The Carlo Maria Martini Diocesan Museum in Milan announces which will be the Capolavoro per Milano 20 25 coming to the museum from October 28, 2025, and its next exhibition dedicated to photography. This year, the protagonist of the 17th edition of Masterpiece for Milan, curated by Axel Hèmery and Nadia Righi, will be Lorenzo Lotto’s Nativity, on loan from the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena until Feb. 1, 2026. Considered “the restless genius” of the Renaissance, Lorenzo Lotto interprets the Nativity scene with an unusual iconography, inspired by an apocryphal Gospel: in addition to the Holy Family, Salome, the midwife who, for doubting Mary’s Virginity, is punished with a paralysis in her hand, appears. The setting is intimate and domestic, immersed in an evocative silent night, according to a taste influenced by the Nordic models prevalent in Venice at the time. Light, a key element in the work, comes from both the Child and the fire in the background: two light sources that create intense contrasts and a visually powerful color effect.
"The Masterpiece for Milan," said Nadia Righi, director of the Diocesan Museum, “is an exhibition event that is always highly anticipated by our public. On the occasion of Christmas 2025 we are pleased to begin a new collaboration with a great Italian museum, the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, which has granted us the loan of Lorenzo Lotto’s Nativity, one of the masterpieces of the eccentric Renaissance artist. The autumn appointment with photography has also become traditional, allowing us to introduce an extraordinary author, Elio Ciol. His eager gaze to get to the bottom of reality and its essence will accompany us in the coming months.”
From November 14, 2025 to February 15, 2026, the Museum will instead host the first major anthological exhibition dedicated to Elio Ciol (born in Casarsa della Delizia, in the province of Pordenone, in 1929), among the most significant figures in contemporary Italian photography. Curated by Stefano Ciol, the exhibition will bring together about ninety shots, from the most famous to the lesser-known, to offer a comprehensive overview of more than seventy years of activity.
The exhibition will trace the major themes addressed by Ciol: landscape, rural life, faces, architecture-elements that evoke expectations, silences, astonishment and questions. Particular emphasis will be given to photographic cycles set in the countryside of Friuli, Umbria and the Milanese lowlands, to works related to the period of Neorealism and to shots taken on the set of Father David Maria Turoldo’s film Gli ultimi. Portraits of 20th-century figures, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini and William Congdon, are also on display.
While waiting for the new exhibitions, the Museum will be open from July 15 to Sept. 1, 2025 exclusively in the evening hours, from 5:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Admission, at a cost of 12 euros, includes the current photography exhibitions (Dorothea Lange and Sony World Photography Awards 2025) and a drink at the inChiostro bistro. From Sept. 2, the museum will also reopen during the day (Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.) and the permanent collection will once again be accessible.
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| The Masterpiece for Milan 2025 will be Lorenzo Lotto's Nativity, on display at the Museo Diocesano |
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