Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum to Present Venetian Renaissance Exhibition Featuring Newly Acquired Altarpiece

Exhibition Showcases Art Museums’ Collection of Venetian Art and Includes Important Loans from Louvre and Private Collections, as well as Works Once Owned by Renowned Collectors such as John Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones and Ian Woodner

Cambridge, MA (January 11, 2000)—The Fogg Art Museum will showcase approximately 30 paintings, drawings, prints, and books by Venetian masters in Sacred and Profane Visions from Renaissance Venice. The exhibition will feature the altarpiece Sacra conversazione, or Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors, the most important example of its kind in New England and a recent acquisition to the Fogg Art Museum. Encompassing works by Titian, Vivarini, Bellini, Carpaccio, and Crivelli, Sacred and Profane Visions will showcase the Fogg Art Museum’s rich collection of Venetian art, as well as loans from the Louvre, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and private collections. The depth of the material on view will allow students and scholars to explore the remarkable and complex activity of the Venetian workshop and how it flourished at the crossroads of diverse artistic traditions. Organized by Stephan Wolohojian, associate curator of paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts, the exhibition will premiere on February 17 and remain on view through July 22, 2001.

"Sacred and Profane Visions speaks to the core of the Harvard University Art Museum’s unique mission," said James Cuno, the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums. "The works from our permanent collection, complemented by important loans, will create a rich context for exploring this extraordinary nexus of artistic development and the renowned patrons who collected works from this tradition."

The new altarpiece, a monumental work created around 1515, provides an opportunity to explore the evolution of Venetian art in response to the innovations of masters such as Titian and Giorgione. Its origin remains a riddle: this Sacra conversazione has been attributed to Giovanni Bellini, Cima da Conegliano, and, most recently, to Luca Antonio Busati. Technical analysis by the Harvard University Art Museums’ Straus Center for Conservation has revealed that the artist painted over part of the background, turning an open sky with cherubs into a lush landscape with elements directly copied from a print by Giulio Campagnola. The artist was thus integrating secular influences into a religious work. The painting, formerly in the Milanese collection of Giulio Ferrario, was acquired by Ian Woodner in 1962; it was a gift to the Art Museums from the Woodner Family Collection in New York.

"The Sacra conversazione was produced at a moment of extraordinary innovation in Venice," said Wolohojian, the curator. "This monumental altarpiece is the most important Italian painting acquired by the Fogg Art Museum in almost twenty-five years, and has allowed us to reexamine many works in our collection. Our study of the painting and of its bold fusion of a sacred image against a secular pastoral landscape has offered us new insight into this important period of artistic development. It is a work of great artistic and historical merit, distinguished also by its provenance."

The exhibition presents a unique opportunity to examine, in addition to this altarpiece, such important works as Titian’s The Submersion of Pharaoh’s Army in the Red Sea and Giulio Sanuto’s Bacchanal in a Forest, a rare print that is another recent acquisition being exhibited for the first time. Sacred and Profane Visions will also feature The City of Jerusalem by Jacopo Bellini, which is on loan from the Louvre. This important work completes Bellini’s Funeral Procession of the Virgin and is part of the Fogg’s permanent collection. Both parts of this drawing will be on view together (until May 15) for the first time in over 100 years.

The Fogg’s collection and the material highlighted in Sacred and Profane Visions include works distinguished by their exceptional provenance. These works, which previously belonged to some of the most important early admirers of Italian art, provide a platform for further examination of the importance of Venetian art in the nineteenth century. Bartolomeo Vivarini’s Virgin and Child, c. 1475, once belonged to John Ruskin, and the copy of the celebrated book Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ("Polifilo’s Strife of Love in a Dream," first printed in Venice in 1499, and assumed to be by Francesco Colonna) was given to Edward Burne-Jones by William Morris.

Among the highlights of the exhibition will be fragile works on paper. Supplementing the Fogg’s holdings are a rare and beautiful drawing of a tree by Titian—perhaps the only study of its kind by the artist—which will be on loan from a longtime friend of the Fogg Art Museum, and a group of drawings from another private collection. The rarity and fragility of the manuscripts and drawings on loan allows them to be displayed only until mid-May.

Symposia

The Art of Florence and Venice, 1420–1520
Saturday, February 17
Sackler lecture hall, 9:30 a.m.–5 p.m.;
coffee at 9 a.m.
Free admission

This day-long symposium brings together leading scholars who will present new research on Florentine and Venetian art in the great age of the Renaissance in Italy. The event will coincide with the opening of the exhibition Sacred and Profane Visions from Renaissance Venice.

Speakers include Cristelle Baskins, Department of Art and Art History, Tufts University; Carmen Bambach, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Paolo Berdini, assistant professor, Stanford University; Keith Christiansen, Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Paul Hills, senior research fellow, University College, London; Megan Holmes, Department of Art History, University of Michigan; David Rosand, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University; and Stephan Wolohojian, associate curator, Department of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, Fogg Art Museum.

The Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums is one of the world’s leading arts institutions. It is distinguished by the range and depth of its collections, its groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of its staff. For more than a century, it has been the nation’s premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and is renowned for its seminal and ongoing role in the development of the discipline of art history in this country.

The three art museums at Harvard – the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Fogg Art Museum – are all outstanding institutions in their respective fields. The Fogg also houses the Straus Center for Conservation, long a leader in the research and development of scientific and technology-based analysis of art, as well as the U. S. headquarters for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, an ongoing excavation project in western Turkey. The 150,000 objects in the art museums’ collections range in date from ancient times to the present and come from Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Each museum also has an active program of special exhibitions that promotes new scholarship in its areas of focus.

As an integral component of the Harvard University community, the three art museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study. The public is welcome to experience the collections and special exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs in the various museums.

The collections are divided among ten curatorial areas: Ancient and Byzantine Art and Numismatics; Architecture and Design; Asian Art; Busch-Reisinger Museum; Drawings; Islamic and Later Indian Art; Modern and Contemporary Art; Paintings, Sculpture and Decorative Arts; Prints; and Photographs. Developed with an emphasis on their value for teaching and research, these holdings are a uniquely broad and rich resource that is continually enhanced through gifts and acquisitions. Together, the holdings of the three museums comprise one of the finest university art collections in the world, with resources rivaling those of many major public museums.

The Straus Center for Conservation is the oldest fine arts conservation treatment, research, and training facility in the United States. The Center specializes in the conservation of paintings, sculpture, decorative objects, historic and archaeological artifacts, and works of art on paper. Its team members are pioneers in developing new applications of digital imaging in conservation. The Center’s state-of-the-art facilities support a broad range of analytical services.

All three art museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Sunday, 1–5 p.m., and are closed on national holidays. Admission is $5.00; $4.00 for senior citizens; $3.00 for students; free under 18 and for all individuals on Saturdays until noon and all day on Wednesdays.

For general information, call 617-495-9400 or visit www.artmuseums.harvard.edu. All groups of seven or more must schedule in advance by calling 617-496-8576. The Harvard University Art Museums receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.