From the time of the Renaissance onwards, many artists from Northern Europe looked with longing to Italy – the land of Antiquity, of warmth and of the golden light. In Search of the Golden Light shows how Flemish and Dutch artists who set out for the South in the seventeenth century returned with landscape paintings that were suffused with sunlight.
The artistic phenomenon itself is still relatively unknown. A large number of seventeenth century Flemish and Dutch artists travelled to Italy so as to be able to capture the golden light of the South in their paintings. They returned home with new ideas for sunny landscapes flooded with light and, once they had settled back into the dullness of the North, even painted local landscapes in bright colours. The Dutch viewers loved these "Italianised" landscapes and the works were very much in demand on the seventeenth century art markets.
The exhibition is devoted to the discovery of Antiquity, the rendering of light in painting, the landscapes of the Gods, the ideal Italian landscape from a Dutch viewpoint, the backyards of the Eternal City, ports and coastal landscapes as a reflection of the longing for far-away places, and finally the classicist-pathetic tendencies of that "Italianised" landscape painting. It presents an uncluttered view of the Castel Sant Angelo in an open field, the unexcavated Forum Romanum as a cow pasture, little groups of travellers against enchanting Italian backdrops, anecdotes and everyday scenes from the shabby backyards of Rome of the time, peaceful shepherds in the gold light of evening and wanderlust-tinted scenes in southern ports.
The exhibition is a collaboration between the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Liechtenstein Museum Vienna within the "Private Art Collections", curated by Dr. Renate Trnek, director of the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts.