Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti reopens in February 2023, with an exhibition on the Ferrara Renaissance

Palazzo Diamanti in Ferrara, closed since April 2021, will reopen to the public in February 2023 after nearly two years of closure for restoration, and it will do so with a major exhibition on the Ferrara Renaissance. In fact, the exhibition Renaissance in Ferrara will open on February 18. Ercole de’ Roberti and Lorenzo Costa, dedicated to Ercole de’ Roberti and Lorenzo Costa, two of the greatest names of Ferrara’s Renaissance season. The exhibition constitutes the first stage of a larger and more ambitious project entitled Rinascimento a Ferrara 1471-1598 da Borso ad Alfonso II d’Este, which will investigate the historical-artistic events of the period between the city’s elevation to a duchy and its transition from the Este dynasty to the direct control of the Papal State. The other moments of the itinerary, which is ideally traced back to the exhibition Cosmè Tura and Francesco del Cossa. L’arte a Ferrara nell’età di Borso d’Este, held at Palazzo dei Diamanti in 2007, will be dedicated to the great protagonists of that season: Mazzolino and Ortolano, Dosso and Garofalo, Girolamo da Carpi and Bastianino.

More than 100 works from museums and collections around the world will be on display to discover (or rediscover) the art of two great interpreters of the Italian Renaissance: Ercole de’ Roberti and Lorenzo Costa. Endowed with an incredible talent for composition, extraordinary in quality and emotional expressiveness, Ercole de’ Roberti (Ferrara, c. 1450 - 1496) was the heir to theOfficina ferrarese, the youngest and most intelligent of those who participated in the cultural climate of Palazzo Schifanoia, in the last years of the rule of Borso, who just then received the title of duke (1471). He worked on several occasions in Bologna, where he left a very deep imprint, but there is no doubt that in Ferrara he found the most suitable environment in which to express himself during the last decade of his life, spent in the employ of the court. Instead, it was Lorenzo Costa (Ferrara, 1460 - Mantua, 1535), ten years his junior, who picked up his legacy and continued his style in his early works. But during a long stay in Bologna his painting changed in the direction of a greater softness, a calm and relaxed classicism. The world was changing, Leonardo da Vinci and Perugino were imposing a new “manner,” which Costa immediately understood and of which he was among the greatest interpreters, even after moving to Mantua to the Gonzaga court.

Visitors will be able to follow Ercole’s career through more than 20 works (by far the largest number ever assembled), from his beginnings to his accomplished maturity. Among the early evidence will be the compartments of the Griffoni polyptych, executed alongside Francesco del Cossa, and the luminous portraits of Giovanni II and Ginevra Bentivoglio that will arrive from Washington, a commission that enshrines the prestige he achieved in nearby Bologna. The rooms devoted to the last years, when Ercole after his return home had become court painter to the Este family, will be embellished with four paintings of rare refinement, thanks to the exceptional loan granted by the National Gallery in London: in addition to the diptych that belonged to Duchess Eleonora of Aragon, the Collection of Manna and theInstitution of the Eucharist will arrive, possibly from a Ferrara church. From the Kimbell Art Museum in Forth Worth comes the panel with Portia and Brutus , which will be reunited with the companion with Lucretia, Brutus and Collatinus from the Galleria Estense in Modena.

No less rich is the selection of Costa’s works, which begins with the early period, during which the painter was engaged in a fruitful confrontation with Hercules, as evidenced by the Stories of the Argonauts brought together here for the first time. This phase, which passes through masterpieces such as the Nativity at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, finds an end and a synthesis in a tight succession of extraordinary altarpieces from the 1590s. To illustrate the more classical and calm Costa will be on display a serene Holy Family from the Toledo Museum in Ohio; while to document the Mantuan period, hitherto less frequented by scholars, the Louvre’s Saint Veronica, the Portrait of a Cardinal from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, up to the last known work, the Madonna and Saints from the church of Sant’Andrea in Mantua, dated 1525, will intervene.

The two protagonists will be flanked by noble masters and contemporary fellow travelers: Mantegna, Cosmè Tura, Nicolò dell’Arca, and Marco Zoppo will provide the starting point, while Antonio da Crevalcore, Guido Mazzoni, Boccaccio Boccaccino, Francesco Francia, and Perugino will offer a platform for dialogue along the exhibition route. The exhibition will have its ideal prologue at Palazzo Schifanoia, where the young Ercole de’ Roberti made his debut in the Salone dei Mesi, realizing the month of September.

Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti reopens in February 2023, with an exhibition on the Ferrara Renaissance

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