The National Gallery Presents 2014 Exhibitions

STRANGE BEAUTY: MASTERS OF THE GERMAN RENAISSANCE

19 February - 11 May 2014 Sainsbury Wing

This exhibition takes a fresh look at the German Renaissance paintings in the National Gallery Collection, providing insights into the ways these works were perceived in their time and in the recent past, and how they are seen today. It will focus on some of the best known artists of the period, including Hans Holbein the Younger, Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach the Elder. All famous artists in their own time, the exhibition will highlight the ways in which their paintings, drawings and prints were valued in the 16th century for qualities such as expression and inventiveness.

The exhibition will also examine the evolution of the perception of German Renaissance art and the reasons why attitudes towards it were mixed in the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in the context of the formation of the National Gallery Collection. While some viewers admired the artists' technical mastery and their embodiment of a perceived German national identity, others saw these works of art as excessive or even ugly - particularly when compared to works of the Italian Renaissance.

This exhibition is the result of collaboration between the National Gallery and the University of York.

VERONESE: MAGNIFICENCE IN RENAISSANCE VENICE

19 March - 15 June 2014

Rooms 4-8 and 11-12

Paolo Veronese (Verona, 1528 - Venice, 1588), is one of the most important painters of the Venetian Renaissance. His paintings are magnificent visions of the opulence and spectacle of 16th century Venetian life. He created works ranging from complex fresco decorations of villas and palaces to large scale altarpieces, smaller devotional paintings, mythological, allegorical and historical pictures, and portraits.The National Gallery owns 10 paintings by Veronese, from a wide range of periods in the artist's career, and including masterpieces such as The Family of Darius before Alexander and the four Allegories of Love.

This exhibition, the first monographic show on the artist ever held in the United Kingdom, will put these important works in context by displaying them next to other major paintings by the artist, lent by European and American museums (including the Musée du Louvre, Paris; Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City). Visitors will be able to enjoy the monumental nature of these works as they are being displayed in the heart of the National Gallery.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Veronese's paintings were avidly bought by collectors and eagerly studied by artists. Carracci, Rubens, Tiepolo and Watteau are among

the many artists who are heavily indebted to Veronese's art.

New research on Veronese's works is being carried out especially for the exhibition, and the catalogue is intended to become the key and most up??to??date publication in English on the artist.

This exhibition will provide a unique opportunity to admire about 45 key works by one of the most significant, influential and beautiful painters of the Italian Renaissance.

BUILDING THE PICTURE: ARCHITECTURE IN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE PAINTING

30 April - 21 September 2014 Sunley Room

This exhibition is the first in Britain to explore architecture in Italian Renaissance painting. It considers the ways in which Italian painters of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries including Duccio, Botticelli and Crivelli represented architecture. It will also examine how architecture was used to frame figures and to construct the illusion of space.

Architecture underpins many Italian Renaissance paintings, and roots distant biblical and mythological stories in a physically familiar world. The depictions of buildings sometimes reflect real architectural forms. In other cases they are deliberately fantastical, straining beyond structural possibility. Both credible and incredible buildings, however, offer a fascinating insight into the conception, conventions and techniques of architecture of the period.

This project is the result of a research partnership between the National Gallery and the University of York. It is focused upon pictures in the National Gallery, with a few loans from other collections in the United Kingdom, including from the National Galleries of Scotland.

COLOUR

18 June - 7 September 2014 Sainsbury Wing

This exhibition - the first of its kind in Britain - offers visitors an exceptional opportunity to take a journey through the history of colour by exploring the wide ranging materials used to create colour in paintings and other works of art.

Using the Gallery's own spectacular paintings across the breadth of the collection, and the world??class expertise of the National Gallery's scientific department, visitors will understand not only the history of the use of colour, but also the origins and developments of the physical materials themselves - from natural and mineral products to manufactured pigments.

By following trade routes and exploring artistic experimentation over 700 years (from the early Renaissance to the Impressionist movement) the exhibition invites visitors to explore the material problems faced by artists in achieving their painterly aims, the breakthroughs they struggled for and the technical challenges they faced in creating works both beautiful and enduring.

The exhibition will transport visitors through the full colour spectrum. Each room will be dedicated to a particular colour and the show includes a room devoted to gold and silver.

The rich, diverse display has paintings at its heart, but also includes minerals, textiles, ceramics and glass on loan from major national and international cultural institutions. These demonstrate the central importance of colour in the way artists and craftsmen experience and represent the world, and the close connections of colouring materials used in painting and the sister arts.

REMBRANDT: THE FINAL YEARS

15 October 2014 - 18 January 2015 Sainsbury Wing

Sponsored by Shell

Rembrandt: The Final Years is organised by the National Gallery in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. It is the first ever in depth, focused exploration of Rembrandt's late works across all media.

The exhibition will bring together approximately 40 paintings, 20 drawings and 30 prints by the master, to offer visitors a once in a lifetime opportunity to experience the passion and innovation of Rembrandt's late works.

Far from diminishing as he aged, his creativity gathered new energy in the final years of his life: from the 1650s until his death in 1669 he consciously searched for a new style that was more expressive and more meaningful. He freely manipulated printing and painting techniques in order to give traditional subjects new and original interpretations - endowing his work with rare profundity that has influenced countless printmakers, painters and draftsmen in the generations that followed. The exhibition

will highlight the formal and iconographic concerns that occupied Rembrandt during these years, and inspired unprecedented creativity. Soulful, honest and deeply moving, in many ways it is the art of these late years that indelibly defines our image of Rembrandt the man and the artist.

The exhibition will include key works lent by European and American museums (including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Mauritshuis, The Hague).

The exhibition will run in London from 15 October 2014 to 18 January 2015 and in Amsterdam from 12 February to 17 May 2015.