ARCHITECTURAL PAINTINGS From Renaissance to Eighteenth Century 18 October 2011 to 22 January 2012 Curators: Delfín Rodríguez and Mar Borobia

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1 ARCHITECTURAL PAINTINGS From Renaissance to Eighteenth Century 18 October 2011 to 22 January 2012 Curators: Delfín Rodríguez and Mar Borobia On 18 October the Museo Thyssen Bornemisza and Fundación Caja Madrid will be inaugurating the exhibition Architectural Paintings. From Renaissance to Eighteenth Century. It comprises a group of more than 140 paintings from the Renaissance to the 18 th century that depict buildings and cities, either as the principal motif or as the background for the depiction of other subjects. The exhibition will aim to show the visiting public the development of these architectural motifs or settings and the wide range of issues that contributed to the independence of the genre in the 18 th century. Painted buildings were one of the options chosen by numerous artists to emphasize the scenes and episodes depicted in their paintings, among them leading painters from the Mediterranean world and northern Europe between the 14 th and 18 th centuries including Duccio di Buoninsegna, Canaletto, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Tintoretto, Gaspar van Wittel, Hubert Robert, Maerten van Heemskerck and Hans Vredeman de Vries. Curated by Delfín Rodríguez, Senior Professor of Art History at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, and Mar Borobia, Chief Curator of Old Master Painting at the Museo Thyssen Bornemisza, the exhibition brings together works by these renowned artists, with outstanding loans from private collections and museums around the world, among them Musei Vaticani, National Gallery of Art (Washington), Galleria degli Uffizi, Museo del Prado and Patrimonio Nacional. By including architectural motifs in their works, artists established the setting for the movement or position of the figures and provided them with a context that was credible in spatial, visual, historical, mythical, legendary and imaginary terms. In addition, such works could become innovative painted architectural projects or eloquent fragments of structures that steered the viewer s emotions and the narrative thread through the use of walls, windows etc. The link between the painting of buildings and cities with travelling is another key theme in this exhibition, as is an analysis of the architectural ideas and solutions that these artists frequently presented in their works. Images from left to right: Vittore Carpaccio. The Visitation, c Galleria Franchetti. Ca d Oro, Venecia. Canaletto. Piazza San Marco in Venice, c Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Bernardo Bellotto. Capriccio with the Colosseum, Galleria Nazionale, Parma. For more information and images, please contact: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Press Office Paseo del Prado, Madrid. Tels / Fax prensa@museothyssen.org;

2 Behind their apparent objectivity, painted structures cities, palaces, temporary constructions, ruins and designs conceal symbols, recollections, or forms of political and religious propaganda, in some cases of considerable complexity. The works of these artists, who became increasingly specialised, particularly in the 17 th and 18 th centuries, responded to demand from the religious and political authorities and from intellectuals. On occasions they painted fantastical buildings inspired by ancient and modern travellers accounts or by religious or secular texts. These were backdrops and buildings charged with sacred or political resonances and symbolism, transformed into expressions of wealth and luxury, eulogies of particular individuals, emblems of cities or nations or recollections or exaltations of triumphs and journeys or visits. In other cases these artists painted buildings under construction or ones contemporary with the painting, introducing the very process of building into the representation: machines, tools, workmen, etc. They also painted ruins, which in the case of religious scenes such as the Nativity or the Adoration of the Magi, referred to the destruction of a pagan past over which the new architecture of Christianity arose. Similarly, the depiction of the classical architectural orders symbolised the new order of Humanism. Painted buildings and settings were soon incorporated into the theory of representational systems, particularly those of perspective and architectural theory. Painting and architecture and their respective idioms thus began to express inherent tensions and conflicts through works that moved from painting to architecture and from planned or built architecture to painting. To paint buildings was a form of designing them and, conversely, to design and build them was a way of painting and adorning the world, including the world represented on the two dimensional surface of the canvas. Bernardo Bellotto. The Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Oil on canvas, 61 x 90 cm. Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest. Attributed to Girolamo Da Contignola (Girolamo Marchesi). View of a City, Tempera on panel, 67 x 50 cm. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Ferrara. The exhibition is structured both chronologically and thematically. The first part, on display at the Museo Thyssen Bornemisza, spans the 14 th to the 17 th centuries, a period in which the painting of buildings and city views was considered a minor genre but in which these elements frequently appeared as the backgrounds to religious, historical and mythological scenes. The depiction of such elements would become increasingly important until it triumphed as an independent genre in the 18 th century, which is the subject of the second part of the exhibition in the exhibition space of Fundación Caja Madrid. It includes works by the great masters of the vedute, landscapes with ruins, capriccios etc.

3 Museo Thyssen Bornemisza Francesco d Antonio. Christ Healing a Lunatic and Judas Receiving Thirty Pieces of Silver, c Tempera and gold on canvas, 115,2 x 106 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Cities for living in or dreaming about, real, imaginary, surprising or dream like cities occupy the backgrounds of the paintings to be seen in the first rooms of the exhibition. Duccio di Buoninsegna, Francesco d Antonio and Benedetto Bonfigli are among the 14 thand 15 th century artists whose paintings introduced the theme of Architecture as Setting with works in which the setting allows for the presentation of the religious narrative. Religious subject matter is also the focus of the second section, Perspective and Space, which includes a group of paintings that reveals the importance of perspective, both pictorial and architectural, which was crucial to Renaissance art and to the evolution of painting from that point onwards. Artists represented include Fra Carnevale, Gentile Bellini and Tintoretto. The next two sections, The historical City: memory and ruins and The Ideal City, introduce symbolism in the form of reverie, recollection, emotion and fantasy as an additional element in the architectural settings of a range of scenes. It is thus to be found in the work of Italian artists such as Vittore Carpaccio and northern European ones including Maerten van Heemskerck. These two sections are followed by Legendary Buildings and Cities and Imaginary and fantastical Buildings, which illustrate the theme of travel and its key role in the development of painted architecture as an independent pictorial genre. We see real or imaginary journeys, journeys in time or through the imagination. These works lead on to the representation of historical or mythical places and monuments such as Babylon, the Tower of Babel, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse at Alexandria: buildings, ruins or cities entirely or partly created by the painter s imagination. The exhibition continues with an area devoted to Antiquity as Landscape featuring the work of great 17 th century painters such as Annibale Carracci and Claude Lorrain. Here the religious or historical subject becomes a more anecdotal pretext for the depiction of majestic landscapes with elements from the classical world. Finally, views of cities such as Rome and Naples or some of their most famous buildings and monuments are the subject of The modern City as a Metaphor of Power. This section includes works by Viviano Codazzi and Gaspar van Wittel, among others, and is the last section in the first half of the exhibition. Claudio Lorena. Port with Villa Medici, Oil on canvas, 102 x 133 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

4 Fundación Caja Madrid Cities of the Grand Tour is the first section on display at Fundación Caja Madrid. These views of buildings and cities, which functioned as souvenirs of royal or historical trips, first appeared in the Renaissance but it was above all in the 18 th century, with the rise of the socalled Grand Tour, that the genre of vedute reached its peak. This room includes works by all the leading representatives of vedute painting Canaletto, Guardi, Bellotto, Van Wittel, Zocchi, Panini and Marieschi in the form of views of Italian cities, particularly Venice, with a markedly topographical focus. As a result such works became postcards or souvenirs for the aristocrats, intellectuals and European artists who wished to recall their experiences of Italian art and culture throughout the course of the 18 th century. The evolution of the genre and its expansion beyond Italy can be seen in the next section, entitled The Image of the City and Architecture in Europe, which includes views of other cities, among them Madrid, with paintings of Atocha, the calle de Alcalá and the Royal Palace by Antonio Joli. Bernardo Bellotto. Santa María d Aracoeli and the Capitol, Rome, c Oil on canvas, 86,4 x 148,6 cm. Petworth House, The Egremont Collection. The attitude of other Grand Tour travellers, who seemingly allowed themselves to get lost and to be surprised by what they saw, confusing real views with fantasies and potential projects, led to the appearance of a new genre known as the capriccio. The room devoted to Architectural Capriccios features various examples by artists such as Canaletto, Bellotto and Panini in which real city views, buildings and historical monuments are combined with imaginary places and structures, on occasions associated with artistic and architectural innovations or new intellectual concepts. The same was the case with the subject of ruins, another sub genre of the architectural landscape and one that became widespread in the 18 th century. In the present exhibition examples are included in the section The Poetic of Ruins, with works by Marco Ricci, Hubert Robert and Claude Joseph Vernet among others. Ruins were associated with the notion of the passing of time, both historical time and the day to day, and such works implied a journey into the past or through the present that encouraged thoughts of the future. The exhibition ends with a room devoted to Ruins and Memory as Projects which displays a group of prints by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Marco Ricci. Capriccio with Ruins and Washerwomen. Oil on canvas, 64 x 76 cm. Museo Civico Amadeo Lia, La Spezia. From 26 October 2011 to 18 January 2012 the Museum will present a monographic course associated with the exhibition. Entitled On Paintings of Buildings and Cities (accounts, travels, dreams, ruins and other imaginary places), it is directed by the exhibition s two curators and is organised in collaboration with the Complutense and Autónoma universities in Madrid. It will benefit from the participation of distinguished international experts.

5 EXHIBITION INFORMATION Title: Architectural Paintings. From Renaissance to the Eighteenth Century. Organiser: Museo Thyssen Bornemisza and Fundación Caja Madrid. Dates and venues: Madrid, Museo Thyssen Bornemisza and Casa de las Alhajas, Fundación Caja Madrid, from 18 October 2011 to 22 January Curators: Delfín Rodríguez, Senior Professor of Art History, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, and Mar Borobia, Chief of Old Master Painting Department, Museo Thyssen Bornemisza. Technical Curator: Dolores Delgado, Old Master Painting Department, Museo Thyssen Bornemisza Number of works: 144 Catalogue: published in Spanish. Associated activities: Monographic course On Paintings of Buildings and Cities (accounts, travels, dreams, ruins and other imaginary places), 26 October to 18 January, with Delfín Rodríquez, Fernando Marías, Víctor Nieto Alcaide, Marcello Fagiolo, Filippo Camerota, Mar Borobia, Jörg Garms and Franceso Dal Co. VISITOR INFORMATION MUSEO THYSSEN BORNEMISZA Address: Museo Thyssen Bornemisza. Paseo del Prado 8, Madrid. Opening times: Tuesdays to Sundays, 10am to 7pm. Saturdays in 2011, from 10am to 11pm. Ticket desks close half an hour before the galleries are closed. Ticket prices: Temporary exhibition: General ticket: 8 Euros. Reduced price ticket: 5.50 Euros for visitors aged over 65, pensioners and students with proof of status, and family groups comprising at least one adult and three children (or two if one has special needs) officially registered as a Large Family. Free entry: children under 12 and unemployed Spanish citizens with proof of status. Temporary Exhibition + Permanent Collection: General ticket: 13 Euros. Reduced price: 7.50 Euros. Free entry: children under 12 and unemployed Spanish citizens with proof of status. Pre booked tickets available from the Museum s ticket desks, on its website and on tel: More information: Audioguide: available in various languages.

6 FUNDACIÓN CAJA MADRID Plaza de San Martín, Madrid Opening times: Tuesday to Sundays, 10am to 8pm. Closed on Mondays. Free entry. Information Service: Tel: Audioguide: Available in Spanish, English and French. Guided Tours: Booking: More information on tel Tuesday to Fridays, 10am to 2pm. Free. More information on: PRESS INFORMATION pintadas