Painters of reality compared: Bellotti and Ceruti on display at MarteS

An unprecedented confrontation between two great modern painters of reality: this is what is being staged from March 21 to June 28, 2026 at the MarteS Museo d’Arte Sorlini in Calvagese della Riviera, in the province of Brescia, where the dossier exhibition Il Vero-Simile. Bellotti and Ceruti: reality painting compared, an exhibition project conceived and promoted by the Luciano Sorlini Foundation and dedicated to two Lombard protagonists of reality painting between the 17th and 18th centuries, Pietro Bellotti (Roè Volciano, 1625 - Gargnano, 1700) and Giacomo Ceruti (Milan, 1698 - 1767). The initiative is part of the path of valorization of reality painting and Brescia’s artistic heritage carried out by the museum, consolidating the role of MarteS in the Italian cultural system. Curated by Stefano Lusardi, in collaboration with Serena Goldoni and Alessia Mazzacani, the exhibition enjoys the patronage of the Lombardy Region, the Province of Brescia and the Municipality of Calvagese della Riviera. The itinerary develops in the museum’s exhibition spaces and places four national loans, from public institutions and private collections, alongside the works permanently displayed in the MarteS spaces. It is organized in collaboration with the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice.

The project stems from the desire to enhance the work of Pietro Bellotti in his home territory, the Lake Garda area, following a particularly significant year, 2025, which saw the painter’s art celebrated with a major exhibition precisely at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, entitled Stupor, Reality, Enigma. Pietro Bellotti and the Painting of the Seventeenth Century(our review here). The new exhibition proposal, dedicated to the enhancement and study of his production, confirms the Luciano Sorlini Foundation’s focus on Lombard reality painting, already made concrete in 2023 with the exhibition PerDiana! Giacomo Ceruti, masterpieces between Lombardy and Veneto. The gaze is also turned to the future, looking forward to 2027, when the cultural initiatives of the MarteS will be centered on the production of two extraordinary interpreters of the Venetian school of painting.

At the heart of the exhibition is a dialogue between the works of Bellotti and those of Ceruti, placed in comparison to highlight their respective interpretations of reality painting. Both artists share a deep concern for the humanity of the subjects depicted, rendered through a respectful point of view, free, however, from overly moralizing or mocking intentions. The exhibition aims to bring to the general public the iconographic and material evidence of this research, through a selection of works capable of making the comparison immediate.

However, the differences emerge clearly on a stylistic and technical level, revealing the distance between two artists who were children of their own time. Pietro Bellotti is associated with a painting defined as “rusty,” fully seventeenth-century, characterized by an intense chromatic matter and a dramatic rendering of the figures. Giacomo Ceruti, active in the following century, is instead distinguished by refined chromatic combinations and a language influenced by 18th-century sensibility. The exhibition highlights these specificities, offering keys to comparative interpretations.

The opening of the exhibition is entrusted to the direct comparison between the self-portraits of the two painters, which allows us to grasp their personalities through precise stylistic and compositional choices. Pietro Bellotti, in theSelf-Portrait on loan from the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, depicts himself in luxurious clothes and with a strong expressiveness that seems to suggest a moralizing message, aimed at elevating the artist to the role of an intellectual. The image communicates self-awareness and a certain desire for social affirmation. Of opposite sign is Giacomo Ceruti’sSelf-Portrait, on loan from the Villa Bassi Rathgeb Museum in Abano Terme, in which the Milanese painter avoids symbolic or allegorical elements and represents himself in humble clothes and manners, with an intense gaze and a moderate, almost resigned expression.

The dialogue continues with two large-format canvases, emblematic for understanding the scope of the two authors’ genre painting. Of particular note is the presence of Popolani all’aperto, a monumental work measuring 213 by 193 centimeters that recently became part of the national heritage and has been returned to Pietro Bellotti’s production. The painting, on loan from the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, stands out as an absolute masterpiece of the genre scene, capable of surprising for the rawness of the representation and for the strength with which it renders the reality of the subjects.

This mode of depiction immediately recalls the large canvases of the so-called Salvadego Cycle to which Giacomo Ceruti devoted himself in his most intense artistic moment, the Brescian one between 1725 and 1733. Of the famous Cerutian cycle, one of the most incisive and biting proofs, the Dwarf, exceptionally granted by a prestigious Brescian private collection, is on display at the MarteS. The figure, strongly characterized and recurring in Pitocchetto’s production, harks back to the human types of seventeenth-century Spanish figurative culture.

The comparison finds a further point of contact in Bellotti’s Vecchia popolana, a painting from the Madrid collection of the Marquises of Casa Torres, where it was traditionally attributed to Diego Velázquez. The work was brought back to Italy by the Luciano Sorlini Foundation in 2025 and is now on display at the MarteS. Accepted by specialists among the cornerstones of Pietro Bellotti’s production, the canvas shares the same stylistic temperature as the Popolani all’aperto and a date that can be placed in the artist’s full maturity, between 1680 and 1690. The presence in the painting of a young man, or perhaps an adult suffering from dwarfism, directly recalls the figure of Ceruti’s Dwarf, creating a thematic and iconographic link that spans the decades.

The exhibition also aims to certify the commitment of MarteS to the enhancement of Brescia’s artistic heritage and to affirm the active role assumed by the museum in the Italian cultural system, fully inserted and in dialogue with some of the country’s most prestigious realities. The study day organized by the Luciano Sorlini Foundation for Saturday, May 16, 2026 at the MarteS, in collaboration with the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, is also part of this perspective. The meeting will gather the outcomes of the research that began with the acquisition of Vecchia popolana and continued on the occasion of the exhibition Stupore, realtà, enigma. Pietro Bellotti and the Painting of the Seventeenth Century held at the Gallerie dell’Accademia between October 2025 and January 2026.

Also continuing through May 2026 is the PCTO project entitled 1625-2025. Discovering an Adventurous Artist from the Valsabbia: Pietro Bellotti 400 years after his birth, activated in November 2025 by the Luciano Sorlini Foundation with the Istituto d’Istruzione Superiore “Giacomo Perlasca” in Idro, a town located a few kilometers from Bellotti’s birthplace. The initiative testifies to the attention also paid to the education and involvement of the younger generation.

The MarteS Museo d’Arte Sorlini, opened in 2018 and recognized by the Lombardy Region in 2023, houses a collection of 185 paintings, mainly Venetian and Venetian, dating from the 14th to the 19th century, collected over time by Brescian entrepreneur Luciano Sorlini. The museum confirms its commitment to the promotion and enhancement of its heritage through new acquisitions and an articulated program of activities and collaborations with public and private institutions.

The exhibition The True-Similar. Bellotti and Ceruti: reality painting compared is set up at the MarteS headquarters in Piazza Roma 1 in Calvagese della Riviera. Hours include guided tours of the museum and exhibition on Mondays from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. with staggered shifts, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Saturdays from 3 to 6 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. with breaks in between. Full price ticket is 14 euros, reduced price ticket is 10 euros. Admission is free for children under 10, people with disabilities, tour guides and Abbonamento Musei Lombardia holders. The ticket includes a guided tour of the permanent exhibition.

Painters of reality compared: Bellotti and Ceruti on display at MarteS

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