In Perugia, the first-ever monograph on Taddeo di Bartolo: the exhibition at the National Gallery of Umbria

From March 7 to June 7, 2020, the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia is hosting the exhibition Taddeo di Bartolo, the first-ever monographic exhibition dedicated to the great Sienese artist Taddeo di Bartolo (Siena, c. 1362 - 1422), one of the greatest painters of his time, long active between Tuscany, Umbria, Liguria and Lazio. The exhibition, curated by Gail E. Solberg (the leading scholar of the artist), offers the public one hundred panels by Taddeo di Bartolo and aims to reconstruct his career, from his beginnings in the 1380s to his final years (the exhibition covers a time span from 1389, the year in which the artist executed his first known signed and dated work, to which belonged the panel with theAnnunciation arriving from the Kode Museum in Bergen, Norway, to 1420, the year of the Madonna Avvocata in the Museum of Sacred Art in Orte). The loans, of the highest caliber, come from major Italian and international museums: the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, the Museo di Palazzo Ducale in Gubbio, the Louvre, the Szépművészeti Múzeum in Budapest, the Niedersachsisches Landesmuseum in Hanover, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen, and many others.

Highlights of the exhibition will include a reconstruction of the interior of a Franciscan hall church, where the San Francesco al Prato altarpiece from Perugia will be temporarily reunited: the National Gallery in Perugia preserves 13 elements of the polyptych, and these will be joined by the missing parts identified so far, including the seven panels of the predella depicting the Stories of St. Francis, preserved between the Landesmuseum in Hannover (Germany) and the Kasteel Huis Berg in s’-Heerenberg (Netherlands), and the small St. Sebastian from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, which probably decorated one of the pillars of the woodwork. Also arriving from the Museum of Palazzo Ducale in Gubbio will be the eight tablets once part of the polyptych of the church of San Domenico in Gubbio: these are the paintings that were purchased by MiBACT in late 2017 in an auction from Pandolfini.

It is precisely the polyptychs, Taddeo di Bartolo having been one of the greatest polyptych masters of his time (if not the first ever), that will be the protagonists of the exhibition: complete altarpieces and retouched panels will alternate in the exhibition’s itinerary, which will still document other types of works such as processional banners and panels intended for private devotion. Space then will also be given to frescoes, although only in... virtual format: in fact, the exhibition includes a 3-D video reconstruction of the frescoes in the chapel of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, which in turn is part of a rich multimedia apparatus intended to document the restorations and diagnostic investigations carried out on the occasion of the exhibition thanks to the contribution of the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, and to illustrate the very high technical and stylistic quality of Taddeo di Bartolo’s production.

The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual (Italian and English) scholarly catalog, published by Silvana Editoriale, containing essays by Gail E. Solberg, Emanuele Zappasodi, Veruska Picchiarelli, Donal Cooper and Alberto Sartore, Machtelt Brüggen Israëls, Christa Gardner von Teuffel, Daniele Costantini, Cristina Tomassetti and Emanuela Massa. In addition, in keeping with a well-established tradition of the National Gallery of Umbria, an ad hoc publication will also be produced on the occasion of the exhibition for the youngest audience, a fable-story about Thaddeus written by Carla Scagliosi, the Gallery’s official art historian, illustrated by illustrator Chiara Galletti and published by Aguaplano.

You can visit the exhibition on Mondays from 12 to 7:30 p.m. and every other day from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tickets: full 8 euros, reduced 18-25 years old 2 euros, free for categories provided by the Ministry of Culture. Free admission every first Sunday of the month and April 25. All info can be found on the National Gallery of Umbria website. Below is a gallery with some of the works on display.

Taddeo di Bartolo, Saint Catherine of Alexandria (Caen, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen)

Taddeo di Bartolo, Archangel Gabriel (1401; Montepulciano, Cathedral)

Taddeo di Bartolo, Virgin Annunciate (1401; Montepulciano, Cathedral)

Taddeo di Bartolo, Saint Thomas (Gubbio, Ducal Palace Museum)

Taddeo di Bartolo, Adoration of the Magi (Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale)

Taddeo di Bartolo, Crucifixion (Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale)

Taddeo di Bartolo, Double-sided Polyptych of San Francesco al Prato (1403; Perugia, National Gallery of Umbria)

Taddeo di Bartolo, Pentecost (Perugia, National Gallery of Umbria)

In Perugia, the first-ever monograph on Taddeo di Bartolo: the exhibition at the National Gallery of Umbria

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