Vittore Carpaccio @ NGA, Washington DC - Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice, National Gallery of Art

Vittore Carpaccio 

Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice 

National Gallery of Art, Washington 

November 20, 2022 – February 12, 2023

Vittore Carpaccio

Virgin Reading, c. 1510

Oil on canvas transferred from panel

Overall: 78 x 51 cm (30 11/16 x 20 1/16 in.)

Framed: 119.7 x 86.4 x 10 cm (47 1/8 x 34 x 3 15/16 in.)

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection

Vittore Carpaccio

The Flight into Egypt, c. 1516/ 1518

Oil on panel

Painted surface: 72 x 111 cm (28 3/8 x 43 11/16 in.)

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection

A leading figure in the art of Renaissance Venice, Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1460/1466–1525/1526) is best known for his large, spectacular narrative paintings that brought sacred history to life. Celebrated in his native city of Venice for centuries, beloved for his observant eye, fertile imagination, and storytelling prowess, Carpaccio remains little known in the U.S.—except as a namesake culinary dish, "Steak Carpaccio.”

Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice is set to establish the artist’s reputation among American visitors with this, his first retrospective ever held outside Italy. Some 45 paintings and 30 drawings will include large-scale canvases painted for Venice’s charitable societies and churches alongside smaller works that decorated the homes of prosperous Venetians. The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery and Musei Civici di Venezia, also the organizers of the 2019 exhibition Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice.

“The National Gallery of Art is pleased to partner, once again, with the Musei Civici di Venezia, this time to introduce American audiences to a lesser-known protagonist of the Venetian Renaissance, Vittore Carpaccio,” said Kaywin Feldman, director, National Gallery of Art. “Our visitors will be delighted by Carpaccio’s vivid and dynamic paintings that bring to life Venice in the 15th and 16th centuries. Through his masterful storytelling, Carpaccio illustrated the maritime empire during a fascinating period when it was a cultural crossroads between West and East. We are grateful to the many museums, churches, and collectors who have generously lent their works to share with the public in this historic exhibition.”

Several paintings have been newly conserved for the exhibition. Two of Carpaccio’s best-known canvases from the Scuola degli Schiavoni were treated with the support of Save Venice, the organization dedicated to the preservation of the city’s cultural heritage: Saint Augustine in His Study (shortly after 1502)and Saint George and the Dragon (c. 1504–1507). Other treatments uncover discoveries about the original compositions. National Gallery conservator Joanna Dunn’s treatment of the museum’s Virgin Reading (c. 1505) reveals a baby Jesus previously hidden beneath a later repainting that sought to disguise where the painting had been cut down centuries ago.

The two paintings from the Scuola degli Schiavoni are among several works never before exhibited outside Italy, including the full, six-painting narrative cycle, Life of the Virgin (c. 1502–1508) made for the Scuola di Santa Maria degli Albanesi. The exhibition also includes the reunification of Fishing and Fowling on the Lagoon (c. 1492/1494)from the J. Paul Getty Museum and Two Women on a Balcony (c. 1492/1494) from Venice’s Museo Correr—two paintings that likely adorned a folding door.

Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice begins in the West Building’s West Garden Court with a special installation of Fishing and Fowling on the Lagoon (c. 1492/1494)and Two Women on a Balcony (c. 1492/1494). The two compositions were painted on the same panel of wood but were likely cut in half in the 1700s. When seen together, the paintings tell the story of two women sitting on a balcony while their husbands enjoy a day of sport on the Venetian lagoon. The panels are believed to have decorated folding doors that led into a domestic space in a Venetian palace. Here, they lead visitors into the exhibition.

The exhibition continues with an emphasis on Carpaccio’s innovations in Venetian painting. Early examples of private devotional paintings by the artist include Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (c. 1493–1496) from Germany’s Städel Museum, a unique depiction of the Virgin and Child as aristocratic Venetians of the 15th century. Another highlight of the exhibition is the reunification of the complete cycle of six canvases depicting the life of the Virgin Mary made for the Scuola di Santa Maria degli Albanesi. Carpaccio sets the story in Venice of his own day, blending details of Venetian architecture, furniture, and clothing with elements that evoke Jerusalem. Carpaccio also transposed scenes from classical mythology to contemporary Venice in other works like Departure of Ceyx from Alcyone (c. 1498/1503) from the collection of The National Gallery, London.

The exhibition includes examples from the three extant narrative cycles that Carpaccio was commissioned to create. His final narrative cycle made for the Scuola di Santo Stefano is represented by Ordination of Saint Stephen (1511) from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie. Among the largest works in the exhibition is the Lion of Saint Mark (1516) from the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Palazzo Ducale. Spanning more than twelve feet, the painting shows the traditional symbol of Venice, a winged lion. The lion stands half in the sea and half on land, alluding to the vast sea-faring empire.

Carpaccio pioneered narrative subjects in altarpieces. The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Christians on Mount Ararat (1515) from the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, was created to decorate the altar of the Ottobon family in the church of Sant’Antonio di Castello, which no longer exists. Its original context can be seen in another painting, Vision of Prior Francesco Ottobon (c. 1513), from the Gallerie dell’Accademia.

More of Carpaccio’s drawings survive than those of any other Venetian painter of his generation. Outstanding works on their own, the drawings include rough sketches for paintings presented in the exhibition, along with meticulous preparatory drawings for paintings too large to travel for this show. Preparatory drawings for a narrative cycle of the Life of Saint Ursula for the Scuola di Sant’Orsola, the artist’s first major commission, include a remarkable double-sided drawing Head of a Young Woman in Profile/Head of a Young Woman in Three-Quarter View (c. 1488–1489) from the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

Finally, an interpretive and reading room features View of Venice (1500), a remarkable woodcut by Jacopo de’ Barbari. Drawn from the National Gallery’s collection, the six-sheet print details Venice as it appeared in Carpaccio’s day and shows the thousands of buildings, squares, canals, bridges, gardens, and sculptures that filled the bustling city-state.

Exhibition Catalog

Copublished by the National Gallery of Art and Yale University Press, this 340-page illustrated catalog features essays by curators Peter Humfrey and Andrea Bellini along with contributions by other leading scholars exploring the full range of Carpaccio’s artistry and presenting new research on the extraordinary artist. Sara Menato of the Fondo Ambiente Italia analyzes extensively Carpaccio’s drawings. Susannah Rutherglen, independent scholar and former exhibitions research assistant at the National Gallery of Art, illuminates Carpaccio’s narrative paintings for the Venetian confraternities known as scuole. Professor Deborah Howard, St. John’s College, Cambridge, explores the artist’s rendering of architecture. Professor Catherine Whistler of the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford, offers her insights on Carpaccio as draftsman. Joanna Dunn, conservator at the National Gallery of Art, reveals elements of the artist’s pictorial technique. Professor Linda Borean, Department of Humanities and Cultural Patrimony, University of Udine, Italy, offers a historical perspective on early collectors and critics of Carpaccio. Andrea Bellieni of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia shares his insights on the modern understanding of Carpaccio that began in the 19th century.

Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice is organized by the National Gallery of Art and Musei Civici di Venezia. The exhibition will be presented at Palazzo Ducale, Venice, March 18, 2023 – June 18, 2023.

The exhibition is curated by Peter Humfrey, internationally recognized scholar of 15th- and 16th-century Venetian painting and Professor Emeritus of art history at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, in collaboration with Andrea Bellieni, curator at the Musei Civici di Venezia, and Gretchen Hirschauer, curator of Italian and Spanish painting at the National Gallery of Art.

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC

www.nga.gov

Giovanni Battista Moroni, Royal Academy of Arts, London

Giovanni Battista Moroni

Royal Academy of Arts, London

25 October 2014 – 25 January 2015

This exhibition of outstanding works by Giovanni Battista Moroni (c.1520-1579), widely regarded as one of the greatest painters of the sixteenth century, will be the first comprehensive survey of his oeuvre to be held in the UK. In the autumn of 2014, the Royal Academy of Arts will gather a selection of over 40 works to present Moroni not only as a distinctive portraitist but also as a fine religious painter, a role for which he is lesser known. For the first time, a number of altarpieces from the churches of the Diocese of Bergamo, northern Italy, will be displayed alongside examples of Giovanni Battista Moroni’s portraiture, chronologically charting his rise to the summit of Italian sixteenth-century painting. From works influenced by Lotto and Moroni’s master Moretto, to later commissions earned as the leading painter of Bergamo, Giovanni Battista Moroni will offer viewers the chance to discover Moroni as an unsung genius of the Renaissance.

Moroni captured the exact likeness, character and inner life of his sitters with rare penetrating insight. His portraiture, singular not only for its unprecedented realism but also its psychological depth and immediacy, was in many ways ahead of his time. Preempting the work of Caravaggio, Moroni came to be widely collected in the nineteenth century, including Portrait of a Lady (c.1556-60) and A Knight with a Jousting Helmet (c.1556), purchased by the National Gallery, London, in 1876. Moroni’s portraits depict members of the society in which he lived, a cast of compelling Renaissance characters whose lives played out the feuds and family dramas of a pro-Spanish aristocracy living under the Republic of Venice in the mid-sixteenth century. With a selection to establish Moroni as one of the major specialists in the genre, his portraits reveal an enamel-like brightness, a clarity of design and a touch of realism which is in contrast to the adorned portraiture of his contemporary Titian.

Although Moroni’s name was linked to Bergamo, he also lived and worked in the nearby towns of Brescia, Trent and Albino. Working in a city without a leading court, Moroni’s sitters span a surprisingly wide social spectrum; his clientèle, unique at the time, comprised intellectuals, professionals, state officers and artisans. His famous portrait of The Tailor (1565-1570), one of the highlights of this exhibition, is the first known portrait of a man depicted whilst undertaking manual labour. In capturing the world around him, Moroni’s works also offer a vivid record of the fashions and fortunes of Bergamo, revealing changes in costume as the colourful silks of the portraits of Isotta Brembati (c.1555) and Gian Gerolamo Grumelli (c.1560), yield to the more sombre styles of the Spanish fashion, seen in the portrait of Pietro Secco Suardo (1563).

Moroni’s religious paintings were completed in accordance with the principles of the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent (1545-1563). In these, a worshipper is often depicted as a witness to the sacred scene, as demonstrated by The Last Supper (c.1566-1569). The pastoral visit of the religious reformer Cardinal Charles Borromeo to the Diocese of Bergamo in 1575 prompted the churches of the region to commission many new religious paintings, and Moroni as the leading painter produced several art works for public devotion, including the altarpiece painting Saint Gotthard Enthroned with Saint Lawrence and Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c.1575). The selection of Moroni’s religious works will also include examples of paintings intended for private devotion, such as A Gentleman in Adoration before the Baptism of Christ (c.1555-1560).

The exhibition will be a definitive survey of Moroni’s output and includes many of his greatest masterpieces. It will reveal an artist who has perhaps gone unrecognised as an exceptional painter and a master of the Renaissance.

Giovanni Battista Moroni has been organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London. The exhibition has been curated by Simone Facchinetti, Curator of the Museo Adriano Bernareggi in Bergamo, and Arturo Galansino, Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Giovanni Battista Moroni 

(c) Royal Academy of Arts, London

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated and scholarly catalogue with contributions from Simone Facchinetti and Arturo Galansino.

ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS 

Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD

www.royalacademy.org.uk

Ghirlandaio: A century-long artistic saga - The Ghirlandaio Family. Italian Renaissance Painters in Florence and Scandicci

The Ghirlandaio Family
Renaissance Painters in Florence and Scandicci
Castello dell’Acciaiolo, Scandicci – Italy
Through May 1st, 2011

 

Always used in the singular, Ghirlandaio is actually the trademark of the dynasty of such artists and entrepreneurs, who, beginning in the second half of the 15th century, dominated the scene of the Florentine Renaissance for a century. DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO (1449-1494) was therefore the first artist in the Ghirlandaio family of which were also part his brothers DAVID GHIRLANDAIO (1452-1525) and BENEDETTO GHIRLANDAIO (1458-1497), his half-brother GIOVAMBATTISTA, his brother-in-law BASTIANO, and his son RIDOLFO GHIRLANDAIO (1483-1561). Numerous artists who were apprenticed to their school (MICHELANGELO and GRANACCI being the most renowned) contributed to spreading in Italy and Europe their fame as masterly illustrators of Florence and its civitas.

The Ghirlandaio’s workshop was above all a place with extraordinary professionals - very productive and organized according to modern criteria as to skills and roles - where Domenico and Ridolfo were the true creative masters of colour, some were extremely good at painting, and others besides expert in the workshop management.

Such a well-balanced, prolific and long-lived clan is now the focus of an extremely important exhibition, the first one on the family in its entirety, which involves the whole area from Florence to Scandicci as well as various other places in the hinterland. It is the land where the Ghirlandaio family lived and worked, rarely leaving it, disseminating it with masterpieces, so much so as to turn it into a spectacular and diffused museum.

Hence the title of the event: The Ghirlandaio Family. Renaissance Painters in Florence and Scandicci. The venues: the Castello dell’Acciaiolo in Scandicci, showcasing 15 works of art. From here visitors may follow a double itinerary leading them to large and small museums, palazzos and churches, villas and abbeys which house dozens of panel paintings, altarpieces and frescoes. Works which have mainly a religious character and represent the Madonna and Child, the nativity, the annunciation, but which also include portraits and figures that document the Florence of that time.

This implies that the exhibition is made up of a series of exhibitions and venues, ascribable to two well-known cultural projects: that of the Città degli Uffizi, conceived by Antonio Natali, director of the famous gallery, to showcase the immense artistic heritage kept in the Uffizi store rooms and promote the beautiful areas around Florence, and the Piccoli Grandi Musei one organized by the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze with an expert committee presided over by Antonio Paolucci, which has the aim of promoting the artistic and monumental heritage of the Florentine area.

It was in honour of the Ghirlandaio family that the two aforementioned projects merged. The initiative is promoted by the Special Office for Monuments and Fine Arts of the Polo Museale Fiorentino, the Uffizi Gallery and the Municipality of Scandicci, along with the Ente Cassa di Risparmio, the Regional Office for the Cultural and Landscape Heritage of Tuscany, the Monuments and Fine Arts Office of the metropolitan area (Florence-Pistoia-Prato), the Provincial Administration of Florence, the Municipality of Florence, and the Romualdo del Bianco Foundation. It is under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and involves the collaboration of the Tuscan Regional Administration, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, the municipalities of Calenzano, Campi Bisenzio, Sesto Fiorentino, Signa and Lastra a Signa. The catalogue is published by Polistampa.

As it is known, the true surname of Domenico Ghirlandaio was Bigordi, and he and his brothers ended up being identified with the nickname of their father, an excellent goldsmith renowned for his special skill in making garlands (ghirlanda in Italian). From Scandicci, their homeland, they moved to Florence in the first half of the 15th century, and in this town, which was then the world capital of art, their workshop became established in the second half of the century. The exhibition tour starts from Scandicci. Curated by the art historian Annamaria Bernacchioni, the exhibition at the Castello dell’Acciaiolo showcases a famous painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio (Saints James, Stephen and Peter), the beautiful Madonna by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (from the Fuligno Refectory) and another 14 works loaned by various museums in Florence.

From here two different Ghirlandaio exhibition tours start. The one in Florence includes the frescoes in the Sala dei Gigli of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Sassetti Chapel and the Tornabuoni Chapel - respectively in the churches of Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella - and the Adoration of the Magi at the Museo degli Innocenti. Numerous other masterpieces by such artists are in the Uffizi Gallery, the Accademia Gallery, the Palatine Gallery and in the Ognissanti and San Marco Refectories, all of which are to be visited even though not part of this specific programme.

The other tour is in the area north-west of Florence, on both sides of the Arno, abounding in works of art that the Ghirlandaio family left behind: in the houses which belonged to the family in San Martino and Colleramole, in the millenary Settimo Abbey, in the Church of Sant’Andrea in Campi Bisenzio, in the Sacred Art Museums of San Donnino and San Martino a Gangalandi. And also Mosciano, Giogoli, San Martino alla Palma, and San Colombano.

A fascinating journey in the Florentine Renaissance.

www.ghirlandaio.it

11-21-2010 / 05-01-2011