The National Gallery 2019-20 Italian art exhibitions

Issued November 2019

Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece
Commissioned and Produced by the National Gallery. Created by 59 Productions
Until 26 January 2020
Ground Floor Galleries

Titian: Love Desire Death
16 March – 14 June 2020
Main Floor Galleries

Artemisia
4 April – 26 July 2020
Sainsbury Wing

The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Raphael
3 October 2020 – 24 January 2021
North Galleries

Image: Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece, commissioned & produced by the National Gallery and created by 59 Productions. Photo © The National Gallery, London

Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece

Now extended until 26 January 2020

Ground Floor Galleries
Admission charge
Book in advance and save
Members go free

500 years after his death, Leonardo remains one of the world’s most popular artists and the National Gallery’s Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece provides an immersive exploration of his genius as a painter, focusing on 'The Virgin of the Rocks'. Critics have described the Experience as ‘atmospheric’ ‘fun and informative’ and ‘a bold move.’

The ground floor galleries have been completely transformed into a space that investigates 'The Virgin of the Rocks' and the inventive mind that created it. A wide range of multi-sensory experiences are presented across four separate rooms. Visitors are able to step inside a similar chapel-setting and see what art historical research suggests the painting’s setting may have looked like. They can explore Leonardo’s own research, which informed the specific compositions in the painting. In addition they can see how Leonardo used his scientific studies to create strong effects of light and shadow in his painting. The modern process of discovery in a conservation studio, where the mysteries and secrets of a painting are uncovered, are also brought to life with visitors being able to engage in detail with the latest findings underneath 'The Virgin of the Rocks'.

The experience has been created by 59 Productions, the multi award-winning company of artists, architects, designers and technologists behind the video design of the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Children go free - up to four free under-18 tickets can be booked with each adult ticket.

Titian: Love Desire Death

16 March – 14 June 2020

Admission charge
Book in advance and save
Members go free

Titian’s epic series of large-scale mythological paintings, known as the poesie, will be brought together in its entirety for the first time since the late 16th century at the National Gallery next March.

From the original cycle of six paintings, the exhibition will reunite 'Danaë' (1551–3, The Wellington Collection, Apsley House); 'Venus and Adonis' (1554, Prado, Madrid); 'Diana and Actaeon' (1556–9) and 'Diana and Callisto' (1556–9), jointly owned by the National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland; and the recently conserved 'Rape of Europa' (1562) from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Following its landmark decision to lend works on a temporary basis for the first time in its 119-year history, the Wallace Collection will lend its painting from the cycle, 'Perseus and Andromeda', (1554–6), to the exhibition in Trafalgar Square.

The National Gallery’s own 'Death of Actaeon' (1559–75), originally conceived as part of the series, but only executed much later and never delivered, will also be displayed in London.

Painted between about 1551 and 1562 the poesie are among the most original visual interpretations of Classical myth of the early modern era and are touchstone works in the history of European painting for their rich, expressive rendering.

All the paintings revolve around love and desire: their fruits and perils. Combining Titian’s remarkable talent as both artist and storyteller, the mythological scenes capture moments of high drama; a fatal encounter, a shameful discovery, a hasty abduction. In these paintings Titian expertly manipulates paint and colour to dazzling effect; capturing luminous flesh, sumptuous fabrics, water and reflection, as well as atmospheric, almost enchanted, landscapes. His characters show very human, and relatable, emotions: euphoria, concern, guilt, surprise, shame, desperation, anguish, and terror.

Exhibition organised by the National Gallery, the National Galleries of Scotland, the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Artemisia

4 April – 26 July 2020

Sainsbury Wing
Admission charge
Members go free

For the first time in the UK, a major monographic exhibition of the work of Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1654, or later), will open at the National Gallery in April 2020.

At the centre of the exhibition will be the Gallery’s recently acquired 'Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria' (about 1615–17), which will be displayed alongside other closely related works by Artemisia for the first time since its discovery in 2017.

Artemisia Gentileschi is considered one of the most accomplished followers of Caravaggio, whom she must have known personally through her father, Orazio Gentileschi. At a time when women artists were not easily accepted, she was exceptional for becoming the first female member of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence and for enjoying a long and successful career, spanning more than forty years.

Artemisia will bring together around thirty-five works by the Italian Baroque artist from both public institutions and private collections around the world. The exhibition will present a highly selective survey of Artemisia’s career – from her youthful training in Rome, where she learnt to paint under the guidance of her father, to her formative years in Florence and her return to Rome just a few years later. The exhibition will end with Artemisia’s brief trip to London, to join her dying father, and the establishment of her studio in Naples, where she lived for the last 25 years of her life.

Key loans will include Artemisia Gentileschi’s 'Self-Portrait as a Lute Player' (about 1615–18) from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, painted around the same time as the National Gallery’s own painting.

Supported by

The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Raphael

3 October 2020 – 24 January 2021
North Galleries
Admission charge
Members go free

A painter, draughtsman, architect, archaeologist, and poet who captured in his art the human and the divine, love, friendship, learning, and power, who gave us quintessential images of community and civilisation: Raphael’s life was short, his work prolific, and his legacy immortal.

In the year that marks the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, the National Gallery will present one of the first-ever exhibitions to explore the complete career of this giant of the Italian Renaissance.

In his brief career, spanning just two decades, Raffaello Santi (1483–1520) shaped the course of Western culture like few artists before or since. This exhibition will examine not just his celebrated paintings and drawings - but also his not so widely known work in architecture, archaeology, poetry, and design for sculpture, tapestry, prints, and the applied arts. The aim is to do something no previous Raphael exhibition has ever done - explore every aspect of his multimedia activity.

'The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Raphael' will demonstrate why Raphael plays such a pivotal role in the history of Western art, and seek to understand why his work remains relevant to us today. There will be more than ninety exhibits, with focus on autograph works and those in media he did not practice himself but for which he provided designs.

Loans from across his entire career – many of them unprecedented – will be travelling to London from around the world, to join 10 works from the National Gallery’s outstanding collection of Raphaels. Lenders will include the Louvre, Musei Vaticani, Galleria degli Uffizi, National Gallery of Art (Washington DC), and the Museo Nacional del Prado.

Work and activities that cannot be represented by original exhibits – such as the monumental frescoed rooms in the Vatican Palace, known as the Stanze of Raphael – will be presented in other innovative ways.