After 119 years away from home, Giovanni della Robbia’s monumental Resurrection is making its way back to Florence.
The exhibition “From Brooklyn to the Bargello. Giovanni della Robbia, the Antinori lunette and Stefano Arienti” features della Robbia’s lunette on loan from the Brooklyn Museum, where it has been housed since it was purchased and promptly donated by Brooklyn magnate Aaron Augustus Healy in 1898.
From November 8, 2017 to April 8, 2018, the show at the Bargello provides an innovative dialogue between the Renaissance and the present day by placing the lunette side by side with Scena Fissa, a piece by internationally renowned contemporary artist Stefano Arienti, directly inspired by Della Robbia’s work.
The exhibition is staged in collaboration with the Antinori Art Project, an initiative of the centuries-old Antinori family who hosts works of contemporary art in their wine cellars in the Chianti Classico region. The Antinori family have long supported the arts; indeed, it was their distant ancestor Niccolò di Tommaso Antinori who commissioned Giovanni della Robbia to create the lunette, likely around 1520, and who can be seen kneeling beside Christ and the soldiers. Nearly 500 years later, the same family backed the restoration of the piece in anticipation of its display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2016.
Concurrently with the Bargello exhibition, the Antinori wine cellars will host a second work by Arienti, a site-specific installation titled “Altorilievo“, which, like the other pieces commissioned for the Antinori Art Project, will become a part of the family’s permanent collection, highlighting the strong connection between history and patronage.
For more information, see www.bargellomusei.beniculturali.it and www.antinori.it.
