Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, six new rooms dedicated to the Venetian 16th century in the Palladian Loggia

The Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice will open six new rooms located along the Palladian loggia, a space of exceptional architectural merit designed by Andrea Palladio. Theunprecedented exhibition, which expands the panorama of 16th-century Venetian painting, will be inaugurated on Thursday, March 16, 2023 at 12 noon.

Reopened to the public last April 28, 2021, after a two-year restoration, the loggia is now remounted with fifty works, including some presented for the first time, that will tell the story of the period of Venetian and Italian art from the first decades of the sixteenth century to the early seventeenth century. For the occasion, some of the paintings underwent extraordinary maintenance work carried out partly by the museum’s in-house restorers, Francesca Bartolomeoli and Cristiana Sburlino, and partly by private firms.

For the first time in the history of the Galleries, an entire space will be devoted to the production of Jacopo Bassano and his flourishing workshop, with masterpieces such asEcce homo and the Rest from the Flight into Egypt, never before exhibited, or the Miracle of Water on loan from the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

The rearrangement of the rooms on the second floor (rooms XII to XVI), conducted according to the scientific project curated by Roberta Battaglia and Giulio Manieri Elia, with the collaboration of Michele Nicolaci, marks, after the rearrangement of the entire ground floor (rooms 1-13) and the Renaissance rooms on the second floor (rooms VI-XI), another significant step forward in the overall revision of the museum’s itinerary. This revision was also made possible by the architectural restoration work on the second floor directed by architect Ilaria Cavaggioni for the MiC Regional Secretariat for Veneto. It is a very important initiative for this institution because it represents the fourth scientific arrangement of the collections.

“The current opening of new rooms,” notes director Manieri Elia, “should be considered in the overall framework of the unique opportunity to rethink the historical-artistic itinerary, healing some critical steps or knots in the narrative construction. It is an opportunity to give the museum’s collections new clarity and display coherence, in line with the original history and educational mission of the Gallerie dell’Accademia.”

The Palladian loggia opens with a rhythmic and evocative sequence of paintings by Bonifacio de’ Pitati (Room XII), marking a renewed approach to the prolific and relevant production of the Veronese artist, who in the second quarter of the 16th century directed one of the most successful Venetian workshops of the time. By the painter we find canvases from the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi in Rialto, including the scene of the Massacre of the Innocents and theAnnunciation and the Eternal Father above St. Mark’s Square, which depicts the “bird’s eye” view of St. Mark’s Square in Venice. Masterpieces in this new display include, also by Bonifacio, the Redeemer and the Apostles and the Madonna dei Sartori, his first signed and dated work, both of which have been enlivened by a special maintenance operation entrusted to a private firm.

Of the two rooms facing the loggia, the first (XIII) offers an excursus on the protagonists of the Renaissance between Venice, Brescia and Bergamo, with paintings by Savoldo, Romanino and Moretto. Visitors can immerse themselves in the religious climate of Brescia in the 1610s and 1920s through some devotional works. The long Lombard sojourn of Lorenzo Lotto, a Venetian by birth, justifies the placement within this room of his extraordinary Portrait of a Young Man, relocated here from Room IX in order to increase its visibility and give the work the prominent position it deserves, consistent with the loggia’s itinerary.

The following rooms (XIV and XIVa) are, for the first time in the museum’s history, entirely devoted to Jacopo Bassano and his flourishing workshop, run by his sons Francesco and Leandro. An important selection of masterpieces such as St. Dionysius between Saints Eleutherius and Rusticus Receives Communion and St. Jerome and the Madonna in Glory, collected together for the first time, are further enriched by the arrival of The Miracle of Water, an exceptional canvas on loan from the Royal Castle in Warsaw until May 17, 2023. Among the most successful examples of the workshop’s production, never before exhibited, is a splendid and sensual Lucrezia di Leandro.

The last two rooms of the itinerary (XV and XVI) offer an exemplification of the lagoon artistic panorama of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, dominated by the reworking of the great 16th-century tradition of Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, of which Palma il Giovane and Padovanino are the main interpreters. Eloquent of the close relations woven in the second decade between Padovanino and Palma il Giovane is the comparison of the two artists’ works on the same theme of the dead Christ supported by angels, suggestively juxtaposed in Room XVI.

The Tintoretto tradition, on the other hand, is represented by Domenico Tintoretto ’s two large canvases with Portraits of the Brethren of the Merchants’ School, one of the most significant examples of late 16th-century Venetian portraiture.

Bearing valuable testimony to the “forest” presences in seventeenth-century Venetian collections, an important contribution to updating the local artistic panorama, is Annibale Carracci’s Saint Francis, a unicum that returns to public view after a long period, with splendid expressions of vivid naturalism with intriguing symbolism and an evocative still life piece with clear influences from the Venetian school.

After the walk along the Palladian loggia, there will be musical accompaniment by students of early music from the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory of Venice.

Image: Palladian Loggia, Detail of the installation, Loggia dedicated to Bonifacio de’ Pitati © Luca Zanon

Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, six new rooms dedicated to the Venetian 16th century in the Palladian Loggia

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