Great Painters in Brescia from the Renaissance to the 18th Century

Posted by Suzanne Hill Jul 24, 2006

It seems that the Portland Art Museum lent three of its Impressionist paintings in 2005 to the city of Brescia, Italy, for their exhibition of Monet, the Seine and the Waterlilies.

To Portland's great fortune, the museum is now having this favor amply returned.

The principal museums of Brescia, the Santa Giulia City Museum [also known as the Monastery of Santa Guilia] and the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, have lent the Portland Art Museum 35 Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces.

The works in the exhibit include beautiful frescoes with secular and mythological themes that would have decorated the interiors of private palaces. The frescoes look as fresh as if they had been created today. Many paintings show the religious subjects so important to the people of the Renaissance. The exhibit includes artist Antonio Rasio's allegorical studies of the four seasons depicted as beautiful and finely-detailed women. There are works showing the beginnings of landscape painting as an independent artistic genre.

And finally the museum includes paintings that illustrate the Brescian artists' prowess with realism in portraiture, by the likes of both 16th-century Renaissance artists like Bonvicino (known as Moretto) and Moroni (Moretto's pupil), and by 18th-century artists.

I was most struck by one of these very same 18th-century paintings called Due Pitocchi of two tattered guys quite down on their luck sitting together over a pitcher and a card game. It's arresting because of its realism and attention to detail, its use of warm rich colors, and the men's gazes that seem to ask why I am intruding on their private time.

The exhibit runs at the Portland Art Museum until Sunday, September 17, 2006.