Venezia 500: The Gentle Revolution of Venetial Painting

Venetian master, Christ Carrying the Cross, ca. 1515, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. © KHM-Museumsverband

Venezia 500 is devoted to the groundbreaking innovations in Venetian Renaissance painting, with lasting effects that continued to resonate far into European modernism. It presents 15 masterpieces from the Munich collection and around 70 international loans, focusing on portraits and landscapes from the first half of the sixteenth century as the most eloquent examples of the characteristics and achievements of the flourishing Venetian school. The leading masters brought a previously unprecedented intensity to their explorations of the essence of humanity and nature and their interrelations. This explains the attraction and the relevance of these portraits and landscapes, which will be presented in themed groups and in juxtapositions of drawings and sculptures that address the contexts of their creative origins and contemporary readings.
Works by Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Palma Vecchio, Lorenzo Lotto, Titian and Tintoretto are on display: Their subtle representations of individuality oscillate between the real and the ideal, between representative and lyrical portraits, and their atmospheric landscapes quickly became established as pictorial motifs in their own right. The favourable local constellation of well-acquainted artists and patrons who showed at the same time a high degree of sensitivity and openness made striking innovations possible. The exhibition at the Alte Pinakothek casts light on this eagerly experimental period of upheaval.