Urbino, a major exhibition on Simone Cantarini at the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche

From May 22 to Oct. 12, 2025, the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino will pay tribute to Simone Cantarini (Pesaro, 1612 - Verona, 1648), known as “il Pesarese,” with a major monographic exhibition dedicated to his artistic production. The event, organized in collaboration with the Barberini Corsini National Galleries in Rome, represents an important opportunity to rediscover the talent of a painter who knew how to move between classicism and baroque with extraordinary originality.

Curated by the Director of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Luigi Gallo, together with Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari, professor of History of Modern Art, and Yuri Primarosa, an official art historian at the Ministry of Culture, the exhibition, titled Simone Cantarini (1612 - 1648) known as the Pesarese, brings together 54 works selected to narrate Cantarini’s artistic and intellectual journey. It is an exhibition that testifies to the constant collaboration between Italian museum institutions to enhance the national heritage.

A restless and innovative artist

Simone Cantarini was born in Pesaro in 1612 and from a young age showed an early talent for drawing and painting. His training took place in Emilia, where he had the opportunity to study closely the works of great masters of the 16th century, including Raphael and Correggio, but especially those of the Bolognese painters of his time. The turning point in his career was his entry into the workshop of Guido Reni in Bologna, one of the most influential artists of the Italian seventeenth century.

His apprenticeship with Reni was crucial in refining his technique and developing a pictorial language of great elegance, but the relationship between the two soon proved difficult. Cantarini, with a proud temperament and little inclined to submission, soon manifested a desire to emancipate himself from his master’s influence, openly criticizing his master’s work and giving birth to a more personal and dynamic pictorial language. The break with Reni became inevitable, and after leaving the Bolognese workshop, Cantarini embarked on an independent career, consolidating his own style and attracting the attention of important patrons.

In 1678, Bolognese biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia described him thus, “He was Cantarini of ordinary stature, well formed of limbs, of somewhat proud appearance, of olive color, of lively eye ... ”. A portrait well suited to a painter of independent character and precocious talent, capable of creating works in which grace is combined with a unique dramatic intensity. His painting is distinguished by an extraordinary finesse of execution and a luministic sensibility that brings him close to the great masters of the seventeenth century. Although he remains attached to an idea of classical beauty, there is a more vibrant expressive tension in his works than the idealized composure of Guido Reni. His skillful use of chiaroscuro, the delicacy of his physiognomies, and the fluidity of his strokes made him a highly regarded artist among his contemporaries.

The San Cassiano masterpiece and the return of the works to their homelands

One of the most significant works on view in the exhibition is the monumental altarpiece from the church of San Cassiano in Pesaro, a place of worship particularly linked to the artist’s life. In this striking composition, the Madonna and Child with Saints Barbara and Terentius, Cantarini self-portrays the figure of Saint Terentius, inserting himself within the sacred narrative with intense emotional participation. The work, which can be admired in the first room of the Rovereschi Apartments on the second floor of the Ducal Palace, returned to the museum in 2021 thanks to the Ministry of Culture’s “100 Works Return Home” project.

The ministerial initiative made it possible to unearth works kept in storage, returning them to the areas for which they were intended. This project had the merit of returning visibility to some works that, for years, had remained away from the public. The exhibition on Cantarini fits into this perspective of rediscovery and valorization, offering the opportunity to delve into the figure of an artist who is often little known, but of fundamental importance in the pictorial panorama of the seventeenth century.

An early interrupted talent

Despite the success he achieved in life, Simone Cantarini’s career was marked by a premature end. He died suddenly in 1648, at only 36 years of age, under circumstances that are still unclear today. According to some sources, he was murdered after a fight; in fact, Cantarini had stormy relations with other artists. Other hypotheses speak of a poisoning by a rival, but the fact remains that his demise deprived the Italian art scene of one of the most original voices of the seventeenth century.

Despite his short life, Cantarini’s legacy is of extraordinary importance. In addition to painting, he was a gifted engraver, producing a series of prints that were highly successful and contributed to the spread of his style far beyond the borders of Emilia and Marche. His ability to translate into images a refined balance between classical idealization and expressive naturalness makes him a unique artist whose rediscovery is now more necessary than ever.

Urbino, a major exhibition on Simone Cantarini at the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche

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