NGA Building Projection - Enlighten Festival 2012
NGA Building Projection - Enlighten Festival 2012
Paintings from 'Renaissance' cover the Cathedral's 75m high facade - Titian, Madonna and child with a landscape 1507
NGA Building Projection - Enlighten Festival 2012
9 December 2011 – 9 April 2012, National Gallery of Australia
Organised in partnership with the City of Bergamo and its Pinacoteca Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
Renaissance was the first exhibition of Early and High Renaissance art held in Australia and featured paintings by many of the greatest Italian artists, including Raphael, Botticelli, Bellini and Titian. More than 70 works on canvas and wood panel, were able to be loaned from the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Italy while they were temporarily closed for renovation.
Paintings by Raphael, Botticelli, Bellini, Mantegna and Perugino, had never been seen in Australia before and there had never been an exhibition of early Renaissance art in this country.
The works in Renaissance were created between 1400 and 1600 by exceptional artists in northern and central Italy. Of extraordinary quality, the paintings were made in the centres of Renaissance culture - Venice, Florence, Milan, Bergamo, Padua, Ferrara and Siena, where the Church and private patrons commissioned religious scenes as well as magnificent portraits.
Subjects ranged from depictions of the Madonna and Child, Bible stories, the lives of the saints and moving renditions of the Crucifixion to insightful images of nobles and patricians.
Australian Government support was brokered through the International Exhibition Insurance scheme, with San Remo Pasta as Exhibition Partner and National Australia Bank as Principal Partner.
When the Renaissance exhibition closed, after 122 days, it had attracted 212,920 visitors from across Australia injecting an estimated $75 million into the ACT economy, making it the second most popular exhibition staged at the National Gallery of Australia in the previous ten years.
Six Madonna and Child paintings from the exhibition, including Carlo Crivelli Madonna and Child c.1482-3, projected onto the 75m high iconic façade of St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney during the weeks leading up to Christmas
