The Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest opens "From Botticelli to Titian"

Written by Dora Fishbien Sunday, 30 October 2011 22:59

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY - The most comprehensive exhibition to date dedicated to the Italian Renaissance will run in the Museum of Fine Arts from 28 October through 14 February, 2010. The large-scale exhibition entitled "From Botticelli to Titian: Masterpieces of Two Centuries of Italian Painting" will display paintings on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts from over fifty museums, including the Uffizi in Florence, the Louvre in Paris, the national galleries of London and Washington, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Galleria Borghese in Rome and the Prado in Madrid.

In addition to works by Botticelli and Titian, the 130 paintings on show represent the art of over eighty masters, among whom are Leonardo, Giorgione, Raphael, Veronese and Tintoretto.

The exhibit of 15th-16th-century Italian painting offers visitors the opportunity to familiarize themselves with masterpieces by the greatest artists of the period and explore the emergence and development of intellectual and artistic processes in the most important cultural centres. For the very first time in Hungary the Italian Renaissance will be presented in a spectacular, large-scale exhibition with a sound scholarly foundation. The works on loan will be supplemented by thirty-five paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts’ own prestigious Italian collection.

The Budapest exhibition will display works that are a sensation in themselves: Titian’s "Man with a Glove", Bartolomeo Veneto’s "Flora", Botticelli’s "Story of Virginia", Cossa’s "Portrait of a Man", Perugino’s "Portrait of Francesco delle Opere", Savoldo’s "Tobias and the Angel" and Palma Vecchio’s "La Bella" are all outstanding pieces of the period.

The Hungarian public will also have the opportunity to see one of the most famous and valuable paintings in the world, the emblematic Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci, which is permanently exhibited in the Czartoryski Museum in Cracow and has so far in Europe only been loaned to Italian museums.

The millenary session of the Hungarian Parliament in 1896 passed a law whereby art collections previously held in different institutions were to be unified and placed in the newly-established Museum of Fine Arts.

On the basis of a competitive tender, Albert Schickendanz and Fülöp Herzog were commissioned to design and construct the building, which opened in 1906. The gallery displaying original paintings was placed in the first floor halls of the neo-classical building; however, only plaster casts were available to illustrate a complete history of European sculpture. It was for these life-size copy sculptures that the Doric, Ionic, Romanesque, Renaissance and Baroque halls on the ground floor were designed, imitating the styles of individual periods of art history.

Visit the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest at : http://www.szepmuveszeti.hu/

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