all the Nordic, Venetian and Lombard elements learned in his experience as a painter [125 ].

Simone Peterzano was from the Veneto school, who made his debut in Milan in the decoration of the church of San Maurizio at the Maggiore Monastery and some canvases for the church of San Barnaba, where his first style is still alive, given by the training on the Venetian models of Tintoretto, Veronese and Titian, his teacher. Upon his arrival in Milan he immediately showed adherence to the models of painting mitigated according to the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, as in the cycle for the apse of the Certosa di Garegnano where the commissioning friars specified both the subjects and the way of painting, or in the Deposition now in the church of San Fedele, where the Venetian painter also shows a certain adherence to models of naturalism typical of Savoldo: the Peterzano is also famous for being the master of Caravaggio, who also exploited the Deposition of the master in drafting the madesimo subject now preserved in the Vatican Pinacoteca. The involvement in the diffusion of counter-reformed art is also evidenced by the collaborations with Pellegrino Tibaldi, favorite artist of Borromeo.

Ottavio Semino, a painter of Genoese origin, before arriving in Milan to perform the decorations of Palazzo Marino was formed on the Genoese experience of Perin del Vaga, Giulio Romano and Raphael who studied on a trip to Rome. After the decoration of Palazzo Marino, where he arrived thanks to the call of the fellow commissioner of the building, he obtained various positions including fresco cycles for the chapel of San Gerolamo and the Brasca chapel in the church of Sant’Angelo: curiously in the contract for work in the last chapel was specified as the result should have been at least equal to those of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzoin the Foppa chapel in San Marco. Although Ottavio Semino was considered among the best painters of the Milan scene, contemporary criticism instead judges the work as disappointing and obvious for the obsessive adherence to the Raphaelesque models: nevertheless thanks to this fame the Semino obtained many assignments, among which the frescoes of the Stories of Saint John the Baptist in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

Decorative arts
Already in the early Renaissance the Milanese artisans were among the most appreciated in Europe, however the maximum splendor of the decorative arts in the city occurred in the first Spanish domain. One of the leading sectors of Milanese craftsmanship was the armor, whose invoice far surpassed that of other European manufactures. The fame of the Milanese armourers was such that their works were considered a real status symbol among the nobility of all Europe, despite other foreign states having founded their own shops, as in Innsbruck, Augusta or Greenwich; among the best craftsmen of the second half of the century we remember Lucio Marlianisaid the Piccinino and Giovanni Battista Panzeri called the Zarabaglia, both belonging to known families of gunsmiths.

More generally, the Milanese artisan products of the time supplied many wunderkammers of European sovereigns with luxury items of various kinds. Since the 1930s, the production of cameos, the carving of precious stones, and the processing of rock crystal were consolidated: the products were tableware and equipment, other table furnishings, cups, amphorae, liturgical objects, in addition to the already mentioned cameos and carvings. Even these objects, like the armor, were considered of the best quality: it was not rare that the major noble families or the European courts commissioned works of Milanese shops to give as gifts to sovereigns, relatives or friends.

The initiators of this tradition were the brothers Gaspare and Gerolamo Miseroni, who with their workshop were the suppliers, starting from the second half of the sixteenth century, of Maximilian II of Habsburg, Cosimo I de ‘Medici and the Gonzagas.

At the workshop of the Miseroni there are many portraits of crystal medallions from the collection of Rudolf II of Habsburg, including those of Ottavio Miseroni, inventor however of the technique of “commesso” on cameos, which by virtue of the many commissions of the emperor implanted a shop in Prague.

Another famous family of carvers was the Scala family: from the seventies he had among the principal patrons the dukes of Bavaria from Alberto V of Bavaria, the Gonzagas, and the Savoy. Among the various works of the family, a crystal globe sixty centimeters in diameter, engraved with the shape of the kingdom of Spain and gold decorations, executed for William V of Bavaria, is mentioned in Pompey Leoni’s testament. Within the vast collection of the dukes of Bavaria there are also many works by Annibale Fontana to whom the Scala sometimes inspired, like the cassette for Alberto V with engraved crystal plates stories from the Old Testamentand decorated with precious stones like lapis lazuli, rubies and emeralds, as well as gold enamels. Al Fontana also works exclusively in crystal like the vase with the History of Jason (Treasury of the Residence, Monaco) and the vase with Stories of Proserpine (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

Again, the Milanese families of artists must add the Saracchi workshop, which also took possession of Annibale Fontana’s drawings because of his marriage to Ippolita Saracchi, sister of the founders of the workshop. Active especially for the clients of Albert II of Bavaria, the Saracis dedicated themselves in particular to the tableware objects, as well as the canonical glittal art: among the most famous examples we can find the Galley table with carved stories of the biblical and classical tradition (Treasury of the Residence, Monaco) or the crystal table fountain, enamelled gold, gems and cameos, commissioned for the wedding of Ferdinando I de ‘Medici with Cristina di Lorena(Museo degli Argenti, Florence). Particularly appreciated for the processing of crystal and hard stones, the Saracis had the opportunity to try their hand in the most bizarre fields, such as the jasper zoomorphic jasper vases for the Gonzagas, included in the large collection of the “zoielera”: among the other patrons were also Filippo II of Spain, Rudolf II of Habsburg and the Savoy.

Along with crystals, precious stones and gold, the processing of fine woods such as ebony, ivory, especially used for decorating boxes, and the tortoise shell was also common in Milan. Given the fragility of this last material, very few specimens remain in circulation; however, there are extensive descriptions in the catalogs of the old collections of European sovereigns: in the ivory work we remember Giuseppe Guzzi, a pupil of Cristoforo Sant’Agostino or the sculptor of the wooden choir of San Vittore al Corpo, who provided a wooden and ivory desk to Rodolfo II, and had several collaborations with the Miseroni and with the Arcimboldi.

Coming out of wunderkammer’s objects, in the city there was also the activity of embroidery, which since 1560 was particularly successful thanks to the work of Scipione Delfinone, the most famous among the Milanese embroiderers together with Camillo Pusterla, with whom he ventured into the execution of the Milan banner on a project by Giuseppe Meda. The workshop of the Delfinone (or Delfinoni) was commissioned by the Stuart and the Tudor of England. Particularly active in the city was then the guild of embroiderers, which included the registration exclusively of female workers, which included Caterina Cantona, who worked on commission of Christine of Lorraine and Catherine of Austria, and is also remembered in the Rhymesof the Lomazzo. In any case, every activity in the luxury clothing sector, as well as accessories such as gloves and hats, was present in the city. The importance of this manufacturing sector led legislators to introduce norms on women’s clothing and decoration: although the declared intent was the diffusion of a more sober clothing and to prevent families from spending too much, the real goal was to favor the manufactures local, to the detriment of decorations such as plumes and laces imported from Genoa and Venice.

At the height of their fame, most of the Milanese artisans’ families were offered to transfer their shop to various cities, usually to the chosen court: it is the case of the aforementioned Ottavio Miseroni, who moved his workshop to Prague on request of Rodolfo II, or the laboratories of the Caroni and Gaffuri families who, on the Medici family’s offer, transferred their business to Florence; it was also customary to move temporarily to a court, such as Michele Scala, who worked for about a year in Mantua for the Gonzagas or the very short stays of the Saracs in Munich. The Milanese factories were still lucky in the first half of the seventeenth century: their end is often identified with thegreat manzoni plague in Milan or with the sack of Mantua: the great ducal collections were partly bought by Charles I of England a few years before the sack, “sold off” by the dukes of Mantua to cope with the family’s financial problems, and then destroyed or dispersed by the German troops that invaded the city.

The Academy of the Facchini of the Val di Blenio
To conclude the discussion of the Milanese artistic situation of the late sixteenth century, it is worthwhile to say a few words about a long-reputed phenomenon as marginal and underground, revalued only since the last decade of the twentieth century, which allowed to classify the experience of “Rabisch”, as they were also called adherents to the group, as a phenomenon parallel to the counter-reformed art of the age to which we can refer as “alternative classicism”. The revaluation made the academy pass from a purely goliardic and recreational role to a cultural movement that with its “anti-intellectualist attitude” and the idea of art “as free creation”scapillatura.

Although difficult to define precisely and to be framed within a single activity, the Academy of the Facchini of the Val di Blenio was active starting from the second half of the century in Milan, as a group of personalities eager to get out of the culture schemes spread by Cardinal Borromeo. The group’s work was as varied as its members, strictly in secret: the soul and “abbot” of the order was Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, who dedicated himself to almost all the activities of the order, including painting, to caricature, to poetry, composing the dialect collection of verses of the Rabisch. Among the other more active members we find Pirro Visconti Borromeo, noble protector of the order, the engraverAmbrogio Brambilla and “great chancellor of the valley”, the painters Giuseppe Arcimboldi, Aurelio Luini, Ottavio Semino, Paolo Camillo Landriani, the sculptor Annibale Fontana and finally the Flemish publisher Nicolas van Aelst.

The group’s activities therefore ranged from drawings and caricatures of Leonardesque heritage from the taste of the grotesque to genre painting; from coins distributed to members of the group, to poems in a dialect based on Bleniense: a sort of rustic Milanese spoken in the valleys of the Canton of Grisons, to which were added loans from various languages of the era, including Spanish, Tuscan and Genoese. The compositions often resulted in ridicule if not in the vernacular: for this reason the association remained secret in a period in which the control of the Church on public morality came to the point to deny the associated Aurelio Luini the exercise of painting in the city by order same as the archbishop.

Some of the documents attributable to the academy allow us to describe some of the customs of the group. The most famous is certainly the self- portrait as abbot of the Academy of the Val di Blenio del Lomazzo, where the painter reproduces with a fur coat and a straw hat pinned with the seal of the academy, probably created by Annibale Fontana, depicting a wine box with ivy leaves and vine, symbol of Bacchus, the central theme of the academy in resuming the Aristotelian belief of the association of artistic creativity with wine drunkenness. It is uncertain whether the members should actually dress in the manner depicted by the painting, but it was obligatory during the meetings to express themselves in the Bleniense dialect; the language in which the “admission exam” was carried out, which included a series of questions on the uses and customs of the brentatori, or the ancient Ticinese wine transporters.

So the academy did not lack the playful and joking component end in itself, but it would be wrong to classify it only as such: in the Lomazzo sonnets, in addition to double meanings and teasing, you can find important elements of social criticism towards the rigid policies del Borromeo, as well as references to the works of Pietro Aretino and Luciano di Samosata. An attack on humanism is found in caricatures that twist and deform the human body, at the center of Renaissance humanistic culture with its perfection, while in the same vein can be inserted the paintings of the Arcimboldo depicting human figures composed of vegetables, which however escape ultimately for the purposes of the academy because of the classical symbology to which the painter had to abide by the powerful commissioners. Concluding therefore the analysis of this bizarre and eclectic group of artists, it can be said that the key of the group was to throw itself against the heart of the reformed art, that is against imposed models and fixed rules that would result in orthodox compositions out of which it was not possible to go out, to say it with the words of Francesco Porzio, through”.

Source from Wikipedia

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