London to host “Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting” exhibit

PanARMENIAN.Net - This spring, the National Gallery presents the first exhibition in Britain to explore the role of architecture within painting, and focuses on Italian Renaissance painting of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, the Gallery said in a press release.

Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting aims to increase visitors’ appreciation and understanding of some of the most beautiful and architectonic paintings by Italian masters such as Duccio, Botticelli, Crivelli and their contemporaries. Visitors will be encouraged to look in new ways at buildings depicted in paintings, and to investigate how artists invented spaces in mind and paint that transcended the reality of bricks, mortar and marble.

With a record-breaking six million visits during 2013, the National Gallery remains committed to researching and showcasing its extraordinarily rich permanent collection. As a result of the research partnership between the National Gallery and the University of York, this exhibition offers a fresh interpretation of some of the National Gallery’s own Italian Renaissance collections. In addition, Building the Picture will include the Venetian master Sebastiano del Piombo’s The Judgement of Solomon (Kingston Lacy, The Bankes Collection, National Trust), on display in London for the first time in 30 years, and ‘The Ruskin Madonna’ by Andrea del Verrocchio (National Gallery of Scotland).

In Renaissance Italy, art and architecture were closely interconnected and the boundaries between all the arts were fluid. An important reason for this was that there was no specific educational programme or apprenticeship for architects. The Florentine architect Brunelleschi, for example, trained as a goldsmith, while Michelangelo was a painter and sculptor before he designed buildings. Five short films commissioned to coincide with this exhibition demonstrate how contemporary practitioners and thinkers are again blurring the boundaries between media and forms of practice. The films provide modern perspectives on real and imagined architecture from award-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, film-maker Martha Fiennes, art historian T. J. Clark, film historian John David Rhodes and computer game cinematic director Peter Gornstein.

Building the Picture explores the roles played by architecture in painting and how it affects the viewing process. Architecture within paintings has often been treated as a passive background or as subordinate to the figures. This exhibition shows how, on the contrary, architecture underpinned many paintings, and was used to design the whole picture from the very start.

Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting is an online catalogue produced by the National Gallery to accompany the exhibition.