The Alana Collection Masterpieces of Italian Painting

 

As we read in the exhibition brochure, the Alana Collection is one of the most valuable and little-known private collections of Italian Renaissance art in the world.
Just reading the names of the artists shown here will leave your mouth agape.  
Ready? 
First, the Florentine primitive artists like Beato Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Bernardo Daddi, Niccolò di Pietro Gerini.  
The Sienese artists like Lorenzo Monaco, Luca di Tommè.  
The Pisan painters, such as the unique Francesco Traini.

Of course, there are the Tuscan Renaissance painters, such as Paolo Uccello, Franciabigio, Lo Scheggia, and Umbrian painters like Luca Signorelli, and greats like Carlo Dolci, Annibale Carracci, and Savoldo.

And, naturally, we couldn’t do without great Venetian painters like Bellini, Vittore Carpaccio, Giacomo Bassano, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese, and a pinch of Bronzino and Orazio Gentileschi.  
Ok, we can catch our breath now.    
This museum-worthy collection is jaw-dropping, all the more if you consider that all of these works are shown together for the first time.  
It’s definitely a show not to miss!  
The arrangement of the artworks impresses from the very first room.

And, well, too bad for those who go to exhibitions to learn something or see new contributions to the field.  
But let’s get back to this wonderful exhibition.  
There’s something else here that makes us think: a panel in the exhibition bearing a sentence by Alvaro Saieh.

The art patron, with his wife Ana Guzmán to whom we owe this exhibition. (By the by, it’s the start of their names “Al-Ana” for which the collection is named.)  
The sentence reads: “I want to create a collection that is representative of Italian art of the Renaissance as well as the meaning that it can have for culture today. 
” “Vaste chantier,” as they say in French about big undertakings.  
What meaning might Renaissance culture have today?

We’ll leave you with this interesting question and bid you farewell until the next Magazine post.

La collezione Alana

Jacquemart-André Museum

From 13 September 2019 to 20 January 2020