The exhibition From Donatello to Lippi. Officina Prato highlights, as never before, the crucial role that Prato has played in the history of Renaissance. Museum of Palazzo Pretorio, which reopens after 16 years, houses until 13 January 2014 works from all over the world will be the testimony of an extraordinary artistic season, of which they were protagonists among others Donatello, Paolo Uccello, Filippo and Filippino Lippi. “You cannot understand the Renaissance without knowing Prato”, according to Keith Christiansen, one of the world's leading experts on Renaissance art. “It is with this exhibition – underlines Mayor Roberto Cenni – that a new season can be born for Prato, thanks to art and beauty. Reopening Palazzo Pretorio with masterpieces that come from such prestigious museums is an extraordinary opportunity for hope for a city that, thanks to culture, can and must find new horizons for growth".
The history of the Prato workshop begins thanks to the Duomo factory.
In 1428 Donatello and Michelozzo were called to create the magnificent pulpit for the display of the sacred girdle, the belt which according to tradition the Virgin gave to St. Thomas at the moment of the assumption and which in 1141 was brought to the city from the Holy Land by the merchant Michele Dagomari. Since then it was the object of extraordinary veneration, becoming the city's most precious treasure and the fulcrum of its artistic events. Even today, the five annual expositions from Donatello's pulpit gather thousands of people in the square.
Shortly afterwards, Paolo Uccello was commissioned to fresco the chapel of the Assumption: he was a restless and ingenious young man, and the exhibition spectacularly documents, for the first time, his production of those formidable years. Two works to mention and above all to see: the splendid Nativity of Karlshure, on display for the first time, and the Saint George and the Dragon, from Melbourne.
But the exhibition is dedicated above all to Filippo Lippi, to the artist whom Vasari called "the most singular master of his time", and who painted his masterpieces in Prato, starting with the frescoes in the Cathedral, begun in 1452. " Rationality and powerful imagination - says the councilor for culture Anna Beltrame - the bold and wise use of color, the astonishing beauty of the faces and figures, the ability to convey emotions, make Filippo an extraordinary storyteller, a forerunner of modern manner, of the great masters of sixteenth-century art, starting with Michelangelo and Leonardo, for whose experiments in the fresco technique he prepared the ground, right in Prato”.
The frescoes in the Cathedral were completed only in 1466, also due to the scandal aroused by the passion for Sister Lucrezia Buti, whom Brother Philip convinced to flee from the convent of Santa Margherita, struck by her "beautiful grace". It was a lasting love, from which Filippino was born, who began to paint in Prato and who, after his father's death, entrusted himself to the guidance of Botticelli, of whom Filippo had been a teacher.
Fra Filippo has left us indelible images of Lucrezia, depicting her several times in his works: from the Salomè of the Cathedral, to the Santa Margherita of the Madonna with the Girdle, the symbolic image of the exhibition.
There are many stories, ideas, innovations of the Prato Workshop, also thanks to other artists, such as Fra Diamante and the Master of the Nativity of Castello, Maso di Bartolomeo, Zanobi Strozzi, Domenico di Michelino. The exhibition intends to offer, through a selection of works of great quality, some glimpses of light on these personalities, to help better understand how much of them is left in Prato. At the same time it aims at some exemplary reconstruction operations of works that were in Prato and that have been dismembered, bringing together predellas and altarpieces now divided between the Prato museums and foreign collections (the Assumption by Zanobi Strozzi painted for the Cathedral, now in Dublin, and the predella of the Palazzo Pretorio Museum; the masterpiece of the Master of the Nativity of Castello, the Faltugnano altarpiece now in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, whose predella is shared between the National Gallery in London and the Johnson Collection in Philadelphia ). In this way, works that are found in important foreign museums are brought back to Prato, such as the Budapest altarpiece by Fra Diamante.
Finally, around the masterpieces of the Prato Renaissance, Roberto Piumini has created a path of poetry designed for children, and for adults who still have the freedom of gaze from children. He is the greatest Italian writer of texts for children, but he is also the author of an enchanting story about the love between Filippo and Lucrezia, republished on this occasion.
The exhibition is curated by Andrea De Marchi (University of Florence) and by Cristina Gnoni (Superintendency for the artistic heritage of Florence, Prato and Pistoia) and makes use of a scientific committee of international importance. With the high patronage of the President of the Republic, it has the contribution of the Tuscany Region and the Cassa di Risparmio di Prato Foundation, and the support of private sponsors, including Moretti Gallery. The organization is by the Municipality, together with MondoMostre: a virtuous example of collaboration between public and private, decisive for the future of culture.
