My wife and I visited
the exhibition on opening day and found it to be a fine but modest offering
housed in a relatively small room. Though limited to one room, the room is
right in the middle of the Met’s great collection of Renaissance art, and so it
is easy to place these paintings in a broader context.
The title of the exhibition is a little misleading.
There is only one painting, a Pieta, by Giovanni Bellini although many of the
others showed his influence. Moreover, the only Titian is a very small version
of the story of Orpheus and Euridice. The catalog calls it a very early Titian
but admits that the attribution is questionable.
The real star of the show is Lorenzo Lotto with four
representative works. The first three are predella pieces separated in the
nineteenth century from his magnificent altarpiece that was originally in
Bergamo’s church of Saints Stephen and Dominic, but that is now in the church
of St. Bartholomew. One piece depicts a story from the life of St. Dominic
while another depicts the stoning of St. Stephen. In the middle is an
Entombment that, like the others, exhibits the life, emotion, and vivacity that
Lotto brought to all of his work. These predella pieces are also full of
naturalistic detail including very detailed contemporary costumes.
Lotto is also represented by a portrait of Lucina
Brembati, a granddame from Bergamo, in all her finery. The exhibition catalog
quotes Bernard Berenson’s appraisal of Lotto’s portraits. "They all have the interest of personal confessions.
Never before or since has any one brought out on the face more of the inner
life."
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| Lorenzo Lotto Portrait of Lucina Brembati 1518-23 |
However, the exhibition also serves to introduce the
viewer to some lesser-known artists who were working in Northern Italy at the
time of Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian. Vincenzo Foppa is represented by the
“The Three Crosses,” a Crucifixion scene
of the mid fifteenth century that demonstrates a remarkable use of
perspective.
There are two religious works by the Milanese
painter styled Bergonone including a very striking nursing Madonna from around
1485. Also represented are Bartolomeo Montagna, Giovanni Cariani, Moretto da
Brescia, Andrea Previtali, and Giovanni Battista Moroni. Most of their
contributions are sacred subjects but there are also a few outstanding
portraits.
Previtali, for example, combined a sacred subject
with two very realistic portraits of the Bergamo donors in “Madonna and Child
with Saints Paul and Agnes, and Paolo and Agnese Casotti.”
All the paintings are on loan from Bergamo’s
Accademia Carrara currently in the midst of renovations that will be completed
in 2013. In the catalog, M. Cristina Rodeschini, the Head of the Accademia
Carrara, provided an overview of the storied history of the collection
including the contribution of Giovanni Morelli, one of the great figures in the
nineteenth century revival of interest in the art of the Renaissance.
Andrea Bayer, who participated with Dr. Rodeschini
in putting the exhibition together, also contributed essays on the history of
the Museum, as well as on the individual paintings in the Met exhibition. Her introduction should make anyone
want to visit Bergamo and the Accademia Carrara after the completion of the
renovation in 2013.
Arriving at the Accademia Carrara is a memorable experience, especially if traveling to Bergamo by train from Milan. Greeted upon arrival by the lower part of the town, the visitor follows a route past the historic Teatro Donizetti before beginning the climb toward the great medieval neighborhood of Bergamo Alta perched on the hills above. Along the way, one passes a number of the city’s most important churches, home to some of Lorenzo Lotto’s greatest paintings, as well as the twisting Via Pignolo, lined by noble Renaissance palaces. Finally, the great fortifying walls of the upper city appear, and there on an irregular piazza stands the neoclassical building that houses the city’s extraordinary art collections, the result of more than two hundred years of collecting and a direct outgrowth of the local culture embodied in these very streets, churches and homes. ###
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