“Raphael Self-Portrait” Unpacking Xinmin Evening News reporter Wang Kai
Uffizi is coming to Shanghai! On September 9, the long-awaited “Master Uffizi Self-Portrait Exhibition” will open at Dongyi Art Museum on the Bund. This exhibition is one of the “five-year ten exhibitions” between Shanghai Dongyi Art Museum and The Uffizi, Italy. It focuses on the 500-year history of self-portrait development. 50 authentic collections of Chinese and foreign art masters from the Uffizi Gallery gathered in Shencheng. Among them, “Raphael Self-Portrait”, the treasure of the town hall, was unveiled in Shanghai for the first time.
At 3 p.m. yesterday, the staff of Dongyi Art Museum unpacked the exhibits that had just arrived at the exhibition site, and the precious “Raphael Self-Portrait” revealed its true colors. Raphael is one of the three masters of the Italian Renaissance. Although he died young, he still left many classics in his painting career for more than 20 years. This unforgettable self-portrait is one of the representative works. In this bust, Raphael wears chestnut shoulder-length hair, staring at the audience with a pair of black eyes, and his face shows concentration and melancholy. Subsequent research confirmed that Raphael painted this work without drafting and in one go.
The unboxing that followed was equally exciting. Rembrandt’s “Self-Portrait” was created before the painter’s death, and it is the latest one of Rembrandt’s more than 130 self-portraits. At that time, the great painter had no intention of beautifying himself, and only from his piercing eyes, fur cloak and medal on his chest, he could still vaguely see his glorious age. And all this was overshadowed by reflection and melancholy, and the pursed lips seemed to be certain that the glory of the past was gone forever. Rembrandt’s portraits are very well-known. They use the decisive contrast of light and shadow to realistically represent the object, and demonstrate the superb painting skills of a textbook.
Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait unboxing
The largest of the unboxed works is “Self-Portrait” by the painter Louise Elisabeth Vigie Le Brun from the Palace of Versailles. The female artist was 35 years old when she created this painting. At the time of the French Revolution, the portraitist beloved by Queen Marie Antoinette, who was beheaded a few years later, fled her homeland for fear of safety. In this self-portrait, she is depicting the queen’s beautiful face. The female painter used the traditional classical and delicate techniques of the 18th century to paint portraits with the characteristics of the spirit of the times, with a neoclassical tendency.
This “Uffizi Self-Portrait Exhibition” will display 50 artistic treasures spanning from the 16th century to the 21st century, bringing together Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Ingres, Morandi , Chagall, Kusama Yayoi, Cai Guoqiang and other 50 Chinese and foreign art masters, which can be called a concentrated display of 500 years of portrait development history.
Xie Dingwei, executive director of Dongyi Art Museum, revealed that the first round of the planned “five-year ten exhibition” includes three heavyweight exhibitions – “Botticelli and the Renaissance”, “Master Self-Portrait” and “Eighteenth Century”. Masters Exhibition”, plans to present two special exhibitions to the audience each year. However, the epidemic has posed unprecedented challenges to the transportation and arrangement of exhibits. The “Self-Portrait of the Uffizi Master” is inseparable from the cooperation of Italy. The staff of the Uffizi Museum came to Shanghai for epidemic prevention and quarantine. The staff of both sides also connected with the exhibition designers in France day and night.
Louise Elisabeth Vigie Le Brun, “Self-Portrait”
The list of exhibits in Shanghai is generally controlled by the Uffizi Art Museum, but Dongyi Art Museum actively strived for it. After several consultations, heavyweight classic works were introduced. “Raphael’s Self-Portrait”, the most important masterpiece, was added in, in order not to leave any regrets for the Shanghai exhibition. “Italian heavyweight art galleries tend to be conservative when lending classics. Since the Renaissance, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence has been a pilgrimage site for art lovers around the world, and the exhibits do not easily leave the museum. The collections in the Uffizi Gallery In the exhibition, self-portrait works are a major highlight, because Western artists have the practice of creating self-portraits. This exhibition includes self-portraits of artists from different regions and different eras, which is very rare.” Xie Dingwei revealed. It is worth mentioning that the self-portrait works of Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang are also in the collection of the Uffizi Gallery and will be presented in this exhibition this time.(Xinmin Evening News reporter Le Mengrong)
Related Links: Uffizi Gallery
The Uffizi Gallery is the oldest and most well-known art museum in Florence, Italy. It is part of the complex known as the Uffizi Museum. In addition to the above art galleries, it also includes the Vasari Corridor, the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens. They bring together the core collections of the Medici, Habsburg-Lorraine and Savoy families, and together they constitute one of the most important museums in the world, known for the quantity and quality of their collections. The gallery occupies the entire first and second floors of a large building built between 1560 and 1580, designed by Giorgio Vasari, and is distinguished by its extraordinary collection of ancient sculptures and paintings. Through bequests, exchanges and donations over the centuries, the Uffizi has collected a collection of precious and priceless works of art including Giotto, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Carla The masterpiece of Wacho et al.