Past Exhibition

Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting

Four people with pale skin are gathered to our right in a landscape, their heads bowed down toward an infant who lies on a white cloth on the ground in this horizontal painting. The nude baby has a rounded belly, chubby limbs, and short blond hair. To our right and near the edge of the panel, a woman kneels with her hands in prayer, looking toward the baby so she faces our left in profile. She wears a lapis-blue robe over a rose-pink dress, and a white cloth covers her head and shoulders. Behind her and to our left, a man with a white beard, wearing a golden yellow robe, sits or kneels next to a rock at the mouth of a cave cut into a rocky outcropping that extends off the top of the composition. To the left of the baby and at the center of the foreground, a pair of men wear tattered clothing and hold shepherd’s staffs. The man closer to us kneels with his hands pressed together in prayer as the man behind him bends his knee as if to kneel. The landscape recedes deep into the distance on the left half of the painting with a winding river, houses and other buildings, grassy hills, and mountains beneath a blue sky. A small winged angel wearing white looks down on the scene from the upper left corner.
Giorgione, The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1505/1510, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.289

Details

  • Dates

    -

  • Locations

    West Building, Main Floor, Galleries 72 through 79
Four people with pale skin are gathered to our right in a landscape, their heads bowed down toward an infant who lies on a white cloth on the ground in this horizontal painting. The nude baby has a rounded belly, chubby limbs, and short blond hair. To our right and near the edge of the panel, a woman kneels with her hands in prayer, looking toward the baby so she faces our left in profile. She wears a lapis-blue robe over a rose-pink dress, and a white cloth covers her head and shoulders. Behind her and to our left, a man with a white beard, wearing a golden yellow robe, sits or kneels next to a rock at the mouth of a cave cut into a rocky outcropping that extends off the top of the composition. To the left of the baby and at the center of the foreground, a pair of men wear tattered clothing and hold shepherd’s staffs. The man closer to us kneels with his hands pressed together in prayer as the man behind him bends his knee as if to kneel. The landscape recedes deep into the distance on the left half of the painting with a winding river, houses and other buildings, grassy hills, and mountains beneath a blue sky. A small winged angel wearing white looks down on the scene from the upper left corner.
Giorgione, The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1505/1510, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.289

Overview: 50 paintings by Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and their contemporaries were shown in this exhibition, which explored the art of Venice during the first three decades of the 16th century. Included were works from the National Gallery of Art and loans from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and other institutions in Europe and North America. The Louvre loaned Titian's Pastoral Concert (Concert Champêtre) for the exhibition, the first time the work had been shown in North America. The installation was arranged by theme: sacred images, pictures of women, allegories and mythologies, and portraits of men. One room was devoted to conservation studies of Venetian paintings, undertaken by Elke Oberthaler of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and Elizabeth Walmsley of the National Gallery of Art. Titian's Bacchanal of the Andrians from the Prado and Giovani Bellini and Titian's The Feast of the Gods from the collection of the National Gallery were hung side by side to evoke the Camerino of Duke Alfonso d'Este.

An audio tour was narrated by National Gallery director Earl A. Powell III, curator David Alan Brown, and others.

A summer lecture series, Five Hundred Years of Art in Venice: Achievement, Allure, and Influence, was presented by education department lecturers as part of the National Gallery's Summer in Venice celebration. Two Sunday concerts were presented in June as part of the celebration, and a special menu of Venetian-inspired cuisine was available in the West Building Garden Café. A public symposium, Rediscovering Venetian Renaissance Painting, was held on September 16 and 17. The symposium was organized by the National Gallery of Art in conjunction with The Solow Art and Architecture Foundation.

Organization: The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The exhibition curators were David Alan Brown, curator of Italian paintings, National Gallery of Art, and Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, curator of Italian paintings at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Sponsor: The exhibition was made possible by Bracco, an international leader in diagnostic imaging. It was supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Early support for planning and research was provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

Attendance: 147,063

Catalog: Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting, by David Alan Brown et al. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art and Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London,  2006.

Brochure: Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting, by Susan M. Arensberg. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2006.

Other Venues: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, October 17, 2006–January 7, 2007

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