Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Titian, they are among the three
masters whose works arrived in Beijing yesterday to light up the
capital's bleak winter with the brilliance of Renaissance art.
A Portrait of a Young Lady by Piero Pollaiuolo, valued
at 500 million euros (US$600 million), was the first artwork to be
taken out of dozens of boxes that traveled 10,000 kilometers under
strict security from museums in Florence, Italy.
The 86 paintings, sculptures and tapestries of Italian
Renaissance masters, which are making their debut in the country,
signal the start of the 2006 Italian Cultural Year in China.
The masterpieces will be on display at an exhibition titled
"Italian Renaissance Art" at the Millennium World Art Museum of the
Millennium Monument in southwestern Beijing from Saturday to April
23.
"In Florence, the artworks are spread out in many museums, but
in Beijing they are brought together for the grandest show ever
held in China," said Wang Limei, director of the Millennium
Museum.
The collection, which would make "even Florentines jealous," is
on loan from 12 museums in Florence, Wang said.
They include the four-centuries-old Uffizi Gallery, the most
ancient museum in Europe that houses perhaps the biggest collection
of Italian paintings in the world; and the Bargello National Museum
of Florence, a magnificent palace built in the 13th century which
houses many important Renaissance sculptures.
The art on display was created over a span of six centuries,
between the Proto-Renaissance the first rays of Renaissance in the
late 13th century during the High Medieval Age and the Baroque to
the mid-18th century.
Although it was almost impossible to bring household names like
Raphael's Madonna dell Granduca (Madonna Holding the Baby
Jesus), curators of the exhibition managed to include some of the
greatest paintings and sculptures of the "Renaissance men," such as
the Head Portrait of a Lady by Leonardo Da Vinci
(1452-1519) and the David Holding the Head of Goliath by
Caravaggio (1571-1610).
After the Renaissance art show, the Italian Culture Year in
China will feature dozens of events, such as the exhibition of
avant-garde art from Venice Biennale at the National Museum of
China, and the performance of the La Scala opera house of Milan in
Beijing and Shanghai, according to Li Shaoping, an official with
the Chinese Ministry of Culture.
(China Daily January 16, 2006)
