Lorenzo Lotto. Incontri immaginati

The fascination of art history arises from the works, the authors and is enriched by the encounters, real and ideal, occurred or imagined, encounters of themes, manners, inspirations, of a common feeling and talent that today, centuries later, continues to fascinate us, continued to make us think of those artists as masters and those encounters with enchantment.

Lorenzo Lotto. Incontri immaginati for Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo renews that wonder, thanks to extraordinary loans, tells us about one of the most fascinating protagonists of art history and, at the same time, tells about those encounters, through proposed dialogues with some of the artists in the Collection.

So the protagonist is Lotto (1480 – 1556/1557) and the encounters are those with the masters, almost of the same age, of sixteenth-century Brescia such as Savoldo (circa 1480 – post 1548), Romanino (circa 1484 – 1566) and Moretto (circa 1492-1495 – 1554). The path, within the rooms of the Pinacoteca, is created thanks to five works by the Venetian sixteenth-century genius, four from loans and one present in the Tosio collection.

The new Fondazione Brescia Musei project, from 1 December 2023 to 7 April 2024, represents the culmination of the cultural offer that Brescia Musei has organised in the year of Bergamo Brescia Italian Capital of Culture and involves visitors, also thanks to a series of educational initiatives, from Christmas to spring.

Lotto’s letter to Moretto asking for help with the cartoons for the choir of the cathedral in Bergamo dates back to 1528. The document shows that a well-established relationship of esteem and, one might say, friendship existed between the two, probably dating back to a few years earlier.
There is no further evidence of direct contact between Lotto and the Brescian masters, although obviously their simultaneous presence in various cities of the Venetian mainland dominions – as well as, at least for Savoldo, in the lagoon – sketches out the outlines of ‘imagined’ encounters and a mutual acquaintance, if not personal, certainly mediated by works of art for public use, starting with the altarpieces.

Light, gestures, expressiveness, colour, themes, certain stylistic solutions, certainly chronological proximity and frequentation in lands dominated by Venice are just some of the characteristics of the artists that this exhibition brings together: Lotto and Savoldo, Lotto and Moretto, Lotto and Romanino.

Then, as always happens in a museum, new encounters take place between the loans and the works in the collection, also thanks to the gazes, curiosity and intuition of the visitors.

This project is intended to be a suggestion of wonders, of encounters first and foremost around the sensitivity that is perhaps the trait d’union for reading Lotto’s work together with that of Savoldo, Moretto and Romanino: ways of doing painting that have found very personal and always very human transpositions in the representation of figures.

The project Lorenzo Lotto. Incontri immaginati is the result of the collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo and Gallerie d’Italia arising from the participation of Fondazione Brescia Musei with important loans from the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo Collection in the exhibition Moroni (1521-1580). Il ritratto del suo tempo, (Milan, Gallerie d’Italia, 6 December 2023 – 1 April 2024).

Two exhibition projects that will significantly enliven the next cultural season in Brescia and Milan: two sister exhibitions that seal a collaboration between the promoting bodies also in terms of communication and promotion of the same to the public, who will be invited to visit them with special discounted rates.

Present your entrance ticket for the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo at the ticket office of the Accademia Carrara di Bergamo and you will receive an entrance ticket at the reduced rate of 10.00€.

The Accademia Carrara entrance ticket allows entry to the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo at the reduced rate of 6.00€.

Summer timetable (1 June – 30 settembre):

• Mondays (non-holidays): Closed
• Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday: 10.00 a.m. – 7.00 p.m.
• Last admission: 6.15 p.m.

Winter hours (1 October – 31 May):

• Mondays (non-holidays): Closed
• Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday: 10.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m.
• Last admission: 5.15 p.m.