Giovanni Agostino da Lodi

La Brera Art Gallery a Milan hosts the first major exhibition ever dedicated to Giovanni Agostino da Lodi, one of the most original and bizarre artists active in Italy in the decades around the turn of the millennium. The exhibition is expertly curated by Maria Cristina Passoni e Cristina Quattrini, and an authoritative scientific committee of international standing. The story of this author, fascinating and mysterious due to the scarcity of biographical data, unfolded in a framework of dense and fruitful artistic relations between Milan e Venice. It is an exhibition that is reconstructed above all by stylistic means, through close comparisons with the great masters that the artist was able to observe directly, reworking the influences in a totally personal way: Bramantino e Leonardo on the Milanese side, Alvise Vivarini, Giovanni Bellini, Boccaccio Boccaccino, Giorgione e Albrecht Dürer on the Venetian one, masters whose works are present in the room thanks to prestigious loans from Italy and abroad.

A refined painter, he re-emerged in historical studies at the beginning of the 20th century under the conventional name of Pseudo Boccaccino, coined by Wilhelm von Bode. Despite the signature in the famous Double portrait of Brera, his turned out to be a controversial critical affair for a long time, until the full recognition of his stature was sanctioned by research at the end of the century. His training took place in Milan in contact with Bramante, and then on to Venice, where his first documented work for the church of San Cristoforo della Pace in Murano.

The decisive update on Leonardo da Vinci is also evident in the technique of his rare drawings, while his collaboration for leading construction sites such as the Charterhouse of Pavia and the church of St Mary of Peace characterises its most monumental phase, close to the Leonardism of Marco d'Oggiono. The aim of the exhibition is to present to the general public an artist hitherto loved mainly by insiders, contextualising his work in a key moment of the Renaissance.