Category: Exhibitions

During the seventeenth century Pieter Paul Rubens was considered by his contemporaries, including the French scholar Claude Fabri de Peiresc and some other leading thinkers of the République de Lettres, to be one of the greatest connoisseurs of Roman antiquities.

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Nothing seems to escape his powers of observation and his desire to learn from and interpret the old masters: his drawings make the works he studies vibrant, adding movement and feeling to the gestures and expressions of the characters. Rubens enacts the same process of enlivening the subject in stories that he uses in portraiture: the members of the Gonzaga family emerge enlivened from his brush as their gazes are directed toward the viewer, but the same thing happens with marbles and reliefs and celebrated examples of Renaissance painting. In Rome, with the vestiges of the ancient world, the same thing happens: Rubens draws, in sanguine, then with a red charcoal that returns his color, the famous statue of the Spinario. The drawing, which takes the pose from two different points of view, really seems to be executed by a living model, rather than a statue, so much so that some scholars imagine that the painter used a boy posed in the same way as the statue.

This process of animating the antique, although performed in the first decade of the century, seems to anticipate the moves of the artists who, in the decades following its Roman passage, would come to be called Baroque.

How Rubens’ formal and iconographic insights filter into the rich and varied Roman world of the 1920s is an issue that has not yet been addressed systematically by studies. The presence in the city of painters and sculptors who had had the opportunity to train with him in Antwerp (such as Van Dyck and Georg Petel) or who had already come into contact with his works in the course of their training (such as Duquesnoy and Sandrart) certainly guaranteed the accessibility of his models to a generation of Italian artists, who, no less than the Flemish, had by then become accustomed to confronting the Antique in the light of contemporary pictorial examples and on the basis of a renewed study of Nature. Among them all was Bernini: his Borghese group, made in the 1920s, reread famous ancient statues (the Apollo of Belvedere) to give them movement and translated marble into flesh, as happens in the Rape of Proserpine.

The exhibition will thus measure how much these masterpieces are indebted to Rubensian naturalism, as were certainly other youthful sculptures by the artist, such as the Vatican Charity in the Tomb of Urban VIII, already judged by European travelers of the late eighteenth century to be ‘a Flemish Governess.’ 

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The exhibition planned for the Galleria Borghese, recovering some of these lines of research, aims to highlight the extraordinary contribution made by Rubens to a new conception of the antique, of the concepts of natural and imitation, on the threshold of the Baroque, focusing on what the disruptive novelty of his style in the first decade in Rome consisted of and how the study of models could be understood as a further possibility of momentum toward a new world of images.

The Morgan is home to one of the world’s largest and most important collections of drawings by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770) and his eldest son Domenico (1727–1804), with more than 300 representative examples of their lively invention and masterful techniques. Combining highlights from the Morgan’s collection with carefully selected loans, this exhibition will provide a comprehensive look at the Tiepolos’ work as draftsmen, focusing on the role of drawing in their creative process and the distinct physical and stylistic properties of their graphic work. At the core of the collection and exhibition are substantial groups of Giambattista’s drawings that relate to major ceiling fresco projects of the 1740s and 1750s. A fresh look at the style, function, and material properties of these working drawings has yielded new insights into their purposes.

 The exhibition presents around 30 women artists and 150 works, by artists including works by Sofonisba Anguissola, Judith Leyster, Marietta Robusti (Tintoretto's daughter) and Angelika Kauffmann. Masterful portraits, still lifes and historical scenes in painting, drawing and prints from all over Europe, ranging from the Renaissance and Baroque periods to early Neoclassicism will be brought together in Hamburg. For the first time, works by women artists will be juxtaposed with those of their male colleagues in such a pointed way that both formal and stylistic similarities and differences will come to the fore.

From the Royal Collection and the Ferens’ own collection, these works show Venice’s Grand Canal in all its splendour. Created 10 years apart, when seen together they show the development of an artist’s technique and reveal much about Venetian life in the 1700s.

A newly commissioned work by the Ferens’ latest artist in residence will be shown alongside the paintings, connecting the past to the present through the theme of climate change. Canaletto’s A Regatta on the Grand Canal marks the fifth and final loan of exceptional works of art from the Royal Collection to go on display at Ferens Art Gallery as part of the Masterpieces in Focus from the Royal Collection series.

For the first time, the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna is presenting an exhibition on the important Baroque painter Rembrandt. Never before has it been possible to admire such a wealth of international loans by the master in Austria. His powerful art left a lasting impression on his gifted pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten. The fascinating interplay between Rembrandt and Hoogstraten is on display in a unique way – you have never seen Rembrandt like this before. Discover around 60 paintings and drawings, and immerse yourself in Dutch Baroque painting. This will be the cultural highlight of 2024.

The exhibition is devoted to the groundbreaking innovations in Venetian Renaissance painting, with lasting effects that continued to resonate far into European modernism. It presents 15 masterpieces from the Munich collection and around 70 international loans, focusing on portraits and landscapes from the first half of the sixteenth century as the most eloquent examples of the characteristics and achievements of the flourishing Venetian school. The leading masters brought a previously unprecedented intensity to their explorations of the essence of humanity and nature and their interrelations. This explains the attraction and the relevance of these portraits and landscapes, which will be presented in themed groups and in juxtapositions of drawings and sculptures that address the contexts of their creative origins and contemporary readings.

It was a turning point in the history of art: Renaissance painting. What had begun in Italy developed into something completely new in Northern Europe in the works of the painters Hans Holbein the Elder (ca. 1464–1524) and Hans Burgkmair (1473–1531), pioneers of this singular art. Its centre was the free imperial and mercantile city of Augsburg, which became the capital of a German—but also an international—Renaissance within just a few decades. None other than Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), one of the German Renaissance’s greatest painters, would ultimately make this art known throughout Europe.

The concept of this exhibition is definitely radical: we are not allowed to look at Bouts as an artist. The image we have today of the artiste peintre did not exist in the 15th century. Dieric Bouts was not a romantic genius or brilliant inventor, he was an image-maker. He painted what was expected of him and excelled at it, just think about master pieces such as ‘The Last Supper’ and ‘The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus’. That is why it makes sense to confront him with today's image-makers of sports photographers, filmmakers and game developers. M places them side-by-side with the old master.

From the 16th to the 18th centuries, the port city of Genoa was one of Italy's major artistic centres. Nicknamed 'La Superba' ('the proud one') by the Medieval poet Petrarch, it was among the wealthiest cities on the Italian peninsula, with strong trade links across Europe and beyond. 

These links and the riches they brought made Genoa a desirable destination for painters and sculptors wanting to study or find lucrative work. Superb line opens with works by the first major arrival, Raphael's pupil Perino del Vaga, who transformed the artistic scene when he came in 1528, introducing a new, modern manner seen in drawings like the Venus and Aeneas, which typifies his distinctive blend of graphic confidence and courtly stylishness.

Other prominent artists soon followed Perino's lead and, over the next 150 years, the city continued to attract even bigger names like Rubens and van Dyck. This constant injection of new blood kept Genoa at the cutting edge of artistic trends, creating a nurturing environment for homegrown talents to develop in their own right. In the following centuries the city produced a steady stream of internationally renowned painters, among them Luca Cambiaso, Bernardo Strozzi and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, who were especially feted for their innovative, often experimental graphic works, wowing collectors with dazzling displays of line. Featuring highlights from the British Museum's longstanding holdings of Genoese prints and drawings, this display celebrates the virtuosity and originality of the city's artists.

Botticelli Drawings is the first exhibition ever dedicated to the drawings of Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445 – 1510). Exploring the foundational role drawing played in Botticelli’s work, the exhibition traces his artistic journey, from studying under maestro Fra Filippo Lippi (c. 1406 – 1469) to leading his own workshop in Florence. Featuring rarely seen and newly attributed works, the exhibition provides insight into the design practice of an artist whose name is synonymous with the Italian Renaissance. Botticelli’s drawings offer an intimate look into the making of some of his most memorable masterpieces, including Adoration of the Magi (c. 1500), which will be reunited with its preparatory drawing, surviving only in fragments. From Botticelli’s earliest recorded drawings through expressive designs for his final painting, the works on display reveal the artist’s experimental drawing techniques, quest for ideal beauty, and command of the line.

In addition to devoting herself to pastel portraiture, Rosalba Carriera was an outstanding painter of miniatures on ivory; in fact she pioneered this genre, elevating it from a craft to a true art. Using an innovative technique, she succeeded for the first time in bringing the fluid, vibrant brushstrokes of painting on canvas to tiny ivory supports. Her success was immediate. There was no visitor to Venice who did not aspire to have a miniature portrait made by Rosalba. Today, however, these small images are rare, in fact their number is much smaller than her pastel work.

It is to Rosalba Carriera the miniaturist that this retrospective is dedicated, with thirtysix works on display, together with the pastels from the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and from private collections. The exhibition offers a very rare opportunity to admire these works of extraordinarily delicate refinement, now classic examples of Rococo art, in the year that marks the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the artist’s birth.