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Giant naked men, battle scenes - something for everyone in Renaissance show
16/05/2005 3:43:00 PM
http://travelcanada.sympatico.msn.ca/TravelNews/ContentPosting.aspx?contentid=9e9c0debbc474d4a8970811506998a21&show=True&number=5&showbyline=False&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc
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OTTAWA (CP) - Heavily muscled, naked men, mighty battle scenes and perhaps a glimpse or two of heaven: you can find it all in Ottawa.
A security guard walks past three pieces of renaissance art that will be in an upcoming show at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa Wednesday, April 27, 2005. The show featuring artworks from several artists including Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo will open May 29, 2005. (CP PHOTO/Jonathan Hayward)
Obviously, we're not talking about Parliament Hill, even with the herculean struggle for political power these days.
Rather, it's this summer's show at the National Gallery of Canada - a major international exhibition of Renaissance paintings, sketches and sculpture drawn from galleries around the world.
Leading the exhibit are the two "bad boys" that defined the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
Contemporaries and bitter rivals, the two masters drove a revolution in 16th-century Italian art - a passionate movement that show curator David Franklin captures through more than 120 works by the pair and the legions of artists they influenced.
As a group, the artists of the Renaissance attempted to idealize the human form and show it in physical perfection - a shift away from predecessors whose subjects were drawn primarily from religious stories.
"The way I see it, through Leonardo and Michelangelo, is the total belief in the human individual to express everything that needs to be expressed," says Franklin, deputy director and chief curator of the National Gallery of Canada.
"The wanted to make man the measure of all things."
Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and the Renaissance in Florence is a significant coup for the National Gallery - the sole international venue for an exhibition that was four years in the making.
"These are not artists that are interested in landscape or showing divine elements . . . Everything comes from you - your reaction to nature; your response is what you're trying to understand," says Franklin.
"It's art from the inside out, whereas art previously had been from the outside in."
Focusing on the period from about 1500 to 1550, the show demonstrates how Florence became the intellectual and emotional centre of an explosion of this new form of art. Whether followers imitated or rejected the masters, in some way all were hugely influenced by Leonardo and Michelangelo.
But visitors to the National Gallery from May 29 to Sept. 5 shouldn't expect to see some of the most famous - and priceless - icons of the Renaissance.
Michelangelo's marble masterpiece David hasn't checked his sling and rock at Canada Customs, and Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus still clings to the walls of Florence's Uffizi Gallery.
But the world-famous Uffizi has sent Rosso Fiorentino's Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro, one of several Rossos in the show.
"That one was quite a coup," says Franklin, whose very first stop in his quest to assemble the Renaissance show was at the crowded doors of the Uffizi.
"It really is one of these ones that's completely crazy - people didn't even know what the subject was (for Rosso) - it's all these naked bodies just flying around," he says of the complex and passionate masterpiece.
"He's trying to do a Leonardo."
Another major contribution is the famously luscious painting by Agnolo Bronzino of the Renaissance-era Florentine ruler, Cosimo I de Medici, now housed in Philadelphia's Museum of Art.
Cosimo looks less like a Medici scion and more like a heavily muscled Greco-Roman wrestler, as he gazes over one powerful shoulder at the viewer.
Bronzino, flatteringly, presents Cosimo as the mythological poet and musician Orpheus at the mouth of Hades, where he had gone to reclaim his dead wife Eurydice.
Franklin has also drawn heavily from Windsor Castle's Royal Library ("the Queen has been most generous") for ink and chalk sketches by Leonardo and Michelangelo, as well as studies by Raphael.
And watch for pieces by Andrea del Sarto, Giorgio Vasari, Benvenuto Cellini and Jacopo da Pontormo.
If that sounds like a lot of passion and revolution for a family to take in, check out the child-friendly activities related to the Renaissance show for more hands-on art fans.
Children can take part in sketching and painting workshops, dress up in period costumes and follow activity guides that will make the stories in the paintings more understandable.
For older fans, there are also drawing workshops, evening lectures, and a symposium with international art scholars discussing the show.
If all that still isn't enough of la bella Italia, visitors can next hit the Canadian Museum of Civilization for the North American premiere of an exhibit on Pompeii.
The citizens of that ancient city in southern Italy were entombed and their homes became a time capsule after Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii in AD 79, at the height of the Roman Empire.
Running from May 27 to Sept. 12, that exhibit will include nearly 500 artifacts from Pompeii, Herculaneum and other archeological sites near the Bay of Naples - frescoes, sculptures, jewelry, household items and body casts of victims.
But the Renaissance art show is the brightest jewel in Ottawa's summer.
Many of the works have never been seen before in North America, and transporting and insuring the pieces has cost the National Gallery of Canada something approaching $2 million.
Yet in terms of art-world prestige - not to mention plain old tourism for the National Capital Region - Franklin says it will be worth the effort.
"A show like this has never really been done before outside of Florence," widely seen as the birthplace of the Renaissance and mecca for art scholars.
With many of the works approaching their 500th birthday, they're not just extremely valuable but also very fragile and difficult to move across thousands of kilometres.
That helps explain why the National Gallery took the rare step of mounting such a major show alone, rather than collaborating with a larger venue in the United States to make up a touring exhibition.
"American museum colleagues were kind of amazed - there's some prestige in that, saying 'We're doing this on our own two feet and we don't need any other support.' "
The limited travel also helped Franklin, a Renaissance scholar, secure the deal with some of the world's foremost galleries, particularly Florence's Uffizi.
"The Florentines almost began to see this is a patriotic gesture to Canada . . . Something that unlocked the loans was the idea that they were doing something for Canada that they've never done before."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2005 Bell Canada, Microsoft Corporation and/or their contributors. All rights reserved. Terms of Use Advertise Privacy Statement About Us
16/05/2005 3:43:00 PM
http://travelcanada.sympatico.msn.ca/TravelNews/ContentPosting.aspx?contentid=9e9c0debbc474d4a8970811506998a21&show=True&number=5&showbyline=False&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OTTAWA (CP) - Heavily muscled, naked men, mighty battle scenes and perhaps a glimpse or two of heaven: you can find it all in Ottawa.
A security guard walks past three pieces of renaissance art that will be in an upcoming show at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa Wednesday, April 27, 2005. The show featuring artworks from several artists including Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo will open May 29, 2005. (CP PHOTO/Jonathan Hayward)
Obviously, we're not talking about Parliament Hill, even with the herculean struggle for political power these days.
Rather, it's this summer's show at the National Gallery of Canada - a major international exhibition of Renaissance paintings, sketches and sculpture drawn from galleries around the world.
Leading the exhibit are the two "bad boys" that defined the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
Contemporaries and bitter rivals, the two masters drove a revolution in 16th-century Italian art - a passionate movement that show curator David Franklin captures through more than 120 works by the pair and the legions of artists they influenced.
As a group, the artists of the Renaissance attempted to idealize the human form and show it in physical perfection - a shift away from predecessors whose subjects were drawn primarily from religious stories.
"The way I see it, through Leonardo and Michelangelo, is the total belief in the human individual to express everything that needs to be expressed," says Franklin, deputy director and chief curator of the National Gallery of Canada.
"The wanted to make man the measure of all things."
Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and the Renaissance in Florence is a significant coup for the National Gallery - the sole international venue for an exhibition that was four years in the making.
"These are not artists that are interested in landscape or showing divine elements . . . Everything comes from you - your reaction to nature; your response is what you're trying to understand," says Franklin.
"It's art from the inside out, whereas art previously had been from the outside in."
Focusing on the period from about 1500 to 1550, the show demonstrates how Florence became the intellectual and emotional centre of an explosion of this new form of art. Whether followers imitated or rejected the masters, in some way all were hugely influenced by Leonardo and Michelangelo.
But visitors to the National Gallery from May 29 to Sept. 5 shouldn't expect to see some of the most famous - and priceless - icons of the Renaissance.
Michelangelo's marble masterpiece David hasn't checked his sling and rock at Canada Customs, and Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus still clings to the walls of Florence's Uffizi Gallery.
But the world-famous Uffizi has sent Rosso Fiorentino's Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro, one of several Rossos in the show.
"That one was quite a coup," says Franklin, whose very first stop in his quest to assemble the Renaissance show was at the crowded doors of the Uffizi.
"It really is one of these ones that's completely crazy - people didn't even know what the subject was (for Rosso) - it's all these naked bodies just flying around," he says of the complex and passionate masterpiece.
"He's trying to do a Leonardo."
Another major contribution is the famously luscious painting by Agnolo Bronzino of the Renaissance-era Florentine ruler, Cosimo I de Medici, now housed in Philadelphia's Museum of Art.
Cosimo looks less like a Medici scion and more like a heavily muscled Greco-Roman wrestler, as he gazes over one powerful shoulder at the viewer.
Bronzino, flatteringly, presents Cosimo as the mythological poet and musician Orpheus at the mouth of Hades, where he had gone to reclaim his dead wife Eurydice.
Franklin has also drawn heavily from Windsor Castle's Royal Library ("the Queen has been most generous") for ink and chalk sketches by Leonardo and Michelangelo, as well as studies by Raphael.
And watch for pieces by Andrea del Sarto, Giorgio Vasari, Benvenuto Cellini and Jacopo da Pontormo.
If that sounds like a lot of passion and revolution for a family to take in, check out the child-friendly activities related to the Renaissance show for more hands-on art fans.
Children can take part in sketching and painting workshops, dress up in period costumes and follow activity guides that will make the stories in the paintings more understandable.
For older fans, there are also drawing workshops, evening lectures, and a symposium with international art scholars discussing the show.
If all that still isn't enough of la bella Italia, visitors can next hit the Canadian Museum of Civilization for the North American premiere of an exhibit on Pompeii.
The citizens of that ancient city in southern Italy were entombed and their homes became a time capsule after Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii in AD 79, at the height of the Roman Empire.
Running from May 27 to Sept. 12, that exhibit will include nearly 500 artifacts from Pompeii, Herculaneum and other archeological sites near the Bay of Naples - frescoes, sculptures, jewelry, household items and body casts of victims.
But the Renaissance art show is the brightest jewel in Ottawa's summer.
Many of the works have never been seen before in North America, and transporting and insuring the pieces has cost the National Gallery of Canada something approaching $2 million.
Yet in terms of art-world prestige - not to mention plain old tourism for the National Capital Region - Franklin says it will be worth the effort.
"A show like this has never really been done before outside of Florence," widely seen as the birthplace of the Renaissance and mecca for art scholars.
With many of the works approaching their 500th birthday, they're not just extremely valuable but also very fragile and difficult to move across thousands of kilometres.
That helps explain why the National Gallery took the rare step of mounting such a major show alone, rather than collaborating with a larger venue in the United States to make up a touring exhibition.
"American museum colleagues were kind of amazed - there's some prestige in that, saying 'We're doing this on our own two feet and we don't need any other support.' "
The limited travel also helped Franklin, a Renaissance scholar, secure the deal with some of the world's foremost galleries, particularly Florence's Uffizi.
"The Florentines almost began to see this is a patriotic gesture to Canada . . . Something that unlocked the loans was the idea that they were doing something for Canada that they've never done before."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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