At the Diocesan Museum of Brescia an exhibition on the sacred production of Giacomo Ceruti

From March 11 to May 21, 2023, the Diocesan Museum of Brescia will host the exhibition Ceruti sacro e la pittura a Brescia tra Ricci e Tiepolo, organized by the Diocesan Museum of Brescia in collaboration with the Soprintendenza archeologia, belle arti e paesaggio for the provinces of Bergamo and Brescia, with the patronage and support of the Diocese of Brescia, the Brescia Musei Foundation, the Brescia Community Foundation, the Parish of Gandino, and with the contribution of the Cariplo Foundation.

Through ten works, the exhibition, curated by Angelo Loda with the collaboration of Federico Troletti, analyzes, in its entirety, the limited production of works of a religious nature created by Giacomo Ceruti known as il Pitocchetto (Milan, 1698 - 1767) during his sojourn in the province of Brescia, between the Camonica and Sabbia valleys, joined by two works executed in Rivergaro in the province of Piacenza ( Madonna and Child with Saints Lucia and Biagio) and in Crema for the church of San Giacomo Maggiore(Saint Valentine Heals an Infirm). This activity of Ceruti’s, considered an appendix to his work as a portrait and genre painter, in which he sought to blend his naturalistic vein with the more conventional component inevitably imposed by his subjects, has been the subject in recent decades of progressive critical studies that have increasingly circumscribed its scope and objective limits.

The exhibition itinerary is introduced by thirty sacred paintings by the main artists active in the Brescia and Bergamo area in the early eighteenth century, including Sebastiano Ricci, Giovambattista Tiepolo, Andrea Celesti, Antonio Cifrondi, and Francesco Paglia, and is enriched with those of authors working between the 1920s and the 1940s, such as Giuseppe Tortelli, Antonio and Angelo Paglia, and Francesco Monti, which testify to the vitality of the local artistic scene and to a patronage open to the best artists of the period. To complete the survey of Pitocchetto’s sacred production, the exhibition extends to Gandino (Bergamo), where an almost unique series of testimonies of Cerutian art is preserved in the basilica.

“On the occasion that Brescia is, with Bergamo, the Italian Capital of Culture,” says Nicoletta Bontempi, president of the Diocesan Museum of Brescia, “the Diocesan Museum wanted to dedicate to Giacomo Ceruti, thanks to the intuition of Dr. Angelo Loda, the central place among all the activities cultural and artistic of its programming, in dialogue with the artists of his time, from Ricci to Paglia, with Celesti, Cifrondi, Pittoni and Zoboli, up to Tiepolo.”

“A year then, 2023,” continues Mauro Salvatore, director of the Diocesan Museum of Brescia, “in which Giacomo Ceruti is further rediscovered and rightly celebrated. With this exhibition, the Diocesan Museum wants to emphasize his propensity for the search for the ”sacred,“ exhibiting canvases that until now have been considered almost secondary and that instead place the master among the leaders of this art as well, where the search for the meaning of life is masterfully combined with pictorial refinement.”

Accompanying the exhibition is a catalog Edizioni Compagnia della Stampa. Ceruti sacred and painting in Brescia between Ricci and Tiepolo, included in the Ceruti 2023 schedule in the year of Brescia Bergamo Italian Capital of Culture, ideally completes the exhibition dedicated to the 18th-century master, titled Miseria & Nobiltà (Misery & Nobility), scheduled from Feb. 14 to May 28, 2023, at the Santa Giulia Museum in Brescia.

The itinerary is enriched with the exhibition PerDiana! Giacomo Ceruti, masterpieces between Lombardy and Veneto, scheduled from May 7 to July 30, at the MarteS Museo d’Arte Sorlini in Calvagese della Riviera (Brescia), where there will be an in-depth look at the three works by Ceruti present in the Sorlini collection(The Old Peasant Woman, The Bravo and Diana and the Nymphs Surprised by Actaeon) witnesses of the Brescian production and the mature Milanese phase, put in dialogue and comparison with the Venetian art present in the museum and with important loans from prestigious cultural institutions and private collections.

Hours of the exhibition at the Diocesan Museum: daily except Wednesday from 10 a.m. to noon and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets to the museum collections and exhibitions: full price 8 euros, reduced 4 euros. Information: tel. 030.40233; museo@diocesi.brescia.it; www.museodiocesano.brescia.it

At the Diocesan Museum of Brescia an exhibition on the sacred production of Giacomo Ceruti

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