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The countdown is over: just a few hours left until the inauguration of the exhibition ‘Federico Barocci Urbino. The emotion of modern painting’, which opens tomorrow at 12 at Palazzo Ducale. The highly anticipated exhibition is the first ever that Urbino, the city where Barocci was born and lived most of his years, dedicates to him. And even the director Luigi Gallo underlines this ‘forgetfulness’ which has finally been remedied: “When the National Gallery was opened, it was 1912, the then superintendent promised an exhibition on Barocci. Finally, after 111 years, we have created it. It is an exhibition dedicated to a great genius who expressed himself between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but also in Urbino, thanks to the myriad of details that the painter included in his paintings. We are all waiting because it will be an unrepeatable opportunity to admire dozens of works in a few meters, including his major masterpieces lent by museums around the world or released for the first time from churches across Italy. Large and small paintings, portraits, colossal altarpieces, drawings, preparatory cartoons… a vast range of works that we have divided by. thematic criteria, from landscapes to devotional themes, from portraits of the Della Rovere dukes to anatomical studies, to close with the last poignant canvases where we can already feel the inspiration of the baroque painting of which he was a precursor”. The exhibition, curated by director Gallo together with Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari, Giovanni Russo and Luca Baroni, will therefore open with a presentation which will take place tomorrow at midday in the throne room (free entry while seats last) and will then be open to the public until 6 October, in the rooms on the ground floor known as ‘Dei banquets’. And for those who would like to immediately delve deeper into the figure of Barocci and the themes of the exhibition, director Gallo will be the guide for a special guided tour already on Wednesday morning at 10am, at the cost of the museum entrance ticket (€12). Places are limited, and reservations are required by email to [email protected]. Also on Wednesday, at 5pm, another visit which will however be reserved for university students, this time free. Here too it is necessary to book at [email protected].
