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| THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2011
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
‘¯µ ¦µŒ ’µ½’¤¦ special report
NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON
© PRINCES CZARTORYSKI FOUNDATION
Leonardo da Vinci’s late 15th-century works ‘‘The Lady with the Ermine,’’ above, and ‘‘The Virgin of the Rocks’’ will be on display in London’s National Gallery at ‘‘Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan’’ from Nov. 9 to Feb. 5.
The Renaissance flowers again
BANKERS AND THE BONFIRE OF
THE VANITIES. Palazzo Strozzi, Florence.
From Sept. 17 to Jan. 22.
LONDON
From London to Rome,
a series of exhibitions
spotlight the masters
BY RODERICK CONWAY MORRIS
Italian Renaissance painters will be the subject of a series of major exhibitions north
and south of the Alps this coming season,
offering opportunities to compare works
never before seen together. And more than
four centuries after her birth, the Baroque
artist Artemisia Gentileschi, who carved out
a successful career against the odds, is given a landmark one-woman show.
LEONARDO DA VINCI: PAINTER AT THE
COURT OF MILAN. National Gallery, London.
From Nov. 9 to Feb. 5.
Much of the attention given to Leonardo
da Vinci in recent years has been devoted to his work as a scientist and engineer, and indeed it was primarily as
an inventor of war machines ‘‘and other
engines of wonderful efficacy not in
general use,’’ that he wrote to Ludovico
Maria Sforza, il Moro (the Moor), the
Duke of Milan in 1483 seeking employment. The Florentine mentioned almost
as an afterthought that he was also a
painter, architect and sculptor.
His paintings are few and as a consequence jealously guarded by those
collections fortunate enough to have
them. They are also typically in a delicate state of conservation.
So this show, which brings together
nearly all of the artist’s surviving
works in this medium, is unlikely to be
repeated. The captivating portrait of
Ludovico il Moro’s teenage mistress
Cecilia Gallerani, ‘‘The Lady With the
Ermine,’’ replete with symbolic references to Ludovico and his lover, will
travel from the Czartovsky Foundation
in Krakow. It will be joined by other
portraits from the Louvre and the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan.
Leonardo spent two periods in Milan:
an extended visit in the 1480s and 1490s,
and a shorter one from mid-1508 until
1513. The second version of ‘‘The Virgin
of the Rocks,’’ owned by the National
Gallery, is the only datable picture from
the second period. It will be brought together for the first time with the first
version from the Louvre. These images
are among Leonardo’s most mysterious,
UFFIZI/PHOTOSERVICE ELECTA/ANELLI
UFFIZI/ARCHIVI ALINARI, FLORENCE
Top, Filippino Lippi’s ‘‘Adoration of the
Magi’’ (1478), on display in Rome in
October, and Artemisia Gentileschi’s
‘‘Judith Decapitating Holofernes’’ (162021), in an exhibition in Milan this month.
combining many of his interests, including his lifelong fascination with geology.
This historic juxtaposition will be followed by another one next spring,
when to return the favor, the National
Gallery lends its version of ‘‘St. Anne’’
to the Louvre, to be placed beside the
one in the French museum, for ‘‘Leonardo da Vinci’s St. Anne,’’ a show
that will run from March 29 to June 25.
FILIPPINO LIPPI AND SANDRO
BOTTICELLI. Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome.
From Oct. 5 to Jan. 15.
MONEY AND BEAUTY: BOTTICELLI,
Benefiting Enterprise for High School Students
October 27 - 30, 2011
Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
Thursday - Saturday, 10:30 am - 7 pm • Sunday, 12 noon - 5 pm
Admission $15, includes catalogue
For information on events and to purchase tickets, please contact:
Tel: (415) 989-9019 • Email: [email protected] • Web: www.sffas.org
Two exhibitions opening in Italy this
autumn will feature works by Leonardo’s near contemporary Botticelli.
‘‘Filippino Lippi and Sandro Botticelli’’ focuses on the ties between these
two artists. The former’s parentage
was somewhat scandalous by the standards of the time: he was the illegitimate son of the Carmelite friar and painter Fra Filippo Lippi and Lucrezia Buti,
a nun. The boy was called Filippino to
distinguish him from his famous father,
who was his first teacher. Botticelli had
been a student of Filippo Lippi, and
after the father’s death, Filippino was
apprenticed to Botticelli’s studio in
Florence. As he developed, he became a
serious rival to his master, both as a
draftsman and a painter.
One of those to spot Filippino’s burgeoning talents was the Duke of Milan’s
agent in Florence. He wrote to Ludovico
il Moro that of the artists working for
Lorenzo de’ Medici, Filippino’s style was
sweeter, if less artful than Botticelli’s.
The Rome show aims to cover the
trajectory of Filippino’s career spanning more than 30 years. Important
loans obtained by the Scuderie del Quirinale include Filippo Lippi’s ‘‘Madonna,
Child and Stories of St. Anne,’’ from the
Galleria Palatina in Florence, Filippino’s ‘‘Adoration of the Magi’’ from the
National Gallery in London, his ‘‘Allegory of Music’’ from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the ‘‘Strozzi
Madonna’’ from the Metropolitan in
New York and Botticelli’s ‘‘Adoration of
the Magi’’ from the Uffizi in Florence.
The exhibition also aims to highlight
Filippino’s major frescoes in Rome, in
the Carafa Chapel in Santa Maria Sopra
Minerva, a commission that Filippino
won on the recommendation of Lorenzo
the Magnificent over the heads of older
and more established artists, including
Botticelli. Filippino then returned home
to complete what is generally regarded
as his greatest single work, his fresco
cycle in the Strozzi Chapel at Santa
Maria Novella in Florence.
Filippino’s patron at Santa Maria
Novella was the wealthy banker Filippo
Strozzi, whose imposing Palazzo
Strozzi is the site for ‘‘Money and
Beauty: Botticelli, Bankers and the
Bonfire of the Vanities.’’
Making money out of money was
viewed as sinful by the medieval and
Renaissance church, and many of
Florence’s largest artistic projects were
financed by the city’s bankers, who on
the one hand wished to project an image of worldly magnificence and on the
other to leave behind them religious
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UFFIZI/ARCHIVI ALINARI, FLORENCE
Botticelli’s ‘‘Adoration of the Magi’’ (1475-1476), to be shown in at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome beginning on Oct. 5.
works that might go some way to saving their souls beyond the grave.
The intricate relationship between
‘‘high finance, economy and art’’ is the
subject of the Palazzo Strozzi show.
More than 100 works will illustrate the
theme, by Botticelli, Beato Angelico,
Piero della Pallaiolo, the Della Robbia,
Memling and other Italian, Netherlandish and German artists, from collections in Italy as well as from Bruges,
London, New York, Nuremberg, Paris
and Rotterdam, with an extensive itinerary designed to take visitors to other
relevant sites around the city.
The Medicis were the most successful bankers, and reaction to their dominance led more than once to their expulsion from Florence before their dynasty came to rule the city and Tuscany
as Grand Dukes.
Sandro Botticelli was in many ways
the artist who became most closely
identified with the Medicis and their
image. Despite the sweetness and light
that radiates from so many of his
works, his association with these magnates obliged him to undertake the unsavory commission of a fresco recording the public hanging of the Pazzi conspirators, who had attempted to overthrow the Medicis.
The artistic extravagance and lavish
festivities promoted by Florence’s leading citizens gave rise to contrary reactions. The most dramatic was presided
over by the Dominican hellfire preacher
from Ferrara, Girolamo Savonarola. He
promoted bonfires of vanities on which
repentant citizens were invited to pile
cosmetics, mirrors and other sinful luxuries. Even artists were caught up in
this mass hysteria, adding their own artworks to the flames. According to Vasari, Botticelli became a follower of the
Dominican friar and gave up painting as
a result. Interestingly, Filippino Lippi, to
judge by his works during this period,
seems to have remained indifferent to
Savonarola’s oratory and influence.
ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI: STORY
OF A PASSION. Palazzo Reale, Milan.
From Sept. 22 to Jan. 22.
An exhibition devoted to the Baroque
painters Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, father and daughter, was
staged almost exactly a decade ago in
Rome at Palazzo Venezia before going
on to the Metropolitan in New York and
the St. Louis Art Museum. Artemisia is
at last to have a richly merited monographic exhibition to herself in Milan.
Born in Rome in 1593, she had a peripatetic life that took her to Florence,
Venice, Naples and even London. She
was the first woman to be admitted to
the Accademia del Disegno in Florence,
in 1616, and her pictures were much
sought after during her lifetime. In more
recent times she has understandably
become a feminist icon. At the same
time her reputation as an independent
artist who forged a style distinct from
her father’s has been steadily growing.
One of her most famous images, ‘‘Judith Beheading Holofernes,’’ was most
likely a direct response to the experience
of being raped by one of her father’s collaborators, in 1611, an event that became
public knowledge in the sensational trial
that was held the following year. The
first version of the painting was contemporaneous with these events. Both versions, from the Capodimonte in Naples
(1611-12) and the Uffizi in Florence (161920), will be brought together for the Milan show. They will be joined by more
than 40 of her other works, many from
private collections, additional ones by
other artists from the period and a number of previously unpublished documents relating to her career.
Artemisia was remarkable not only
in making her way so successfully as a
female artist at the time, but also in her
determination not to confine herself to
the kind of subjects then thought suitable for her sex, like still lifes, family
portraits and small devotional pictures.
From the outset, she depicted strong
women and heroines and further defied
convention by making a speciality of female nudes.
ONLINE: MORE ON THE NEW SEASON
An article on the must-see shows in Asia
this autumn. global.nytimes.com/arts