Until January 9th 2000 | Venice star of the Renaissance | Venice: Palazzo Grassi

A monumental altar piece made by Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni D’Alemagna: the Venetian exhibition starts from this work of art.
It’s no coincidence. At Palazzo Grassi two styles, two traditions, meet. One is the Italian Renaissance, of Tuscan-Florentine origin but with an universal bent. The other is the meticulous description of the details of the Flemish art.
The first abstracts and tries to find the absolute. The second deepens the details, so that, at the end, the details prevail on the whole. In this way the canvas show a collection of details.
Around the first half of the ‘400 the two cultures grow in two different geographical environments: one at south, in Tuscany. The other at north, in the Flanders. They were the richest, the most developed and the most populated territories of the whole Europe.
Thanks to trade, they expanded in the mainland and they also influenced each other. At the beginning, Flemish art seemed to be the prevailing, but the Tuscan art, slower at the beginning, became the winning one at the end.
Hundreds of artist had a good command of both arts and many of them went to Venice where these arts were really appreciated. Venice influenced also Rubens, Rembrandt, il Carpaccio, Tiziano, Dürer. Another artist, Antonello da Messina, became an example of how the Tuscan school, mixed to the details of the Flemish school, could make a perfect union.
Antolello lived and worked in Venice around 1470 and his production can be considered as the symbol of this exhibition that wants to deepen the role of Venice as place of interchange of these cultures.
More than two hundred works of art, from the most prestigious museums of Europe and America, exhibited in twenty-eight halls, subdivided in seven thematic sections.
Paintings have been positioned in such an intelligent way so that it is possible to see the influences between the two arts: a crucifixion near another crucifixion, a portrait near another portrait.
These masterpieces cover a period that starts from the second half of ‘400 and finishes at the beginning of the ‘600.
This exhibition can recall the atmosphere and the stimulus that it was possible to find in Venice during that period.

[exibart]