Heroes and Saints
Paintings from the Italian Baroque period
Duration: March 16-August 26, 2007
Opening: Thursday, March 15, 7pm
Alte Galerie am
Landesmuseum Joanneum
Schloss Eggenberg
Eggenberger Allee 90, 8020 Graz
T 43-316/8017-9770
altegalerie [at] museum-joanneum.at
The forthcoming spring exhibition aims to familiarise the people of Graz with an almost unknown aspect of the Alte Galerie. The Graz collection of old masters includes a substantial number from northern Italy, particularly Venetian paintings from the early and high Baroque periods.
Most of the works to be on show were hidden in storage for decades. Now, having been restored, they are to be presented to the public for the first time. The majority are studio works with an often underestimated significance to the dissemination of standards and collecting of the Baroque period.
Our appreciation of Venetian art is dominated principally by two great epochs, both marking high points in the history of art: the Renaissance of the 16th century from Bellini to Tintoretto, and the 18th century period of Tiepolo, Guardi and Canaletto. Yet we are far less aware of 17th century Venetian painting than might be expected, given the unusually productive masters notable for that period. Just like their contemporaries in Rome, Naples and Genoa, they mastered with virtuosity the language of truly dramatic staging of heroic themes, both spiritual and worldly, the gran maniera. Austria and central Europe have them to thank for their access to international Baroque. That is how this exhibition ties in with the permanent exhibition.
Around 1600, after the death of Tintoretto, it was Jacopo Negretti, known as Palma il Giovane, who dominated particularly religious art in the city on the lagoon. The Graz gallery owns several characteristic works from his highly productive studio, with the defining influence of Tintoretto highly evident. Works on loan from the Vienna Museum of Art History and Viennese art dealers round off our image of an epoch in which holy devotion and the heroic both feature; precisely as required by the stern spirit of the Counter Reformation.
Curator: Dr. Ulrich Becker
