“Crivelli’s gold” exhibition at the Vatican Museums to celebrate United States patrons

The entrance to the Room XVII displaying “L'oro di Crivelli - Crivelli's gold” exhibition at the Vatican Museums, Pinacoteca Vaticana.

On the 13th of November we had the honor to attend the inauguration of the exhibition “L’oro di Crivelli (Crivelli’s gold)”, featuring three recently restored paintings by the early Renaissance artist Carlo Crivelli which have been revealed in the seventeenth room at the Pinacoteca Vaticana before today’s public opening.

This event has been organized to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the United States and it belongs to the “Museums at Work” cultural initiatives, that have taken place in the same polymorphic hall of the Vatican Museums since two years ago.

The exhibition is intended to present the significant nucleus of masterpieces executed by the 15th century Venetian master’s collection and housed in the Vatican Museums collection, which have been restored thanks the generous support of the “Patrons of the Arts” benefactors. Therefore, this is also an occasion to present the continuous work carried out at the brilliantly active restoration and diagnostic laboratories of the museums, that allowed accurate investigation and technologically advanced conservation treatments, contributing to reach a new interpretation and an unprecedented critical knowledge of these precious pieces of Early Modern art.

Carlo Crivelli, Madonna and Child, 1482, tempera on panel, Inv. 40297. Coming from the church of San Francesco in Force (Ascoli Piceno). On view in the Room XVII, Vatican Museums, Pinacoteca Vaticana.

The three paintings, displayed together to encourage an historical examination and critical comparison among the various declinations of the fervent Crivelli’s figurative and coloristic creativity, consist of: the Madonna and Child (1482), which was maybe the central element of a dispersed polyptych, the moving lunette of the Pietà (1488-1489), and the majestic five-panel polyptych of the Madonna and Child with Saints (1481), particularly notable for the good conservation state and the appreciable surface details which let deservedly evaluate Crivelli’s painting ability.

Carlo Crivelli and assistants (?), Madonna and Child with four Saints, 1481, tempera on panel, Inv. 40298. Coming from the church of San Gregorio Magno in Ascoli Piceno. On view in the Room XVII, Vatican Museums, Pinacoteca Vaticana.

The Venetian origins of Carlo Crivelli, who was born around 1435 in Venice in a family of artists (since his father Jacopo and elder brother Vittore were both painters) express themselves in the late-Gothic preciousness of the use of gold and decorative patterns of Byzantine remembrance, mixed with a great sensibility towards the elegant use of colors and lines and the perspectival interests belonging to the early Renaissance consideration of three-dimensional spaces, also gained through the later artist’s experiences in Dalmatia, the inner Veneto and Marche regions, especially between the 1463 and 1494, when he died in Ascoli Piceno.