Williamsburg, Va - The Muscarelle Museum of Art at The College of William & Mary kicks off a special exhibition of Natura Morta: Still-Life Painting and the Medici Collections.  The exhibit includes more than forty European Old Master works from famous painters of the Renaissance and Baroque periods of the sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries.  The museum in Williamsburg, Va., is the first stop on its national tour.

For three centuries, the Medici dynasty dominated Florence, capturing an era and leaving a powerful legacy that has ever since been associated with the commercial and artistic renaissance of Europe.  The Medici patronage and power spurred a creative and intellectual rebirth, which brought Europe from the Middle Ages into the modern world.  The Medici family used their influence to help make Florence the cultural center of Europe.  Through the support of Arte del Cambio, the bankers guild in Florence dominated by the Medici family, public art flourished.

Among the vast Medici collections bequeathed to the city of Florence in perpetuity is an extensive collection of still-life paintings, the Natura Morta.  Today, these paintings are housed in the great Medici villas and Florentine museums, including the world-renowned Ufizzi and the Galleria Palatina.  Many of these will leave Italy for Williamsburg, Va., this fall.

This exhibition of Italian, Dutch, Flemish and French paintings and Italian pietre dure (colored stone works) from the Medici collections offers a rare and unique opportunity to see exemplary works of Renaissance and Baroque art from one of the finest collections of art existing in the world today.

Noted paintings in the exhibit include very large works by the premier still life painter to the Medici family, Bartolomeo Bimbi, important Dutch artist Willem van Aelst, Flemish painter Jan van Kessel, rare Italian women artists including Giovanna Garzoni and Margherita Caffi, and still-life master painters Jacopo da Empoli, Cristoforo Munari, and Bartolomeo Ligozzi.

Unique to the Williamsburg exhibition will be a single painting that is not part of the exhibition.  Caravaggio’s monumental Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge was painted around 1603 and rediscovered in 1991.  Caravaggio is noted for his revolutionary way of depicting images, composing his subjects and painting the presence of light in his works.  He was also an outlaw who ran from the Pope after a murder, just as he was a darling of some of the most important Roman cardinals and princes because of his magnificent gifts as an artist.  He died young and mysteriously. 

Beginning his career as a painter of still life as part of larger paintings, Caravaggio is best known as the artist who broke all the rules of Old Master painting.  While he showed the dirty feet and fingernails of his models as he posed them as virgins, saints and martyrs, he also scandalized Italian society with his overtly sexual figures and his erotic depictions of the simplest of things.  This is abundantly evident in the very provocative still life that is showcased at the Williamsburg museum.  Caravaggio is of equal importance to the Medici exhibition.  The artist made a gift to Ferdinand I de' Medici in the late 1590s, a painting depicting Bacchus, the God of Wine.  That painting, currently in the Uffizi Museum in Florence, includes a large still life in the foreground, and inspired the Medici family in collecting still-life paintings for their palaces and villas.

According to Dr. Aaron De Groft, Director of the Muscarelle Museum, “This is truly an incredible opportunity to bring such a great collection of paintings from one of the finest collections in the world, and then to double the value of that opportunity to the once-in-a-lifetime level by premiering Caravaggio’s amazing work.  The whole thing brings the Medici story of their history of collecting still lifes that began with a Caravaggio to a full circle, and it also gives Americans the rare chance to see one of the greatest and most important artists in the history of the world as the Caravaggio joins this exhibition with us only at The College of William & Mary in Virginia.” 

A new museum near Florence is being readied to house the paintings of natura morta that make up the crux of our exhibition, NATURA MORTA: Still-Life Painting and the Medici Collections.  The new museum will be located at the Medici Villa of Poggio a Caiano, Caiano being a village in the Florentine countryside.  Designed by Giuliano da Sangallo and decorated with frescoes by Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo, the building was began in 1485 and completed in 16th century.  Two hundred natura morta paintings, from a total of 900 paintings of still life found in the Medici collections, will be put on permanent display on the second floor of the villa.  The layout of the galleries has been directed by our exhibition curators, Marco Chiarini and Stefano Casciu.  Most of the artists in the exhibition will be featured in the new galleries, particularly Bartolomeo Bimbi, but also Cristoforo Munari, Giovanna Garzoni, Nicola van Houbraken, and Otto Marseus van Shriek. The museum is scheduled to open in October 2006.

Natura Morta is organized and managed by The Trust for Museum Exhibitions, which is a Washington, DC-based non-profit service organization committed to providing the finest in exhibition and technical support to museums and cultural centers throughout the United States and abroad.  For more information, please visit the Trust’s website at http://www.tme.org; and the Italian firm of Contemporanea Progetti of Florence, Italy, which is one of the foremost events management firms in Italy, specializing in art, education and architecture.  For more information, visit their website at http://www.contemporaneaprogetti.it 

The Medici and Caravaggio exhibition will be on display at the Art Museum at The College of William & Mary until January 7, 2007, when it moves to the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida.  The Caravaggio was most recently on loan to the National Gallery of Australia for the exhibition, Darkness & Light: Caravaggio and His World.

The Muscarelle Museum of Art, located on Jamestown Road, on the campus of The College of William & Mary, and for the Medici and Caravaggio exhibitions, the Museum is open from 10 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Monday through Friday and 12-4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.  Visit www.wm.edu/muscarelle.