The Renaissance in Brescia. Moretto, Romanino, Savoldo 1512-1552, is the great exhibition event of Fondazione Brescia Musei’s cultural program for autumn 2024.
In the rooms, paintings by the great masters of Brescian painting -which came to Brescia from six American museums and important Italian and European collections- dialogue with rare and precious objects such as ancient musical instruments, armor, tapestries and majolica plates, restoring an evocative image of the thoughts, feelings, objects and characters that animated the life of the city.
While the activities of Alessandro Bonvicino il Moretto, Girolamo Romanino and Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo have been widely explored in more than a century of studies, an overall account of the 16th century Brescia in its richness, complexity and, in some ways, contradictory nature has been lacking until now.
The point of view will therefore be centered around emblematic characters, such as Fortunato Martinengo, the Brescian nobleman portrayed by Moretto in the painting preserved at the National Gallery in London, or such as the bride and groom Gerolamo Martinengo and Eleonora Gonzaga for whom sumptuous celebrations were organized, or even female protagonists of a female “revolution” such as Angela Merici.
Poetry, nature, music, love, faith, desire, and research are at the center of this unprecedented narrative for works, which begins with the evocation of the Sack of 1512, which brought Brescia to the attention of all of Europe.