The exhibition The Renaissance Factory. Creative processes, market and production in Vicenza. PALLADIO, VERONESE, BASSANO, VITTORIA, curated by Guido Beltramini, Davide Gasparotto and Mattia Vinco and set up inside the Palladian Basilica from 11 December 2021 to 18 April 2022, reconstructs thirty years of the exceptional artistic life of Vicenza, from 1550 at the inauguration of the Olympic Theater in 1585, thanks to the architectural genius Andrea Palladio, to the painters Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Bassano and to the great sculptor Alessandro Vittoria. For the occasion, after centuries, some of the absolute masterpieces of painting, sculpture and architecture of the time are returning to the city, exhibited along the route alongside books, tapestries, fabrics and precious objects. A unique event of its kind that reflects for the first time on the methods of creation, on the methods and on the value of the three arts, weaving a close dialogue between them and tracing analogies and compositional differences, in an all-out journey inside the forge. of Renaissance creativity.

In the mid-sixteenth century Vicenza, one of the most dynamic areas in Europe for the production and trade of silk, undergoes a surprising transformation, becoming a capital of culture thanks to the project of the cosmopolitan nobility of the city, which invests and bets on the vision of a group of young artists: Palladio, Veronese, Vittoria and Bassano. Binding them is the passion for new art nourished by the Ancient, born in the Rome of Michelangelo and Raphael, what Vasari will define the "modern way", whose strength will allow them to unhinge the traditional models dominant in Venice, together with the suggestions offered by artists such as Giulio Romano and Parmigianino.

The exhibition, which brings together many of their masterpieces, now preserved in the most prestigious museums in the world, aims to investigate, first of all, the mechanisms of creation and production that generated them, placing them within their original context and in relation to their clients. There will be comparisons between the creative processes of sculpture, painting and architecture with the identification of relevant analogies, for example, in the working method of Veronese and Palladio. Many of the works will also be combined, often for the first time, with their models of inspiration, with the drawings and sketches that "prefigured" them, with the reproductions of the same subject made by the artist. It will be possible to enter the artists' workshop and admire the painting surrounded by the statues, plaster casts and drawings represented in the painting itself: this is the case of the splendid Portrait of an artist in a workshop by Palma Il Giovane, on loan from the Birmingham Museums Trust collections.