Cecily Brown. Temptations Torments Trials and Tribulations

The exhibition brings together more than 30 works, including paintings and works on paper, most of which have never been exhibited before, and which arose from a reflection around the Temptations of St. Anthony, a subject widely investigated by artists over the centuries and studied even by Michelangelo, who, at a very young age, measured himself as Vasari recounts with a color reproduction of an engraving by the German Martin Schongauer.

In the chapel on the ground floor of the Museo Novecento, there will be a special and exceptional exhibition of a Renaissance-era panel version of the Temptations of St Anthony, from a private collection. Similar to the one attributed to the young Michelangelo – now preserved at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas and dated between 1487 and 1489 – based on the engraving by Martin Schongauer. This is a very rare opportunity to see the image that has inspired Cecily Brown, along with the results of her dialogue with the composition.

The exhibition continues in the Palazzo Vecchio Museum where, in the Camerino of Bianca Cappello, mistress of Duke Francesco I de’ Medici, the Artist exhibits a single canvas. The Camerino housed collections and small valuables that belonged to the noblewoman Bianca Cappello, as well as a small loophole that allowed her to secretly observe from above the hustle and bustle of the Salone dei Cinquecento, the seat of the palace’s official receptions.

Cecily Brown (b. 1969, London) graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 1993 and has lived and worked in New York City since 1994. Brown has been an active and celebrated figure in the renaissance of painting since the late 1990s, and has become celebrated as one of the most distinctive painters of our time. Brown’s practice is seemingly paradoxical, combining extreme figuration and abstraction, moving simultaneously between the ephemeral and the corporeal, a fascination with the Old Masters, Romanticism and the Impressionists, among others, in tandem with her observations of modern and contemporary artists, and popular culture.