Lecture “Colour Becomes Light. The Art of Bernardo Strozzi”
Italian art historian Anna Orlando will hold a public lecture on Bernardo Strozzi, the most famous painter from Genoa.
The lecture in English is part of the programme of the international exhibition “Painting Music. Bernardo Strozzi and the Caravaggisti”, which will take place in 2024/2025 at the Kadriorg Art Museum.
Bernardo Strozzi (ca. 1581–1644) was one of the most significant and prolific historical and genre painters of Italy in the 17th century, but his works have found wider recognition only recently. Strozzi’s Caravagesque style is characterised by its painterly qualities. Besides Caravaggio’s influence, it displays the influence of Flemish and Venetian art. Strozzi’s paintings, which are filled with local characters, are based on religious and everyday scenes, and earned him widespread popularity. They were painted by Strozzi and his numerous assistants, both in his home town of Genoa and in Venice, where the artist settled at the beginning of the 1630s. Some of the most popular works of Strozzi’s studio depict street musicians and lively common people. This motif is also depicted in the Bernardo Strozzi painting in the collection of the Kadriorg Art Museum (“Concert”, ca. 1631–1632), which is one of the most well known of the museum’s Italian paintings.
This Strozzi painting, however, is currently not on display at the Kadriorg Art Museum: since autumn 2021, it has been in the conservation department of the Art Museum of Estonia for research and restoration.
Anna Orlando (b 1967) is an Italian art historian whose research and curatorial projects mostly focus on Genoa’s artistic culture in the 17th century. She was one of the curators of the 2019 exhibition “Bernardo Strozzi. The Conquest of Colour” (“Bernardo Strozzi. La conquista del colore”, Palazzo Lomellino, Genoa, 10.10.2019–12.01.2020) and a co-author of the catalogue.
Currently, the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa is hosting the exhibition “Rubens in Genoa” (“Rubens a Genoa”, 06.10.2022–22.01.2023). Anna Orlando is a co-curator, with the Rubens expert Nils Büttner.
