FORLÌ.- Pre-Raphaelites: Modern Renaissance marks the first multi-disciplinary exhibition in Italy to examine the profound impact of Italian Renaissance art from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries on the British Pre-Raphaelite movement from the mid-19th through the early 20th centuries.

Displayed throughout the hallowed halls of the San Domenico Museum, a restored 13th-century Dominican convent in Forlì, Italy, are 360 fine and decorative artworks ranging from paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and photographs, to furniture, ceramics, glass, metalwork, tapestries, wallpaper, illustrated books, and jewelry.

Highlights include celebrated paintings and drawings by Italian masters such as Cimabue, Daddi, Botticelli, Angelico, Gozzoli, Lippi, Verrocchio, Michelangelo, Veronese, Titian, and Reni juxtaposed with major works by British artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, John Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, Frederic Leighton, G F Watts, Simeon Solomon, and J W Waterhouse.

Standing toe-to-toe with their brothers, paintings and works on paper by Evelyn De Morgan, Elizabeth Siddal, Julia Margaret Cameron, Marie Spartali Stillman, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, and Phoebe Anna Traquair address women’s important, yet often overlooked, contribution to the movement.

Conceived as a conversation across time, the exhibition chronicles three generations of Pre-Raphaelites, a group formed in 1848 by seven rebellious young men determined to reinvigorate British art in the industrial age. Resolved to capture the passion and authenticity conveyed by medieval and Renaissance Italian artists who worked before the death of Raphael (1520), the Pre-Raphaelites re-envisioned styles and themes from the past in decidedly modern ways.

Over the decades, they and their successors drew on an ever-shifting set of Italian precedents, ranging from Venetian Gothic architecture (promoted by their champion John Ruskin) and the “Primitive” paintings displayed at London’s National Gallery to the sophisticated sensuality of Veronese and Titian. Many of these artists also incorporated revered literary narratives ranging from Dante and Boccaccio to Shakespeare and Tennyson.