An exhibition at the Basilica Palladiana unites works by Leonardo da Vinci, Bassano and Gazzola

From December 6, 2024 to March 9, 2025, Vicenza will host the event Three Masterpieces in Vicenza. Leonardo da Vinci, Jacopo Bassano, Gianandrea Gazzola, a project conceived by the City of Vicenza in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo and curated by Guido Beltramini, director of the Palladio Museum. The Basilica Palladiana, a symbol of the city and UNESCO heritage site since 1994, is transformed into a stage for a dialogue between three masters from different eras. On display are studies and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci (Anchiano, 1452 - Amboise, 1519), the altarpiece L’alluvione del Colmeda by Jacopo da Bassano (Bassano del Grappa, c. 1510 - 1592), and a never-before-seen site-specific installation by Gianandrea Gazzola (Verona, 1948). Like last year’s exhibition Three Masterpieces in Vicenza. Caravaggio, Van Dyck and Sassolino was dedicated to a reflection on the experience of time, so this year curator Beltramini has constructed a dialogue across the centuries between three artists on the concept of nature, declined in an essential and precious element at the basis of human life:water. Leonardo considers Nature to be the “good mother of all things,” never creating anything that is not necessary, in the least number of steps and with the least expenditure. “Make your ingenuity in the likeness of the mirror,” Leonardo writes.

The artist as a “mirror of nature” seems a definition built around the work of Gianandrea Gazzola, known for conceiving a machine to make the winds write entitled The scribe: the wind of the Mediterranean in 2018, and one that draws from the electrical activity of the roots of a centuries-old olive tree the energy that traces a grapheme in real time Sub Limine, Seggiano 2010-2022. The same conception and connection between art and nature can be found in works such as 2013’s Lo Stilo/Stylus and 2018’s Infinitum, both exhibited at Arte Sella, an international contemporary art event that takes place in the meadows and forests of the Val di Sella, in the province of Trento, to which the artist is particularly attached. In the Basilica Palladiana, with a site-specific installation, Gazzola transfers sound waves from air to water in a large square pool and, through an amazing visual artifice, projects them onto large sheets. The liquid figures generated by the waves are based on the same harmonic relationships of Palladian architecture, as theorized by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius: the exhibition will display precisely the precious edition of the Vitruvian treatise On Architecture, illustrated by Palladio in 1554, now among the treasures of the Bertoliana Library in Vicenza. Gazzola’s work thus enters into dialogue, both with the architecture that contains it and its constructive principles, and with three extraordinary drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, from the Codex Atlanticus, now preserved at the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. In these pages Leonardo notes personal reflections interwoven with scientific schemes. “They are personal and secret pages,” notes Guido Beltramini, “annotated with the characteristic inverted calligraphy, for us readable only in a mirror. In these sheets Leonardo reflects as much on the mechanisms of vision, on light and shadow, as on the rectilinear and tortuous trajectories followed by images and smells to reach our senses and become perceptible: he imagines the air around us traversed by the trails of species, that is, by infinitesimal elements emitted by bodies. A visionary idea that resonates with Gazzola’s ’visual waves’.”

But as Leonardo teaches, Nature is as good a mother as she is a cruel stepmother. This is reminiscent of the third masterpiece that concludes the exhibition: the work by Jacopo da Ponte, known as Bassano, The Flood of Colmeda, created for the altar of the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Feltre, commissioned from the artist following the July 27, 1564 cloudburst that devastated the area and led to the overflow of the river. The painting shows, in the upper part, the apparition of the Madonna and Child between Saints Crescentius and Anthony of Padua above storm clouds, while, in the lower part the effects of the flooding are depicted in all its stark realism. It is, however, possible to oppose the destruction, and Palladio himself designed a machine to govern the waters and “win Nature in those things in which we are vanquished. ”The printed text with the Tre discorsi sopra il modo d’alzare acque da’ luoghi bassi, in which Palladio’s machine is represented, another volume preserved in the Bertoliana Library in Vicenza, will be exhibited next to the Bassanesque painting. Painting and book are still, centuries later, a warning and a spur to all. All Basilica ticket holders will have access to the exhibition The Fall of the Rebel Angels. Francesco Bertos at the Gallerie d’Italia - Vicenza with a reduced admission ticket, where free entry is provided for residents of Vicenza and its province between Dec. 6 and Jan. 6. The event is conceived and promoted by the City of Vicenza with the co-organization of Intesa Sanpaolo. The project is curated by Musei Civici Vicenza, Fondazione Teatro Comunale Città di Vicenza and Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, in collaboration with Arte Sella and the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, and with the support of Marsilio Arte.

“With the exhibition of these prestigious works we are offering Vicenza residents and tourists a valuable new cultural experience within the symbol of the city, the Basilica Palladiana. Like last year, we wanted admission to the exhibition to be completely free for residents of Vicenza and its province: a gift that is also the return to the citizens of a collective good. Moreover, this year we decided to extend the exhibition until March 9, with the aim of giving as many visitors as possible the chance to admire these works and, at the same time, to reflect on a deeply topical issue: water. Thanks to this event and the other important initiatives that the city is about to launch, coming to Vicenza, particularly during the Christmas holidays, will truly be an unforgettable experience,” commented Vicenza Mayor Giacomo Possamai.

“It is vital for the Gallerie d’Italia to maintain a deep dialogue with its city and to carry out new initiatives together with the institutions, public and private, of the territory. Proposing at Palazzo Leoni Montanari an exhibition dedicated to one of the masterpieces of the collections it owns, the Fall of the Rebel Angels, is inextricably linked to the planning of the exhibition hosted again this Christmas in the extraordinary spaces of the Basilica Palladiana. The renewed presence alongside the Municipality of Vicenza, the synergy between places of identity value and the participation of one of our prestigious interlocutors, the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, I believe are further confirmations of the Bank’s attention to the city by providing expertise, relationships and venues that help enrich its cultural offerings,” said Michele Coppola, Executive Director Art, Culture and Historical Assets of Intesa Sanpaolo and General Manager Gallerie d’Italia.

An exhibition at the Basilica Palladiana unites works by Leonardo da Vinci, Bassano and Gazzola

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