Anselm Kiefer transmutes the oblivion of his alchemists into gold

Dumb, in the guise of women, they silently bear the weight of vaults and columns, and this time, almost lovingly, they seem to want even more to watch over and support the might of a male-dominated story that, like the maidens enslaved by the Athenians, has deliberately excluded many of their sisters from imperishable glory for centuries.

And so they parade in precious canvases, now finally re-emerging from oblivion in the princely hall of the caryatids, their names rendered to history and shining in the gold of Rebecca Vaughan, Mary Anne Atwood, Isabella Cortese, Marie Meudrac, Maria la Judea and Caterina Sforza. They were alchemists, and now the thirty-eight scholarly heroines to whom Anselm Kiefer at the Palazzo Reale in Milan pays honour and beauty in a sublime exhibition shine with princely splendour. And he does so in his own way, through a strongly material painting that plastically coagulates and kneads colours and metals rendered tactile in a dense and dazzling flow, finally rendering the bodies of his protagonists face and redemption.

"For a long time practically no one knew about those who were wives as well as women. Their memory was lost much more than the men as alchemists who, for example, worked on the transformation of metals. And another very important thing, they did everything the men themselves did and sometimes even better,' Kiefer tells us.

"These works are all dedicated to the theme of alchemy and female alchemists," explains exhibition curator Gabriella Belli, adding, "alchemy is the science of transforming matter, and it is the science that, also pursuing the myth and utopia of the philosopher's stone, seeks and attempts the regeneration of the spirit. Matter is completely transformed through manual intervention by the artist in this work; and it is there that one feels a profound affinity, almost a self-portrait of Kiefer himself, who in this exhibition is an alchemist among alchemists.

As many as 42 imposing canvases are on display, interweaving the themes dearest to the author - such as birth, death, regeneration, memory and destruction - and dedicated to the 'heroines of alchemy'.