The Pinacoteca di Brera will host from May 26 to September 13, 2026 the first exhibition ever dedicated to Giovanni Agostino da Lodi, considered one of the most singular and innovative artists active in Italy in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The exhibition is curated by Maria Cristina Passoni and Cristina Quattrini, while the scientific committee brings together Alessandro Ballarin, Francesco Frangi, Mauro Natale, Maria Cristina Passoni, Cristina Quattrini, Edoardo Rossetti and Marco Tanzi.
The story of this painter, still shrouded in many questions due to the scarcity of available biographical data, develops between the last years of the 15th century and the early 16th century in a context of intense cultural and artistic exchanges between Milan and Venice, which has been reconstructed above all through stylistic analysis and comparison with the great masters of the time, from whom Giovanni Agostino drew suggestions then reinterpreted with an extremely personal figure. On the Milanese front, references to Bramantino and Leonardo da Vinci emerge; on the Venetian front, Alvise Vivarini, Giovanni Bellini, Boccaccio Boccaccino, Giorgione and Albrecht Dürer turn out to be fundamental. The exhibition will also feature works by these masters from Italian and international collections.
A refined artist with an original flair, Giovanni Agostino returned to critical attention in the early twentieth century. At first he was identified with the conventional name “Pseudo Boccaccino,” attributed to him by Wilhelm von Bode, who in 1900 assigned him some works previously referred to Boccaccio Boccaccino. Despite the presence of the signature in the famous Doppio ritratto preserved in Brera, published in 1912 by Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri, his attributional affair remained a matter of debate for a long time, until the definitive re-evaluation occurred thanks to studies in the late 20th century.
The artist’s training seems to have taken place in Milan between the last two decades of the 15th century, in contact with Bramante and Bramantino, and then continued in Venice. Here his first documented work was born: the altarpiece intended for the altar of the fraglia dei barcaioli in the church of San Cristoforo della Pace in Murano, now preserved in the church of San Pietro Martire, made after March 25, 1492. In the first decade of the 16th century the comparison with Leonardo, also evident in the technique of the few known drawings, suggests a temporary return to Milan. At the same time, Giovanni Agostino was among the artists most influenced by Dürer’s second Venetian sojourn, which took place between 1505 and 1507. In 1510 and 1511 his presence is documented again in Milan, where he seems to settle more continuously and where he obtained commissions in important artistic sites, including the church of Santa Maria della Pace and the Certosa di Pavia. In this final phase his pictorial language takes on more monumental forms, approaching the mature works of Bramantino and the Leonardism of Marco d’Oggiono.
The aim of the exhibition is to acquaint a wider audience with an artist hitherto appreciated mainly by specialists, placing his production in the crucial context of the Northern Italian Renaissance.
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| Brera Art Gallery hosts first exhibition dedicated to Giovanni Agostino da Lodi |
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