Antonello da Messina returns to Pavia. Portraits illustrate painting between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

At the Visconti Castle in Pavia, the exhibition Beyond the Gaze is on view until March 29, 2020. Faces and Portraits in Italian Painting between the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Antonello da Messina Returns to Pavia.

The Ritratto d’uomo Malaspina (Portrait of a Man), a masterpiece by the famous artist, returns to the Civic Museums of Pavia after a year accompanied by another great masterpiece by the master: the Ritratto d’uomo (Portrait of a Man ) from the Fondazione Mandralisca Museum in Cefalù.

Two portraits by Antonello da Messina that are part of an exhibition itinerary that includes pictorial works from Lombardy and Flanders from the Malaspina Picture Gallery of the Civic Museums of Pavia. Visitors will thus have the opportunity to contextualize the figure of the celebrated artist in a historical Venetian-Flemish painting, evidence of the evolution of the portrait genre.

“The exhibition aims to highlight an important path around the evolution of portraiture in the era between the 15th and 16th centuries, addressed by Professor Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa, former curator of the major exhibition dedicated to the Messina artist at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. From official portraiture, as it was up to that time, to an introspective expression of the human soul. An important precursor example of this concept is precisely the Cefalù Portrait of a Man, where the painter seems to delve into what we might call the motions of the soul. In fact, the indecipherable, enigmatic and mocking expression questions who he is, on a par with another famous portrait: Leonardo’s Mona Lisa,” said Pavia City Council Culture Councillor Mariangela Singali Calisti.

The exhibition is organized and promoted by the Municipality of Pavia - Culture Sector, the Civic Museums of Pavia, in collaboration with the Municipality of Cefalù, the Mandralisca Cultural Foundation of Cefalù, and with the contribution of the Community Foundation of the Province of Pavia and the Friends of Pavia Museums and Monuments Association.

For info: www.museicivici.pavia.it

Hours: Daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.

Tickets: 4 euros.

Image: Antonello da Messina, Portrait of a Man (1465-1475; oil on panel, 31 x 24.5 cm; Cefalù, Mandralisca Foundation Museum)

Antonello da Messina returns to Pavia. Portraits illustrate painting between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

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