After the success achieved at the Bozar of Brussels, where it was presented earlier this year, the exhibition arrives in Milan in an expanded version, enriched by new international loans. Over one hundred works—paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, drawings, and art objects—converse with one another in a journey spanning the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, demonstrating how the Renaissance not only celebrated the perfection of form, but also made deformity, strangeness, and even the grotesque a privileged terrain of artistic exploration.
Curatorship and coordination
The exhibition, curated by Clare Rabbi Bernard with the general coordination of Gianfranco Brunelli, constructs a rigorous yet accessible narrative, supported by exceptionally high-quality loans from major international museums: from the Vatican Museums to the Louvre, from the Prado to the British Museum, from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. This concentration of masterpieces conveys the European breadth of the Renaissance. From the first rooms, it becomes clear that the concept of Renaissance beauty cannot be reduced to classical harmony alone. If antiquity offered artists a system of perfect proportions, it is precisely the exception, the anomaly, and the different that prove to be the driving force of figurative innovation. The discovery of the Domus Aurea and the grotesques ushered in a new imagery in which the fantastic, the monstrous, and the hybrid cease to be mere deviations from the norm and become autonomous languages of artistic invention. The section dedicated to portraiture is particularly successful, where the exhibition connects the feminine ideal with the progressive affirmation of individuality. On one side, the "Belles," images suspended in an almost abstract perfection; on the other, the real faces, marked by psychology, maturity, and experience. The influence of Flemish painting introduces a more direct perspective on the person, anticipating a modern sensibility that favors truth over idealization. One of the most fascinating themes concerns the relationship between wonder and deformity. Figures such as simonetta vespucci, transformed into the archetype of Renaissance beauty, coexist with characters such as the famous dwarf Morgante, whose physical exceptionality becomes an artistic and symbolic subject. The visitor thus understands that the Renaissance was far less uniform than is often portrayed: alongside the pursuit of perfection, scientific curiosity, observation of reality, and an interest in everything that escapes the norm coexisted.
It is perhaps here that the exhibition finds its most contemporary reading.
Renaissance art appears surprisingly close to the themes of our time, questioning identity, the representation of the body, the construction of public image, and the relationship between the natural and the artificial. Emblematic in this sense is the section dedicated to “make yourself beautiful”, where cosmetics, mirrors, combs, and refined toiletries demonstrate how the desire to alter one's appearance is by no means a contemporary invention. Cosmetics become a form of intervention on the body, analogous to the artist's work on matter: both seek to correct nature, even though they sometimes risk producing opposite effects, transforming the pursuit of perfection into distortion. The exhibition gains further strength in the rooms dedicated to Mannerism. Here, the visitor witnesses the progressive dissolution of the absolute models of classical antiquity. With Leonardo, Last For sixteenth-century artists, the deformed ceased to be a mere curiosity and acquired its own aesthetic dignity. Thus was born what we might call a true "aesthetics of imperfection," in which even the ugly, if masterfully represented, possesses its own beauty. The exhibition's conclusion, entrusted to the celebrated mismatched couples, effectively summarizes the entire curatorial project: beauty does not exist without its opposite. The two poles mutually define each other and find in art the privileged place of their reconciliation. More than an exhibition about beauty, “Beauty and Ugliness” It is a reflection on the freedom of the gaze. It demonstrates how the Renaissance, often identified exclusively with the ideal of perfection, was actually the laboratory where art learned to recognize value even in the imperfect, the different, and the surprising.
John Bazoli, President Emeritus of Intesa Sanpaolo, states: “Following its success at the Bozar in Brussels, the exhibition "Beauty and Ugliness" arrives at the Gallerie d'Italia in Milan. Featuring loans from leading national and international museums, the exhibition presents over one hundred works from the Italian and Northern European Renaissance, addressing one of the most compelling and universal themes in Western culture. Thanks to Intesa Sanpaolo's commitment to art and culture, this initiative further confirms the Gallerie d'Italia's prominent role in the national and global museum landscape."
The installation, signed by Lucchi & Biserni Studio, accompanies the visitor with elegance without ever overpowering the works, while the catalogue published by Allemandi Publishing Company represents a valuable tool for further study.
