In Cremona, over 120 masterpieces from leading international museums and private collections, for an extraordinary exhibition on Lombard naturalist painting from the 1400s to the 1700s.
[Painters of reality. The Reasons behind a Revolution. From Foppa and Leonardo to Caravaggio and Ceruti]. The exhibition retraces the history of naturalistic painting in Lombardy from the second half of the 1400s, when Vincenzo Foppa, from Brescia, and Leonardo were working in Milan, through the 1500s and period of the training of Caravaggio, all the way to the 1700s, with Fra’ Galgario and Ceruti. The sections of the exhibition and the catalogue illustrate the various aspects of Lombard naturalism in keeping with different themes, including observation of reality, interest in representation from life, the empirical use of light, the presence of religious painting based on humble reality, the development of the non-idealized portrait, the still life and genre painting. Other exhibitions and books have approached these themes, but this is the first time such a long timespan has been covered, with works of exceptional quality, including the Portrait of a Young Man by Moretto from the National Gallery of London, the Mary Magdalene by Bernardino Luini from the National Gallery of Washington, the St. Jerome by Cesare da Sesto from the City Art Gallery of Southampton.
Cremona, New York, 2004.