Civic Museums of the Visconti Castle, 19 September 2025 – 11 January 2026
“PAVIA 1525: THE ARTS IN THE RENAISSANCE AND THE TAPESTRIES OF THE BATTLE”
The exhibition is divided into two main sections. The first is dedicated to exploring the extraordinary historical-artistic moment that the city of Pavia experienced in the Renaissance between the end of the fifteenth century and 1525. The second section, deliberately separated to signify the break that the war marked compared to previous years both for Pavia and for the Duchy of Milan, and for the political balance of the entire peninsula, is entirely dedicated to the exhibition of the seven monumental tapestries.
The exhibition opens with the figure of Donato de’ Bardi, a painter active mainly in Liguria, but who proudly signs himself “PAPIENSIS“, evoked in the exhibition as a precursor of the development of Renaissance art in Pavia and the foundation for all Lombard painting of the fifteenth century.
The nuclei around which the route develops are: the Certosa, the Duomo, the city. A section is dedicated to the extraordinary construction site of the Certosa di Pavia, the most emblematic of the ambitious projects of the dukes in their second capital. In its magnificence of marble and altarpieces, the Certosa was – at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – a pivotal site for Lombard art, also due to the presence of the leaders of the region’s art, such as Bergognone, and some of the greatest Italian masters of the time, first and foremost Perugino.
Another section focuses on the reconstruction of the cathedral of Pavia. The enterprise was the consequence of a real movement of civic pride that saw the people of Pavia, the prelates residing at the court of Rome and the lords of the duchy engaged in financing the construction of a church that was wanted to be more beautiful than Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The result was an extraordinary competition of artists on the Pavia scene, including Bramante, Leonardo, Francesco di Giorgio Martini and others who were commissioned to take care of the project. Their presence had significant repercussions on the ranks of local artisans and artists, as evidenced by the monumental wooden model preserved in the Castle – one of the highest testimonies of Renaissance carpentry. In addition to the Prevedari Engraving, the very rare print made from a design by Bramante, some very precious drawings by Leonardo have been loaned, which evoke the master’s stays in Pavia – for example on the occasion of the start of the construction of the Cathedral – with studies on churches with a central plan, on the horses of Galeazzo da Sanseverino and on the theme of the ancient equestrian statue of the Regisole, with sheets exceptionally loaned from the Royal Collections of Windsor.
Other sections are dedicated to the production of Pavia artists engaged in painting, wood sculpture and miniatures, aiming to make visible the reverberations of this lively conjuncture in local figurative production. Thus the personalities of painters such as Bernardino Lanzani, Bartolomeo Bonone, the so-called Master of the Deposition of Pavia, the Master of the Stories of St. Agnes, and those of master carvers such as the De Donati brothers and Giovanni Angelo Del Maino, an artist who was among the noblest interpreters of wooden sculpture in Italy in the early sixteenth century, are presented for the first time.
Following an ascending climax, the path culminates in the last large room of the exhibition, where the public will be able to enjoy a real ‘immersion’ in the phantasmagoria of the representation of the Battle offered by the seven tapestries of Capodimonte, within which the various characters and key moments of the historical event that changed the fate of Europe will be grasped – thanks to a special educational apparatus.
In the same Visconti Castle, visitors will also be able to find another opportunity to learn more about the Battle of Pavia with the multimedia exhibition still in progress and open until December 29, 2025, with the possibility of an integrated discounted ticket.