Titian's Portrait of Pietro Aretino travels to Bergamo for exhibition focus on 16th century intellectual

Coming to theCarrara Academy in Bergamo on loan from the Uffizi Galleries is Titian’s Portrait of Pietro Aretino, which will be featured from December 4, 2023 to April 1, 2024 in the new exhibition project Titian and Aretino. Portrait of a Renaissance Protagonist.

Accademia Carrara’s project starts from this work to delve into one of the most fascinating figures of the sixteenth century: Pietro Aretino, one of the most important intellectuals of the sixteenth century and among the most nonconformist authors ever; a reflection that starts from Titian’s painting and expands to a series of works ranging from graphics to medallistics to publishing, all arts well known to the writer, that celebrate him.

The Portrait of Pietro Aretino made by Titian in 1545 is an extraordinary work both for the quality of its execution, an example of his mature, powerful production, sketchy in its pictorial subject matter, unfinished in places, and for its purpose. Indeed, Pietro Aretino is the subject and commissioner of the painting with the specific intention of giving it to Cosimo I de’ Medici in order to receive his protection.

The exhibition intends to evoke this event by juxtaposing Titian’s canvas with other famous testimonies ofAretino’s iconography, including a series of medals by different artists, which mark the whole course of his career and testify to how much portraiture is intrinsic to Aretino’s reflection on art. Two printed volumes that recall two of the best-known events in Aretino’s life complete the itinerary: the Sonetti lussuriosi, written in 1525, after seeing Giulio Romano’s inventions engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi, known only through a single later printed copy; and the staging of the comedy La Talanta written by Aretino in Venice and staged with the collaboration of Giorgio Vasari during the 1542 Carnival.

For info: www.lacarrara.it

Hours: Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Special evening openings on the last Fridays of the month until 11 pm.

Image: Titian Vecellio, Portrait of Pietro Aretino, detail (1545; Florence, Uffizi Galleries, Palatine Gallery)

Titian's Portrait of Pietro Aretino travels to Bergamo for exhibition focus on 16th century intellectual

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