To celebrate the advent of the Jubilee, Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery decided to open its stands, which normally host contemporary art exhibitions, also to the ancient art.

Credito Valtellinese Gallery chose a collection of unpublished works, called "golden backgrounds", painted in Italy between the XIV century and the XV century. It's a collection of paintings in tempera on wood. The panels are covered with thin golden layers, the so-called golden leaf, on which sacred scenes are painted, in accordance with a tradition that saw its most splendour in the XIV century and until the first half of the XV century and whose main representatives were artists from Umbria and Tuscany.

The fifty exhibits, all belonging to a Milanese private collection, have been kept for a long time in Credito Artigiano's vault. Today, they are shown to the public and to the city of Milan.

The collection of these works began about thirty years ago, without any rigorous scheme and with no technical advice.

Concentrating his choices within given chronological limits, the collector selected works trying to penetrate tastes and mentality of that age, through the analysis of many works, which are on a different artistic level with one another and of various geographic and cultural origin.

The exhibits, among which a few big panels, provide a wide survey on the peculiarities of the Italian schools of that time.

In fact, the most beautiful paintings of the Florentine workshops in the middle of the XIV century are exhibited, first of all the S. Cecilia by Bernardo Daddi, who is regarded as one of the most important disciples of Giotto and who considerably influenced numerous artists of the younger generation, ranging from Maso di Banco to Andrea Orcagna and Nardo di Cione - Orcagna's brother. Nardo di Cione is regarded as the author of the Cappella Strozzi's frescos in Santa Maria Novella in Florence and is also the author of an unusual exhibit: the Crocifissione con la Vergine e San Giovanni. The collection includes more masters, such as the author of the predella of the Ashmolean Museum and the author of the Madonna Lazzaroni, and artists of Venetian culture (e.g. Guariento di Arpo), Florentine culture (e.g. Agnolo Gaddi, Antonio Veneziano, Gherardo Starnina), Siena's culture (e.g. Andrea and Taddeo di Bartolo) and Bologna's culture (e.g. Michele di Matteo). Furthermore, the exhibition includes a series of serene paintings by Sano di Pietro, two rare small panels by Bernardino del Castelletto, a Lombard artist who moved to the north-western Tuscany and two very beautiful gouaches by Lazzaro Bastiani, who grew up with young Giovanni Bellini and Vivarini's workshop.

The exhibition brochure, published by Skira, includes presentations by Antonio Paolucci and Gaudenz Freuler.

PRESS OFFICE:
Elisabetta Mossinelli, phone and fax number 02/48008015
Roberto Stringa, phone 02/80637227, fax 02/80637308

ITALIAN PAINTINGS OF THE XIV AND XV CENTURY IN A MILAN COLLECTION
LIST OF THE EXHIBITS