In Pavia, Leonardo da Vinci is honored with the photos of Jitka Hanzlová

The Museo della Certosa di Pavia and the Museum of Contemporary Photography - MUFOCO are offering a tribute to Leonardo da Vinci in the year in which the 500th anniversary of his death is celebrated: five photographic portraits taken by Czech artist Jitka Hanzlová (Nachod, 1958) in 2007 and belonging to MUFOCO’s collections are on display in the halls of the Museo della Certosa from October 12 to December 15, 2019, suggesting an ideal dialogue between contemporary photography and Renaissance portraiture.

Jitka Hanzlová’s portraits were taken at Palazzo Melzi d’Eril in Vaprio d’Adda and at the locks of Cornate d’Adda, where Leonardo once lived and worked: these places become an opportunity for the artist to reflect on the representation of the human figure in dialogue with the landscape. Leonardo, in fact, was among the great experimenters of portraiture understood in the modern sense, for his ability to create a relationship between the environment and the characters and to give them an introspective complexity through his gaze, gestures and barely noticeable movement, traits capable of revealing “the motions of the soul.”

Jitka Hanzlová’s photographs, intimately linked to the atmospheres of Renaissance portraiture, are characterized by the refined compositional cut, the calibrated use of natural light and the magical, nuanced, timeless atmosphere that envelops them. The gazes, in particular, whether directed at the viewer or turned toward a distant horizon, give the faces a poetic and mysterious air.

Hanzlová’s characters immediately recall the most famous portraits such as the Mona Lisa, the Lady with an Ermine and the Belle Ferronière, but there is no trace of the banal academic exercise of emulation and style, but rather, of an artistic research on the individual and identity, all played out around the languages of contemporary art.

Jitka Hanzlová, born in 1958 in Nachod(Czech Republic), moved in 1985 to Essen, Germany, where she discovered in photography a simple and direct form of expression. Between two lives, two cultures, two languages, two landscapes, Jitka Hanzlová relies on the universal language of photography to tackle a fascinating investigation of the human figure and landscape. Her images move in constant search of the relationship the individual has with the environment where he lives. In 2007 he participated in the project Imagined Stories in Real Places commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Photography in collaboration with Fondazione Cariplo and Navigli Lombardi. In November 2019 he exhibits Silences at the National Gallery in Prague. In Italy, the artist’s gallery of reference is Galleria Raffaella Cortese (via Alessandro Stradella 7, Milan).

For all information you can visit the official website of the Museum of Contemporary Photography.

In Pavia, Leonardo da Vinci is honored with the photos of Jitka Hanzlová

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