Fra Angelico et les maîtres de la lumière | Fra Angelico and the Masters of Light

From 23rd September 2011 to 16th January 2012
Jacquemart-André Museum
158, boulevard Haussmann - 75008 PARIS
www.musee-jacquemart-andre.com

Open 365 days a year from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Open every Monday and Saturdays evening until
9.30 p.m.
www.expositionfraangelico.com

The exhibition, which is opening its doors at the Jacquemart-André Museum in Paris, aims to present the French public with a vast retrospective dedicated to the painter Fra Angelico, whilst at the same time recreating the complexity of the cultural climate in Florence during the first half of the quattrocento. This is an exceptional event as it is the first exhibition in France dedicated to one of the major artists of the Florentine Renaissance.
From 23rd September 2011 to 16th January 2012, the Jacquemart-André Museum is holding an exhibition dedicated to Fra Angelico, a major figure of the Quattrocento. The Jacquemart-André Museum is the first French museum to pay tribute to Fra Angelico and reconsider this exceptional artist’s career. The exhibition will present nearly 25 major works by Fra Angelico and a similar number of panels painted by some of his prestigious contemporaries.

Fra Angelico (c.1400-1455) was a major player in Florence’s artistic and cultural revolution at the beginning of the 15th century. His work combines the golden lustre inherited from Gothic style with a new understanding of perspective. He initiated the artistic movement which specialists have named the “Peintres de la Lumière” (painters of light).
Alongside his works will be hung those of renowned painters who significantly influenced his work, such as his teacher Lorenzo Monaco (1370-1424), Masolino (1383-c. 1440) and Paolo Uccello (1397-1475), as well as artists that he inspired, such as Filippo Lippi (1406-1469) and Zanobi Strozzi (1412-1468).

(19 August – 20 November 2011)
WALLRAF-RICHARTZ-MUSEUM & FONDATION CORBOUD
Obenmarspforten (am Kölner Rathaus)
D- 50667 Köln
www.wallraf.museum

In this exhibition the Wallraf pays tribute to the founder of modern art history, the Italian painter and historian Giorgio Vasari. On the occasion of his 500th birthday the museum will open up its treasure trove of early Italian drawings from the 15th and 16th centuries, including major works by Leonardo, Raphael, Salviati, Andrea del Sarto and Federico Zuccaro.

The exhibition also recalls the meaning of disegno for the development of art during the Renaissance and for the foundation of the artist’s new feeling of self-esteem at the dawn of the Modern Age. The drawings from the museum’s own holdings will be supplemented by loans from private collectors in Cologne, which will elevate the exhibition in honour of Vasari to a veritable homage to the art of Italian drawing.

LA LUCE
"Sembrano, in Piero, i colori nascere per la prima volta come elementi di un'invenzione del mondo".
Così il grande critico d'arte Roberto Longhi provava a spiegare quel senso della luce che resta uno degli aspetti più affascinanti dell'esperienza artistica di Piero Della Francesca. Già durante il suo soggiorno a Firenze Piero apprende la grande lezione di Domenico Veneziano, vale a dire una pittura luminosa, chiara, tersa che costruisce le figure nella luce. Una luce diffusa, che nasce dall'impasto cromatico del colore. Non sovrapposta, ma armoniosamente integrata al disegno. Fu poi l'incontro con la cultura fiamminga, avvenuta durante la sua attività nelle Corti di Urbino e Ferrara, ad accrescere in lui la tecnica del colore. La pittura fiamminga è nota per aver portato in Italia l'uso della pittura ad olio, offrendo al pittore la possibilità di un controllo più raffinato della luce. Piero costruisce le immagini con il colore e costruisce il colore con la luce. L'ora delle sue meditazioni pittoriche è il mezzogiorno, quando la luce zenitale cancella le ombre della terra.

IL MISTERO
La Madonna di Senigallia è un dipinto in apparenza tradizionale: il soggetto è molto comune e la destinazione privata e famigliare. Eppure questo capolavoro si presta a molte letture diverse e non sono ancora chiare le vicende storiche alle quali si lega. Fioccano le interpretazioni e le ipotesi. C'è chi ritiene che l'opera sia stata commissionata da Giovanna Feltria e Giovanni Della Rovere in occasione del loro matrimonio celebrato nel 1478. Per altri è stato invece un dono del padre Federico da Montefeltro alla figlia Giovanna, ma non un regalo di nozze quanto piuttosto un lascito in punto di morte. Per altri invece il dipinto fu voluto da Federico per rievocare la figura dell'amatissima moglie Battista Sforza dopo la sua scomparsa. Secondo questa tesi, autorevolmente sostenuta da Maria Grazia Ciardi Duprè dal Poggetto, il luogo dove Piero della Francesca ha collocato la Madonna di Senigallia è il Palazzo di Gubbio, dimora prediletta di Battista Sforza, come dimostrato dalle travature lignee della stanza retrostante.

I Capolavori dell'Arte in Toscana | Piero della Francesca | La Madonna di Senigallia (1470-1485)

Following their initial collaboration in 2009, which focused on the collection of the House of Savoy, the museums of Flanders and of northern Italy are once again putting their respective schools of painting into perspective with a stunning selection of pictures. From the 15th to the 18th century, the exhibition presents four centuries of contrast between 15 masterpieces from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp and some fifty paintings from the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, one of the finest collections of Venetian paintings in existence. Venetian and Flemish Mastersis organised chronologically in four sections, one for each century; within each section, four major themes are highlighted - the portrait, saints in a natural setting, the sacred and the profane, and panoramic views. In thequattrocento Bellini's portraits influenced Van Eyck, while the northern painter exportedhis naturalism. In thecinquecento the Venetians moved beyond the techniques of the Flemish Primitives. Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese created an explosion of colour and brought new light into the landscapes of Patenier. In theseicento, Rubens, in Italy, had an influence on Tiepolo. Thesettecento, finally,saw a proliferation of styles in a Venice in decline, from Canaletto's snapshots to the sarcastic genre paintings of Guardi, which influenced the love of excess in the work of Jordaens. In short: the Venetian and Flemish schools could not have existed without each other.

The Venetian and Flemish Masters exhibition, presented in four sections, takes us through four key centuries for European painting (from the 15th to the 18th century) and illustrates the many points of contact and mutual influences involved in the relations between Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, and Venice in terms of training and emulation:

· the quattrocento, highlighting the birth of the portrait and devotional painting, contrasting the work of Pisanello and Giovanni Bellini with that of other masters such as Rogier van der Weyden;
· the cinquecento, landscapes and devotional works, including Titian, Palma il Vecchio, and Veronese, presented alongside their Flemish colleagues;
· the seicento – the sacred and the profane – when Rubens, Padovanino, and Tiepolo made an appeal to the senses in their depictions of both sacred and profane subjects;
· genre scenes and views from the settecento, presenting the parallels between Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, and Pietro Longhi and the Northern masters who, on occasion, preceded and influenced them.

Berlinde de Bruyckere's intervention in the exhibition

The internationally renowned Ghent artist Berlinde de Bruyckere (born in Ghent in 1964) works on, sculpts, interrogates, and illustrates the human body in particular. Looking at history and humanity from a global perspective, her art draws its inspiration primarily from painting, both early and modern. Taking her references for the most part from German and Italian painting, she accepted the invitation to engage with a number of works from Venetian and Flemish Masters : she presents two of her own works in the exhibition.
Housed in a wooden container, Lingam features a strung-up body which appears all the more disturbing for its missing head and limbs. Berlinde De Bruyckere has constantly referred to art history in her work, and this one instantly reminds me of Titian's masterpiece, the Flaying of Marsyas, one of the bloodiest images of the Renaissance. But the title here refers to a traditional representation of the Hindu goddess Shiva, adding another layer of mystery to this unforgettable sculpture.

Lorenzo Bartolino. The Sculptor of Natural Beauty.

The Accademia Gallery is a mecca for art lovers because it is home to Michelangelo's David. You can admire that and other Michelangelo’s masterpieces and paintings and sculptures by the great masters of the Florentine 14th and 15th centuries.

The Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence opened the first major exhibition dedicated to Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850), an artist whose work played a central role in the development of sculpture in the nineteenth century Italy, Europe and the United States. The show, inspired by the extraordinary group of plaster models held in the impressive gallery of plaster casts of the Galleria dell'Accademia, will finally emerge the highest quality of its production and will highlight the wealth of artistic interests, ranging on the big issues pillars of nineteenth-century sensibility, such as feeling, memory, ethical and civil values.

Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence
From May 31ST to November 6TH 2011

Opening Hours: Opening hours : Tuesday - Sunday, 8:15 am - 6:50 pm; Closed : Mondays, January 1, December 25 and May 1
July 6th - September 28th 2010, every Tuesday: the Accademia Gallery will remain open until 10:00 p.m.

Uffizi Gallery, Florence
From June 14TH to October 30TH 2011

Opening Hours: Opening hours : Tuesday - Sunday, 8:15 am - 6:50 pm; Closed : Mondays, January 1, December 25 and May 1

Figure, Memorie, Spazio | Disegni da Fra' Angelico a Leonardo
Uffizi Gallery, Florence

8 Mar 11 - 12 Jun 11

This is the return leg of an exhibition that was first on show at the British Museum in London during the Summer of 2010; there it was entitled ‘Masterpices from the Uffizi Gallery – Italian Renaissance Drawings’, here it headlines as ‘Figure, Memorie, Spazio Disegni da Fra’Angelico a Leonardo’.
With perfect balance, the exhibition features 50 pieces from the British Museum and 50 from the Uffizi Gallery, and highlights the increasing importance of drawing in the fifteenth century, featuring works by Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Angelico, Jacopo and Gentile Bellini, Botticelli, Carpaccio, Filippo Lippi, Mantegna, Michelangelo, Verrocchio and Titian amongst others.

Opening Hours: Opening hours : Tuesday - Sunday, 8:15 am - 6:50 pm; Closed : Mondays, January 1, December 25 and May 1

The Ghirlandaio Family in Florence and Scandicci

The Ghirlandaio Family
Renaissance painters in Florence and Scandicci
Castello dell’Acciaiolo
Scandicci (near Florence)
21st November 2010 - 1st May 2011

Exhibition official website (in Italian)

The Exhibition presents a spectacular collection of some of the most beautiful works of art of the Family Ghirlandaio and of whom studied in their work-shop, that worked for about a century, from the second half of 1400 to the first half of 1500 - the project sees, besides the Exhibition, an itinerary among the treasures of the Family in Florence.
Scandicci is by no means an arbitrary venue; on the contrary it has been chosen specially to house the exhibition on the Ghirlandaio family in an area to which these artists were always tied.
Among the works of art showcased in the exhibition at the Castello dell’Acciaiolo is a beautiful panel painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio.
Along with the exhibition at the Castello dell’Acciaiolo, the Piccoli Grandi Musei project offers to visitors the possibility of tracing the artistic activity of the Ghirlandaio family in the area. The recommended itinerary includes a visit to: the abbeys of San Salvatore and San Lorenzo in Settimo, the Museum of Sacred Art of San Martino in Gangalandi in the Lastra a Signa area, and also to the Museum of Sacred Art and the adjoining Church of Sant’Andrea in San Donnino, in the municipality of Campi Bisenzio. Here, visitors will be able to observe the large fresco by Domenico Ghirlandaio of the Madonna and Child Enthroned between Saints Sebastian and Julian. In the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, a video will illustrate the places where Domenico Ghirlandaio and his workshop were active.

Bronzino's most well-known works today are the sophisticated and wonderfully detailed portraits of the Medici family, particularly the work commissioned for Cosimo I, his wife Eleonora di Toledo and their children. Together with the beautiful portraits of the famous royal family, Bronzino also decorated Eleonora's chapel in Palazzo Vecchio with stunning mannerist frescoes. His portraits became icons not only of the Medici family but of noble European portraiture in general. Eleonora di Toledo was really the first of the modern “first ladies” whose fashion, elegance and poise was yearned for by others, and this often-copied portrait of Eleonora in her unforgettable dress and beautiful baby boy perhaps helped contribute to her iconic status – her confident, slightly aloof yet relaxed gaze and exquisite sense of style capture the wealth, domesticity and future of the Medici family. It is also considered the first portrait of a first lady with heir, and thus set a standard for many other similar portraits to come.

Curated by: Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali

Treasures of the Medicis

Paris - Musee Maillol 29 September - 13 February 2011
Curated by Patrizzia Nitti
www.museemaillol.com

On Sept. 29, the Musée Maillol in Paris, now under the direction of the Italian Renaissance expert Patrizzia Nitti, opened Treasures of the Medicis, a four-month-long show of art from the collection of the house of Medici, tracing their centuries-old influence on art, politics and everyday life. In a show of 150 objects that once belonged to the Medici dynasty, Paris's Musée Maillol reveals how these rich apothecaries from Florence became bankers and then princes of Europe — defining the future of Western art along the way by surrounding themselves with the greatest artists of their times.

The Medicis, a family of illustrious Florentine bankers that rose to power in the 14th and 15th centuries, produced popes, princes and two queens of France. Patrons of the arts and arbiters of taste and fashion over a period of more 300 years, they used art as a tool of diplomacy and as an expression of power.
The Medicis surrounded themselves with major figures in the arts: painters like Fra Angelico, Botticelli and Raphael; sculptors like Michelangelo; goldsmiths like Benvenuto Cellini; as well as musicians, poets and thinkers.
From this wealth of material — most of it still in Florence but some dispersed through the dowries of political marriages to Rome, Naples, Paris and Prague — the show at the museum has brought together almost 150 objects and artworks to recreate a sense of the splendor, the intellectual and cultural curiosity and the intimacies of daily life at the Medici court.
Highlights include Adoration of the Magi by Botticelli, a Raphael portrait, and a small, marble sculpture, “Apollo-David,” by Michelangelo. Other notable pieces both on the ground floor and upstairs are the lovely portrait of Eleanor of Toledo (1543) by Agnolo Bronzin, Raphael’s portrait of Tommaso Inghirami, and a stunning portrait of a young man by Bernardo and Neri de’ Nerli in an illuminated edition of the works of Homer.

Bernardo and Neri de' Nerli have left a noble monument of their munificence and love of literature, in publishing at their own expense the first edition of the writings of Homer, printed at Florence in the year 1488; a work which confers honour not only on its patrons, and on the eminent Greek scholars who superintended the printing, but on the age and country in which it was produced.'' This edition was carefully corrected, and the printing superintended by the learned Greek Demetrius Chalcondyles.   Bernardo and Neri de' Nerli dedicated the editio princeps of Homer, printed at their expense, to Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici as a boy.[2] 
Antiquities include an Etruscan bronze from the first century B.C., several Roman cameos in onyx and sardonyx, and a Greek statue of a chariot driver, said to have been restored by Cellini. Scientific instruments include a 13th-century Arab astrolabe in gilded copper, and a 17th-century German sundial, in ivory.

The MAXXI museum designed by Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid is the latest and most ambitious project to try to refresh the Italian capital's image of a decadent city bent on its glorious past.
"My work just really stems from the fact that we can make new juxtapositions with the old," Hadid told The Associated Press during Thursday's preview opening. "The idea of connecting between the old and new is very critical."
For Hadid, who became the first woman to win the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004, the challenge was to work with the "layers" of Rome's artistic past and bring a new space for art in the city. She recalled visiting Rome in the 1960s and posing in front of the Trevi Fountain, a masterpiece of Baroque art.
"Rome has fantastic light," Hadid said. "The idea of this project is about layering and bringing in light to the space so that you have a naturally lit space—and to give the curators tremendous freedom in the way they can organize exhibits."

MAXXI Art has been conceived as the Italian point of reference on the international circuit of excellence in contemporary art. The collection and the exhibitions, reflecting the latest developments in art, but with a broad-based approach, ensure that the institution effectively legitimizes and acts as an international showcase for Italian art of the present.

Palazzo della Ragione – Milano – November 10th, 2010 – February 13th, 2011
www.turismo.milano.it

Palazzo Sciarra Colonna – Roma – November 30th, 2010 – March 6th, 2011
www.fondazioneromamuseo.it

Both artistic and archaeological, the exhibition aims to illustrate the way in which ancient monuments, excavations, museums and artistic institutions were able to nourish the arts and education and spread the love for classic art throughout Europe which, at the end of the eighteen century, became an indispensable model. The exhibition intends to bring into focus the major factors that that generated Rome’s cultural wealth and fame: Classic Antiquity. Especially in the second half of the century Rome was an authentic crossroads for artists who came from all over Europe in order to study Antiquity.

Perugia – September 25th, 2010 – January 9th, 2011
www.gallerianazionaleumbria.it

The show will be set up inside the Galleria Nazionale and contains works by modern and contemporary artists influenced in some way by Freud. In Perugia, you’ll find works by Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalì, Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, Renè Magritte, André Masson, Joan Mirò, Man Ray, Alberto Savinio, Yves Tanguy, Fernando Botero, Paul Klee, Max Klinger, Plinio Nomellini, Gaetano Previati.

Padova – October 2nd, 2010 – February 7th, 2011
www.zabarella.it

Canova and Modigliani, two internationally renowned protagonists but with absolutely different personalities, open and close this passionate tale in paintings in which both great names in history and the anonymous extras of a domestic epic appear. Painted and sculptured, of individuals and groups, with or without a setting, celebrative or introspective, these portraits all evoke the changes and restlessness of a society undergoing rapid transformation, interpreting the expectations of a country that was achieving political unity for the very first time.

Roma – October 14th, 2010 – January 30th, 2011
www.chiostrodelbramante.it

The “Chiostro del Bramante” in Rome will host till January 30th an exhibition dedicated to the great Venetian painters. From Pisanello to Tiziano, from Tintoretto to Tiepolo, Rome will host a part of the Carrara’s Academy collection, proposing a restauration of some of its works. This exhibition at the “Chiostro” will deploy four centuries of venetian artworks, from 1400 to 1700, enlightening the artistic – figurative development that characterized the Serenissima Republic history from Renaissance to Enlightenment.

Rimini – October 23rd, 2010 – March 27th, 2011
www.lineadombra.it

To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio’s death in 2010, Castel Sismondo has decided to flank the “Paris: the Wonderful Years” exhibition with a second, extraordinary event entitled “Caravaggio and Other Seventeenth-century Painters: Masterpieces from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford”. This exhibition consists of a magnificent selection of fifteen large-format paintings from the American museum’s important collection of seventeenth-century works. It naturally commences with Caravaggio’s unforgettable masterpiece, Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy, the great artist’s very first painting of a religious subject, dating from around 1594.

Vinum Nostrum

Firenze – July 20th, 2010 – April 30th, 2011
www.uffizi.firenze.it

From Mesopotamia to our tables, from the rite of communion to avoidable drunkenness, from distasteful habit to gate of spirituality, wine and the grapevine are the protagonists of the exhibition. Original showpieces, sculptures, frescoes and mosaics, accompanied by multimedia and video installations will recount the millenarian history of the grapevine and of wine, and the important influence they exerted on the culture of the ancients.

Roma - October 15th, 2010 - February 13th, 2011
www.galleriaborghese.it

The works of the great German painter Lucas Cranach will be shown for the first time in Italy at the Galleria Borghese. From October 15, 2010 to February 13, 2011, the Galleria Borghese will host – for the first time in Italy – the works of Lucas Cranach the Elder, who, along with Albrecht Dürer, is the greatest representative of the renaissance of German painting in the sixteenth century. Cranach: The Other Renaissance is promoted by the city of Rome’s Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale and its head, Rossella Vodret, organized by MondoMostre.

Palazzo Strozzi – Firenze – September 24th, 2010 – January 23rd, 2011
www.palazzostrozzi.org

This unique exhibition is the very first to be devoted to the work of one of the greatest painters of the 16th century, Agnolo di Cosimo known as Bronzino (1503−1572), a sophisticated court painter in the years in which Cosimo I de’ Medici was in power and one of the greatest artists in the history of Italian painting.
The exhibition, with loans from some of the leading museums of the world, offers visitors the chance to admire over 70 paintings by the artist himself, alongside work by Pontormo, Cellini, Tribolo, Baccio Bandinelli, Pierino da Vinci and Alessandro Allori.

Sandro Botticelli’s painting has become a landmark of Italian Renaissance. The delicate beauty, elegant grace, and unique charm of his frequently melancholic figures make his work the epitome of Florentine painting in the Golden Age of Medici rule under Lorenzo the Magnificent. Initially trained as a goldsmith and then apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli soon ranked among the most successful painters in Florence in the second half of the quattrocento next to Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, and the Pollaiuolo brothers. From 1470 on, he received prestigious public commissions and established himself as a painter of large altarpieces. Throughout his life, Botticelli was in the ruling Medici family’s and their supporters’ good graces. Fulfilling their wishes for innovative decorative paintings, the master could not only rely on his personal knowledge of Florentine traditions and of ancient art, but also on definite suggestions and concepts from the circle of humanists gathered around Lorenzo de’ Medici. Held in equally high esteem as both a panel and a fresco painter, Botticelli enjoyed a high standing beyond his native Florence and was thus one of the artists summoned to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel in Rome by Pope Sixtus IV in 1481. It was particularly his much-discussed late work that brought out the characteristic features of his original style in an extreme manner. Guided by the art of drawing — the exhibition includes an outstanding selection of preparatory sketches – Botticelli followed his penchant for presenting his figures with sharp contours, strong movements, and abundant gestures, grounding his compositions on textures of lines and surfaces rather than on spaces and volumes. In this respect, his painting had already stood out against his competitors’ works and current theoretical demands in his early years. This is one of the reasons why art-historical research, which has devoted a vast number of major monographs and work studies to Botticelli since the beginnings of the twentieth century, still assigns a special position to the artist without fail.

The Städel Museum will show the first monographic exhibition on Sandro Botticelli (1444/45-1510) in the German-speaking world from 13 November 2009 to 28 February 2010. Taking the artist’s monumental Idealized Portrait of a Lady, one of the Städel Museum collection’s highlights, as its starting point, the exhibition presents numerous works from all productive periods of this great master of the Renaissance in Italy about 500 years after his day of death (17 May 1510). The exhibition opens with portraits and allegorical paintings that illustrate the degree of sophistication with which Botticelli drew on this highly developed genre and enriched it with new impulses. While the second chapter centers on his famous mythological representations of goddesses and heroines of virtue, the third part is dedicated to his abundant religious oeuvre. With a total of more than forty works by Botticelli and his workshop, the show presents a comprehensive selection of his work surviving worldwide. Forty further exhibits, among them works by such contemporaries as Andrea del Verrocchio, Filippino Lippi, and Antonio del Pollaiuolo, will allow to understand Botticelli’s precious creations in the historical context of their genesis. The presentation is supported by outstanding loans from the most important collections of paintings in Europe and the United States. These include the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery London, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, and the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden, as well as the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

The starting point and center of the cross-genre exhibition is provided by a main work from the collection of the Städel Museum not only very well known in Frankfurt: the master’s idealized portrait of a young lady, who is probably to be identified with Simonetta Vespucci, the beloved jousting tournament lady of Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano de’ Medici. This portrait is less aimed at a true-to-life likeness of the subject than at the ideal of a woman characterized by perfect beauty and equally perfect virtuousness, an ideal also reflected in the poetry of that time. Such an ideal defines itself not least through its rapport with antiquity: thus, the beautiful female wears a piece of jewelry round her neck which is obviously based on an ancient cameo showing Apollo and Marsyas, which will also be on display in the exhibition. In the Städel Museum, Botticelli’s famous portrait of Giuliano from the National Gallery of Art in Washington will offer itself for comparison with his beloved Simonetta’s likeness. Both paintings make up the center of the first part of the presentation, which is devoted to Botticelli’s art of portraiture and, drawing on prominent examples, illustrates the interplay between social norm and artistic form as well as the different genre conventions of the male and the female portrait.

The second chapter of the exhibition deals with Botticelli’s mythological pictures, which number among the artist’s most original creations. The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which safeguards the most comprehensive and significant collection of works by the artist in the world, supports the exhibition in Frankfurt with one of its most popular works among others loans: the famous Pallas and the Centaur, one of Botticelli’s monumental mythological paintings, to be seen in the context of Medicean self-presentation. Together with Botticelli’s Primavera, it once adorned the walls of a bedchamber in a Florentine palace owned by the family of bankers. We see Pallas taming the wild centaur indulging in his passions through her wisdom and virtue. The control and cultivation of emotions was a central issue in ancient philosophy and — combined with Christian thought — of the Renaissance, too; among the painters of the time, Botticelli offered himself as a congenial interpreter for such subjects. The political dimension and the reference to the patron family are symbolically present in the form of two intertwined diamond rings on Pallas’s gown, which were an emblem of the Medici family. Another great female figure featuring in the Florentine artist’s oeuvre is the goddess Venus. His life-size Venus from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin is a repetition of the central figure of (the unloanable) Birth of Venus in the Uffizi Gallery, which he isolated from the context of the scene and set off against a black background. This work is one of the first monumental nudes of post-ancient painting.

The third and last section of the exhibition is devoted to Botticelli’s religious pictures. Next to his portraits and mythological works, Botticelli has owed his continuing fame to his Madonnas. According to theological thinking, Mary stands out as the ideal woman among the saints: she is the most virtuous and the most beautiful female, the bride of the Song of Songs. Besides many other works spanning from Botticelli’s earliest works still revealing the influence of his teacher Fra Filippo Lippi to examples of his late style, the exhibition in Frankfurt shows one of the artist’s most beautiful Madonnas: The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child. The Madonna’s physiognomy of this painting from the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, whose brilliant colorfulness has only been uncovered through restorative measures some years ago, is rendered in the vein of the same female model which the painter developed for his idealized portraits and pictures of ancient goddesses. This chapter also includes a number of narrative pictures, such as a removed Annunciation fresco once to be found in the vestibule of the hospital of San Martino alla Scala in Florence and preserved in the Uffizi Gallery today. Not only the enormous size of the fresco (243 x 550 cm), but also its qualities as a painting testify to Botticelli’s extraordinary importance in this medium. Four panels depicting scenes from the life of St. Zenobius, an early bishop and patron of Florence, offer a further highlight, with which the exhibition ends. Usually scattered to museums in London, Dresden, and New York, they have been brought together for the first time in Frankfurt again. Ranking not only among his most significant late works, but also among his very last, the panels are to be considered as Botticelli’s legacy as an artist.

Curator of the exhibition is Dr. Andreas Schumacher (Städel Museum).

25th November 2005 -5th March 2006
Palazzo Squarcialupi del complesso museale | Santa Maria della Scala in Siena
www.sienaeroma.it | www.santamariadellascala.com
Open every day 10.30 - 18.30

Art in Tuscany | Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala
The Museo Santa Maria della Scala is a former hospital, situated in front of the Siena Duomo.

Tuscany is widely regarded as the true birthplace of the Italian Renaissance and is known for its beautiful landscapes, its rich artistic legacy and vast influence on high culture. Podere Sante Pia, a holiday estate in beautiful southern Tuscany Italy, is the perfect place for the perfect holiday.
Podere Santa Pia is located in the heart of the Valle d'Ombrone, and one can easily reach some of the most beautiful attractions of Tuscany, such as Montalcino, Pienza, Montepulciano and San Quirico d'Orcia, famous for their artistic heritage, wine, olive oil production and gastronomic traditions. It is the ideal place to pass a very relaxing holiday in contemplation of nature, with the advantage of tasting the most typical dishes of Tuscan cuisine and its best wines.
This is the land where the DOC wines Montecucco and Brunello are produced. So, the surrounding countryside is the ideal area for an uncommon wine tour, visiting small farms producing wine and excellent extra virgin olive oil.
Tuscany wines account for over thirty DOC and half a dozen of Italy's DOCG wines. Not far from Cinigiano and clearly visible from Podere Santa Pia, is the famous Castle of Poggio alle Mura, also known as Villa Banfi and home to one of the most popular producers of Brunello di Montalcino D.O.C.G. wine. Set in 7100 hectares of land in the Montalcino area, Castello Banfi il Borgo is one of the most important wine producers in Tuscany.