Monday, March 19, 2012

Outstanding pictures from the Renaissance


Andrea Previtali (ca. 1470–1528 Bergamo). Madonna and Child with Saints Paul and Agnes and the Donors Paolo and Agnese Cassotti. Oil on canvas. Bergamo, Accademia Carrara, no. 110.

The Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, is a jewel among Italian museums and a haven for art lovers. Founded at the end of the eighteenth century by Count Giacomo Carrara and housed in a beautiful Neoclassical building, it contains a range of masterpieces dating from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. At its core is a group of outstanding pictures from the Renaissance. Because of closure for restoration, it has been possible for the museum to lend to The Metropolitan Museum of Art fifteen masterpieces by Venetian and north Italian painters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including works by Bellini, Titian, and Lorenzo Lotto.