In Venice, gilded masterpieces from the National Gallery of Umbria compare with contemporary masterpieces

From April 17 to June 16, 2024, the Giorgio Franchetti Gallery at Ca’ d’Oro, thanks to the synergy between the National Museums of Perugia - Regional Directorate of Museums Umbria and the Regional Directorate of Museums Veneto, will host a number of masterpieces from the National Gallery of Umbria for a confrontation with important works by Italian masters of the second half of the 20th century. On the occasion of the exhibition entitled The Golden Way - La via dell’oro, curated by Alessandra Mammì, Veruska Picchiarelli and Carla Scagliosi, works by Duccio di Buoninsegna, Gentile da Fabriano, the Master of the Madonna of Perugia, Giovanni Baronzio, Cataluccio da Todi and Bartolomeo Caporali will be placed in dialogue with artists such as Alberto Burri, Gino De Dominicis, Lucio Fontana, Marisa Merz, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Carol Rama: six dialogues between ancient and modern that, linked by the common thread of the use ofgold, which will propose new comparisons, suggestions and perspectives. Each juxtaposition, through insights based on types of artifacts, tools and methods of workmanship in their continuity or discontinuity over time or on the symbolic meanings of a material that has marked millennia of the history of thought in figure, intends to investigate the deeper meaning of one of the most mysterious languages of art. The presence of gold in a work of art is never a purely formal solution, but belongs to a morè complex sphere that refers to sacred figuration, to the gold background of the icon, to a transcendent space. A choice that, beyond any decorative effect, after its debut in medieval times, returns with different sign, but identical intensitỳ, even in the works of artists contemporary to us.

The exhibition thus aims to restore to the reading of contemporary works that strength that comes from tradition and memory, and at the same time invites us to reread in the masterpieces of the 14th and 15th centuries their perennial relevance that has allowed art, both past and present, to stand on the border between the visible of the image and the invisible of its power as a symbol.

It is in this context that the absolute of the gold background in Duccio di Buoninsegna’s Madonna and Child (central part of a polyptych for thehigh altar of the church of San Domenico in Perugia) approaches the cosmic dimension of Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale, or Gentile da Fabriano’s Madonna and Child, with its angels graffitied directly on a metal sheet bent to chiaroscuro effects, reveals next to Priest, an early work by Michelangelo Pistoletto dated 1957, how theuse of the mirror stems precisely from the latter’s vision and reflections on the visual as well as spiritual power of gold and its property of reflecting light in the medieval tradition. Inside the gilded Reliquary of St. Juliana, made by Cataluccio da Todi in the 14th century, a sculpture by Marisa Merz will find a home, with the intention of evoking and renewing the presence of the effigy of the saint made of painted copper, now preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Set up on the second floor of the Giorgio Franchetti Gallery at Ca’ d’Oro, in conjunction with the 60th International Art Exhibition in Venice, the Venetian exhibition stands as the preview of a project that will conclude in Perugia from Oct. 5, 2024, to Jan. 19, 2025, at the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, with the exhibition of additional works, which will also provide an opportunity to expand the investigation into the formula of installations and the declinations that the use of gold has taken on in the research of artists not only from Italy. Venice and the so-called Blue Room of the Giorgio Franchetti Gallery at the Ca’ d’Oro, which houses the nucleus of works with a gold background and a small section of paintings of the Umbrian and Tuscan schools that are part of Baron Franchetti’s legacy, become venues for these encounters.

" The exhibition The Golden Way - La Via dell’Oro, a bridge between two state institutes belonging to the General Directorate of Museums of the Ministry of Culture," said Daniele Ferrara, regional director of the Veneto Museums, “allows us to resume a common thread-that of the suggestive contaminations between ancient and contemporary-that for years now has marked the Gallery’s exhibition initiatives conceived on the occasion of the Venice Art Biennials. A dialogue declined, in this specific case, within a theme - that of gold in art - as much as ever innate to the fame and origins of the building itself.” “The uniqueness of the monumental complex of Ca’ d’Oro, whose fame over the centuries has been handed down thanks to the splendor of the decorations on the façade on the Grand Canal that included extensive gold leaf profiling, undoubtedly offers itself,” as Claudia Cremonini, director of the Museum, points out, “as an ideal context for a reflection on theartistic use of a material of strong symbolic value for the whole of Venice, and lends itself well to hosting highly representative gold-backed masterpieces from the collections of the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, placed in close dialogue with contemporary masters, in environmental contiguity with additional examples from the Franchetti Gallery with which the exhibition appears perfectly harmonized.”

The exhibition, organized under the patronage of the Municipality of Perugia and the Region of Umbria, will be accompanied by a catalog published by Silvana Editoriale, with texts by Costantino D’Orazio, Alessandra Mammì, Veruska Picchiarelli, Carla Scagliosi and Alessandro Vanoli.

Image: Bartolomeo Caporali, Angelo, fragment of the Hunters’ Altarpiece, detail (1487; tempera on panel, 26.3 x 16 cm; Perugia, National Gallery of Umbria). Photo by Sandro Bellu.

In Venice, gilded masterpieces from the National Gallery of Umbria compare with contemporary masterpieces

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