La Fabbrica del Rinascimento. Processi creativi, mercato e produzione a Vicenza

The exhibition “The Renaissance Factory. Creative processes, market and production "curated by Guido Beltramini, Davide Gasparotto and Mattia Vinco, will be set up inside the Palladian Basilica from 11 December 2021 to 18 April 2022.

In the mid-sixteenth century something unique happens in Vicenza, in some respects incredible. Among the most dynamic areas in Europe for the production and trade of silk, the city, thanks to its growing wealth, is betting on the transformation of its image as a "provincial place" through avant-garde art and architecture. becoming a true capital of culture. Cultured and cosmopolitan clients, the Vicentine nobles believe in the visions of a group of brilliant, ambitious young artists who will become famous all over the world. Binding them is the passion for new art nourished by the Ancient, born in the Rome of Michelangelo and Raphael, what Vasari will define the "modern way". It is clear to young artists that the disruptive force of this new language will allow them to challenge and undermine the revered and famous masters and their traditional models, dominant in Venice.

They are the architectural genius Andrea Palladio, the painters Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Bassano, the great sculptor Alessandro Vittoria.

It is from these premises that the one-of-a-kind exhibition begins, which by interweaving absolute masterpieces of painting, sculpture and architecture, combined with books, fabrics, precious objects, tapestries, will transport visitors back in time, within the surprising " factory ”of the Renaissance, recounting thirty years of Vicenza's exceptional artistic life, from 1550 to the inauguration of the Olympic theater in 1585.

They are the architectural genius Andrea Palladio, the painters Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Bassano, the great sculptor Alessandro Vittoria.

The works on display, many of which presented for the first time in Europe or Italy, come from major museums in the world, such as the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, United States; the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; but also from the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, from the Borghese Gallery in Rome, from the Vatican Museums, just to name a few.

Along the exhibition path, the visitor will "literally" enter the artists' workshop and their mechanisms of production of beauty, will discover how the masterpieces were born through a direct confrontation with the clients, the original models, the drawings, the sketches, the method of work.

Thanks to a team of economic history specialists, it will also be possible to know the prices of the works on display and compare them to the objects of the normal life of people at the time. We will thus discover that a pair of 'ladies' gloves or a tapestry had a much higher value than one of the masterpieces of world painting, Two hunting dogs by Jacopo Bassano, arriving from the Louvre in Paris.