Bellini, Botticelli, Titian… 500 years of Italian Art runs the title of Compton Verney’s first exhibition this year. “All you ever wanted to know about Italian art and were afraid to ask,” quips Steven Parissien, the Warwickshire gallery’s director — and he’s not far off the mark for this is a well thought-out exhibition of more than 40 paintings from the Glasgow Museums’ collection of Italian paintings that guides the visitor through the changes in Italian art from roughly 1400 to 1900, offering just enough detail to interest, entertain and inform.

That ellipsis in the title indicates a litany of some of the greatest names of Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, from Giovanni Bellini, Sandro Botticelli, Titian, Domenichino, Salvator Rosa, to Francesco Guardi, and more, as well as an unusually long timeline for an exhibition. Chronologically arranged, transitions in style and subject are made clear, from religious to non-religious art for instance, along with themes such as the political and social context of the times. It starts with a late 14th-century painting of St Lawrence by Sienese artist Niccolò di Buonaccorso: once part of an altarpiece, the panel shows the saintly saint awaiting his fate carrying his traditional attributes, the gridiron and palm of martyrdom. Bellini’s Madonna and Child, a work of great lyricism and lightness, and Botticelli’s The Annunciation, displaying his mastery of perspective, hang beside one another on the far wall. Glasgow curator Patricia Collins points out that Bellini taught many of the artists in this room; how the flatness of the early panel compares to the depth in Botticelli’s; and how symbolism pervades these works. A video hung alongside an Adoration picture shows the extensive conservation work carried out: treacly-brown varnished obscurity transforming to painted and gilded extravagance. Titian enters next as we move into the 16th-century gallery of predominantly Venetian art. Here is a fascinating pair of works: The Adulteress brought before Christ painted when Titian was 20, and Head of a Man. Although they are now two separate pictures, the head originally belonged to a man featured in the larger painting (his knee in striped hose is still there at the right edge). It is thought the painting was damaged sometime and a strip cut off, and the head resurrected as a portrait. Glowing colours in the silk, satin and armour mark it out as Titian – “it’s one of the absolute stars of the Glasgow collection” Collins said. I particularly liked the detail, the little landscape with sheep at the top, and the delicately painted foreground flowers. We meet Mannerism next in a rather wonderful small scene of nudes tumbling out of the sky: The Archangel Michael and the Rebel Angels is most likely an excuse allowing artist Cavaliere d’Arpino to show off his knowledge of anatomy and ability to paint complex poses. Then the Baroque enters with a flourish (the 17th century is well represented, taking two rooms) and we go from drama such as Carlo Dolci’s Salome against a stark black background, to Grammatica’s Madonna with Child and St Anne, all contrasting light and shade and symbolism, to subtler works such as Domenichino’s unusually lush green Landscape with St Jerome. This and the two large wildly dramatic Salvator Rosa landscapes show the artist more interested in painting landscape than the biblical stories they’re supposedly telling. Decorative paintings feature now as well as devotional, souvenirs for Grand Tourists like Guardi’s View of San Giorgio Maggiore, and Medieval and classical themes; one scene with strangely topical overtones shows Roman women offering their gold jewellery for sale for the sake of the state. Outside In, a separate exhibition at Compton Verney, shows contemporary art from 16 artists who feel marginalised from the art world. Many have had no formal artistic training.

Richard Hunt from Oxfordshire, a film maker with Film Oxford, who cites Tony Hart as an inspiration, shows Jigsaw Puzzle with an R. All works are for sale.

 

Compton Verney, South Warwickshire
Until June 23
Visit www.comptonverney.org.uk