Architectural Paintings

On 18 October the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and Fundación Caja Madrid will be inaugurating the exhibition Architectural Paintings. From Renaissance to 18th Century. It comprises a group of more than 140 paintings from the Renaissance to the 18th century that depict buildings and cities, either as the principal motif or as the background for the depiction of other subjects. The exhibition will aim to show the visiting public the development of these architectural motifs or settings and the wide range of issues that contributed to the independence of the genre in the 18th century.

Painted buildings were one of the options chosen by numerous artists to emphasize the scenes and episodes depicted in their paintings, among them leading painters from the Mediterranean world and northern Europe between the 14th and 18th centuries including Duccio di Buoninsegna, Canaletto, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Tintoretto, Gaspar van Wittel, Hubert Robert, Maerten van Heemskerck and Hans Vredeman de Vries. The exhibition brings together works by these renowned artists, with outstanding loans from private collections and museums around the world, among them Musei Vaticani, National Gallery of Art (Washington), Galleria degli Uffizi, Museo del Prado and Patrimonio Nacional.

The exhibition is structured both chronologically and thematically. The first part, on display at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, spans the 14th to the 17th centuries, a period in which the painting of buildings and city views was considered a minor genre but in which these elements frequently appeared as the backgrounds to religious, historical and mythological scenes.

The depiction of such elements would become increasingly important until it triumphed as an independent genre in the 18th century, which is the subject of the second part of the exhibition in the exhibition space of Fundación Caja Madrid. It includes works by the great masters of the vedute, landscapes with ruins, capriccios etc.

Date: until January 22.
Location: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Paseo del Prado 8, 28014 Madrid. Casa de las
Alhajas, Fundación Caja Madrid. Plaza San Martín, 1, 28013 Madrid. (Spain).
Opening hours: from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 7pm. Saturdays from 10am to 11pm, (during 2011).

See some of the works in the following slideshow: