Daily Life in Renaissance Italy: Exploring Italian culture in Beijing

If you are living in Beijing or simply traveling through, you should not miss a chance to visit the Capital Museum, one of Beijing’s leading cultural institutions. The museum hosts an immense collection of ancient bronze, porcelain, paintings, calligraphy and Buddhist statues, as well as many temporary exhibitions on art from China and elsewhere.

A highlight of the museum’s many temporary exhibitions since March is the wonderful exhibit on the Italian Renaissance called Art, Culture and Daily Life in Renaissance Italy. One of the most significant cultural and social movements in Italian history, the Renaissance or Rinascimento in Italian, was born in the city of Florence during the first years of the 15th century.

It was characterized by a rediscovery and revival of classical Greco-Roman artistic traditions which, combined with scientific and technological developments of the time, brought deep transformations in the fields of art, culture, politics and social life in Florence and in other Italian cities, also reaching many European urban centers.

The exhibition features more than 100 exhibits from 17 Italian institutes and museums, which include the Uffizi Gallery, the National Museum of the Bargello and the National Gallery of Umbria. The vast majority of the pieces are being displayed for the first time in China and they include original paintings by Italian artists such as Titian, Tintoretto, Pietro Perugino and Sandro Botticelli. The exhibition is divided into three sections, allowing the visitor to better understand the Italian Renaissance through three main themes, namely tradition and innovation, the role of man at the center of the universe and the interconnection between art and belief.

The first session of the exhibition guides us toward exploring the various forms of Renaissance influence in different Italian cities. In Florence, artists such as Michelangelo, Botticelli, Raphael or Beato Angelico, who promoted humanism and valued individualism in arts, were highly supported by the Medici family’s ruling authority. While in other cities, such as Venice, Renaissance style art was characterized by the brilliant use of light and color, influenced by Venice’s watery cityscape. In the first session, one also gets an overview of the transformations which occurred in art and architecture during the Renaissance period.

As human beings play a crucial role in the Renaissance, the second and third sections reflect changes occurring in the 15th and 16th centuries regarding the role of man and religion. In fact, during the Renaissance, individualism and more specifically rationality, secularism and humanism were some of the main features of social development during this period. This was further promoted in Florence by the Medici family’s rule, which have attributed great importance to the artistic and cultural development of the city.

Man, to them, was at the center of the world, and lived in a completely harmonious relationship with the surrounding environment. Man could understand and appropriately master reason and scientific knowledge and depicted religious subjects in a humanized and secular way. The Renaissance was a unique form of sociocultural innovation and human development which has greatly influenced today’s Europe.

This exhibition represents one of many Sino-Italian initiatives and is a strong incentive for even deeper cooperation between the two countries. Most importantly, it provides the audience with new ways of understanding Italian culture, while also offering learning opportunities for both Chinese and international visitors.

Art, Culture and Daily Life in Renaissance Italy is created and produced by the Directorate General of Museums of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, the Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage and the Capital Museum, in partnership with the Italian Embassy to China and the Italian Institute of Culture in Beijing. The exhibition is free of charge and will run until this Friday — however an advance reservation is needed through the Capital Museum’s official website (www.capitalmuseum.org.cn/).

The author is a graduate of China Studies and International Relations at Peking University and the London School of Economics.