Divine Beauty From Van Gogh To Chagall & Fontana Exhibition

If you have found the perfect luxury villa in Florence and are spending time in that great city, you will never want for art to see or exhibitions to check out. As the centre of the Italian Renaissance, Florence is home to countless museums, galleries and even street art from the likes of Clet. However, there is a particularly interesting exhibition happening in the Palazzo Strozzi at the moment. Typically, religion is something that one rarely connects with modern art. Yet, the exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi, entitled, “Divine Beauty from Van Gogh to Chagall and Fontana” highlights modern sacred art from the middle of the 19th to 20th centuries.

The exhibition demonstrates how this period was one of fertile visual expressions of spirituality by both Italian and international artists and displays some 100 works, in paint, print and sculpture. The revival of sacred subject matter in Italian painting began in the 1860s and, while we associate the sacred with the past, the exhibition shows how these works are highly modern, individualistic and, perhaps, more spiritual than dogmatically religious. Works are grouped by topic and loosely chronologically but, as is the nature with modern art, many movements are represented and there is a great variety in the aesthetic of the pieces. Religious art is presented here as a “genre” rather than merely as a subject.

The artists represented by the exhibition are both Italian and international and both hugely famous and less well-known. Among the Italians are Domenico Morelli, Gaetano Previati, Felice Casorati, Lorenzo Viani, Gino Severini, Renato Guttuso, Lucio Fontana and Emilio Vedova and the international artists include Vincent van Gogh, Jean-Francois Millet, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Georges Rouault and Henri Matisse.

The exhibition is divided into seven thematic sections: From Salon to Altar, Rosa Mystica (dedicated to the theme of the Virgin), Life of Christ – The Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, Nativity and Childhood of Christ, Miracles and Parables, The Passion, Last Supper/Via Crucis, Crucifixion, Deposition and Resurrection, Severini: Mural Decoration from Spirituality to Poetry, Architecture (a video-installation illustrating the multiple solutions adopted between the 19th and 20th centuries in the construction and decoration of Catholic places of worship), The Church, and Prayer.

The exhibition is co-organized by Palazzo Strozzi with the Archdiocese of Florence and the Vatican Museums and it coincides with the reopening of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, providing an opportunity of comparison amongst multiple periods of religious art. There is also a rich programme of activities and events for families, children and adults including special guided tours, workshops, a family kit to visit the exhibition and play with, drawing kit and more.

Great for art-lovers and families alike, this is one exhibition in Florence that you won't want to miss and will run until the 24th of January 2016.