The Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara will reopen on 18 February 2023 with an art exhibition dedicated to two of Ferrara’s Renaissance masters: Ercole de' Roberti and Lorenzo Costa.
The exhibition will run from 18 February to 19 June 2023
The exhibition in the newly restored art gallery will run to 19 June 2023, and is the first stage of a larger and more ambitious project, Renaissance in Ferrara 1471-1598 from Borso to Alfonso II d'Este. This exhibition will showcase the historical-artistic story of the period between the city's elevation to a dukedom and its passage from the Este dynasty to direct control of the Papal State.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to admire two great painters
The over one hundred works on display in the exhibition, drawn from museums and collections around the world, will provide the public with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn about the art of two great interpreters of the Italian Renaissance: Ercole de' Roberti and Lorenzo Costa. Ercole de' Roberti (Ferrara c. 1450 - 1496) had an incredible compositional talent which was extraordinary in quality and emotional expressiveness. He also worked in Bologna, but it was in Ferrara that he found the perfect environment in which to express himself during the last decade of his life, spent in the employ of the court.
Costa was inspired by both Leonardo and Perugino
Ten years his junior Lorenzo Costa (Ferrara 1460 - Mantua 1535), inherited de’ Roberto’s legacy and continued his style in his early works. Then, during a long stay in Bologna his painting softened. Leonardo and Perugino were imposing a new style which Costa immediately understood and of which he was one of the major interpreters, even after his transfer to the Gonzaga court in Mantua.
Refined paintings on loan from international museums
Visitors can trace Ercole's career throughout the exhibition, through over twenty works. From an exceptional loan of four paintings from the National Gallery in London to one of Porzia and Brutus from the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, as well as the Lucrezia, Brutus, and Collatino from the Galleria Estense in Modena. The selection of Costa's works, which begins with his youth, is no less rich. There is a Holy Family from the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, the Louvre's Santa Veronica, the Minneapolis Institute of Art's Portrait of a Cardinal, and his last known work the Madonna and Saints from the Church of Sant'Andrea in Mantua, dated 1525.
For information: www.palazzodiamanti.it
