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Washington celebrates Tintoretto on the 500th anniversary of his birth with a magnificent exhibition at the National Gallery of Art and a symposium at the Embassy of Italy.

Washington celebrates Tintoretto on the 500th anniversary of his birth with a magnificent exhibition at the National Gallery of Art and a symposium at the Embassy of Italy.

Washington DC, March 15, 2019 – Washington celebrates the genius of Jacopo Tintoretto with a series of major events related to the Venetian artist following the events dedicated to him in Venice in 2018. The National Gallery of Art, one of the most important museum institutions in the United States that boasts a unique collaboration with all major Italian institutions, will present three exhibitions on Jacopo Tintoretto (1518 / 1519–1594). The exhibitions, organized on the five hundredth anniversary of the birth of the artist, will be presented to the Italian and American press and then open to the public on March 24th.

The first exhibition, titled “Tintoretto: artist of Renaissance Venice” and organized in collaboration with the Fondazione Musei Civici and the Gallerie dell’Accademia of Venice, is the first retrospective of the artist in North America. It will host about 50 paintings and more than a dozen of works on paper, including many major international loans traveling to the United States for the first time. It is flanked by two exhibitions titled “Drawing in Tintoretto’s Venice” – from the Morgan Library & Museum of New York – and “Venetian Prints in the Time of Tintoretto”.

The new Director of the National Gallery Kaywin Feldman, the Ambassador of Italy to the US Armando Varricchio, the Mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro, and the two curators of the exhibition Frederick Ilchman and Robert Echols, will join the press conference. On the same evening at Villa Firenze, residence of the Italian Ambassador, there will be a gala dinner attended by the NGA’s leadership, Mayor Brugnaro, and the representatives of the various institutions that have collaborated in the realization of the exhibition, defined as “a blockbuster” by the Washington Post.

Great interest and expectation for the international conference “Tintoretto at 500: from Venice to Washington”, that the Italian Embassy will host on March 21, a few days before the inauguration of the exhibitions at the NGA. The symposium aims at illustrating and examining in depth Jacopo Tintoretto’s art, his life, and the influence of his painting on modern art. It will be opened by Ambassador Varricchio and speakers include Frederick Ilchman and Robert Echols curators of the exhibition, Gabriella Belli, Director of the Musei Civici, Paola Marini, former Director of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Giampaolo Scarante, President of the Ateneo Veneto, and its curator Camillo Tonini, Rocco Demetrio Sonaglioni, deputy Director of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Professor Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel, chair of Venetian art history at Wake Forest University in Venice, and Leslie Contarini, Venice Programs
Director with Save Venice, an American organization that has contributed to the preservation and restoration of numerous works by Tintoretto.

“Thanks to the work of Tintoretto, next week America celebrates Italy, its creative genius, its culture and history. A living history that continues to inspire and fascinate generations of Americans who look at Italy as a beacon of creativity, innovation, and tradition. I am sure that the exhibition at the NGA and the conference at the Embassy will contribute to widen the knowledge of Tintoretto in the USA and to further reinforce US cultural relations with Italy and with Venice,” Ambassador Varricchio said.