Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Titian, they are among the three masters whose works arrived in Beijing yesterday to light up the capital's bleak winter with the brilliance of Renaissance art.

 

A Portrait of a Young Lady by Piero Pollaiuolo, valued at 500 million euros (US$600 million), was the first artwork to be taken out of dozens of boxes that traveled 10,000 kilometers under strict security from museums in Florence, Italy.

 

The 86 paintings, sculptures and tapestries of Italian Renaissance masters, which are making their debut in the country, signal the start of the 2006 Italian Cultural Year in China.

 

The masterpieces will be on display at an exhibition titled "Italian Renaissance Art" at the Millennium World Art Museum of the Millennium Monument in southwestern Beijing from Saturday to April 23.

 

"In Florence, the artworks are spread out in many museums, but in Beijing they are brought together for the grandest show ever held in China," said Wang Limei, director of the Millennium Museum.

 

The collection, which would make "even Florentines jealous," is on loan from 12 museums in Florence, Wang said.

 

They include the four-centuries-old Uffizi Gallery, the most ancient museum in Europe that houses perhaps the biggest collection of Italian paintings in the world; and the Bargello National Museum of Florence, a magnificent palace built in the 13th century which houses many important Renaissance sculptures.

 

The art on display was created over a span of six centuries, between the Proto-Renaissance the first rays of Renaissance in the late 13th century during the High Medieval Age and the Baroque to the mid-18th century.

 

Although it was almost impossible to bring household names like Raphael's Madonna dell Granduca (Madonna Holding the Baby Jesus), curators of the exhibition managed to include some of the greatest paintings and sculptures of the "Renaissance men," such as the Head Portrait of a Lady by Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) and the David Holding the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio (1571-1610).

 

After the Renaissance art show, the Italian Culture Year in China will feature dozens of events, such as the exhibition of avant-garde art from Venice Biennale at the National Museum of China, and the performance of the La Scala opera house of Milan in Beijing and Shanghai, according to Li Shaoping, an official with the Chinese Ministry of Culture.

 

(China Daily January 16, 2006)