Two leading Hong Kong museums are showcasing some of the best-known works by the European masters, including many that are being seen in Asia for the first time. Gennady Oreshkin reports.

The Miracle of the Slave, painted by Tintoretto in the last quarter of the 16th century, is on view at the Hong Kong Museum of Art as part of The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Titian and the Venetian Renaissance from the Uffizi exhibition. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE UFFIZI GALLERIES, BY PERMISSION OF THE ITALIAN MINISTRY OF CULTURE.)

There is no need to travel to Italy or the United Kingdom to see works by Tintoretto or Turner in the flesh, if you are in Hong Kong. A treasure trove of paintings from the Uffizi Galleries in Florence and the National Gallery in London are on view at two of the city’s leading museums. Between them, the two exhibitions that opened this month at the Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA) and Hong Kong Palace Museum (HKPM) are showcasing some of the most-cherished works by the European masters, spanning a time frame from the Renaissance to the early 20th century.

Called The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Titian and the Venetian Renaissance from the Uffizi, the HKMoA show is framed like a conversation stretching across centuries. Contemporary Hong Kong artists Leung Chi-wo and Chan Kwan-lok have responded to works by Renaissance icon Tiziano Vecellio, or simply Titian (c 1488/90-1576), and his contemporaries from the Venetian school such as Giorgione, Tintoretto, Giovanni Mansueti and Veronese with their own creations.

The Renaissance master painters brought about a revolution by depicting human emotions, as can be seen in Ecce Homo (c 1550) by Titian. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE UFFIZI GALLERIES, BY PERMISSION OF THE ITALIAN MINISTRY OF CULTURE.)

Saint Jerome in the Desert (1500-10) by Cima da Conegliano and Venus. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE UFFIZI GALLERIES, BY PERMISSION OF THE ITALIAN MINISTRY OF CULTURE.)

Cupid and Vulcan (1550-55) by Tintoretto.(PHOTO COURTESY OF THE UFFIZI GALLERIES, BY PERMISSION OF THE ITALIAN MINISTRY OF CULTURE.)

Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Galleries, says that the 50 prestigious artworks from his museum as well as some others in Tuscany in the Titian exhibition are on show in Hong Kong for the first time. “Many of these have never been exhibited in Asia,” he adds. “The show therefore creates a new link between the cities that played a vital role in fostering cultural exchange in the past centuries, shaping the evolution of arts and culture in the East and the West.”

Such exchanges between Italian seats of high culture and Hong Kong are not difficult to imagine. As Schmidt puts it, “If Hong Kong is ‘the Venice of Asia’, Venice could easily be ‘the Hong Kong of Europe’.”

HKMoA Director Maria Mok Kar-wing agrees. While the Italian city “held significant importance as a bustling trading and cultural center, attracting merchants, explorers and voyagers from across the globe, Hong Kong too has been a vibrant trading port, fostering a multicultural environment that has nurtured numerous talented and distinguished artists over the years,” she says.

Leung Chi-wo pays tribute to the Venetian masters by making an installation out of vintage lampshades collected from Murano, the home of handblown glass artifacts, north of Venice. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE UFFIZI GALLERIES, BY PERMISSION OF THE ITALIAN MINISTRY OF CULTURE.)

The pieces created by Leung and Chan in response to the environments inhabited by the Italian masters are evidently a product of the curiosity and empathy generated from living in a multicultural city. Leung collected vintage glass lamps from Murano, a town in the north of Venice, and known the world over for its exquisite handblown glass artifacts, to make an installation called Tears of Tempo. The sound of waves hitting Murano’s coastline, recorded by the artist himself, serves as the audio.

“When you stand in front of Leung’s artwork, you will be captivated by the enchanting sight of flickering lights reflected on the vintage Venetian glass (on the floor),” Mok says. “The audio recording captures the soothing sounds of waves and passing boats, transporting viewers to the Venetian atmosphere.”

Chan Kwan-lok’s take on the Italian masters is a set of 13 gongbi-style Venetian landscapes rendered in ink. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE UFFIZI GALLERIES, BY PERMISSION OF THE ITALIAN MINISTRY OF CULTURE.)

Chan’s piece, on the other hand, takes its cue from the presence of the divine as well as human elements in the same frame. The images in his set of 13 gongbi-style Venetian landscapes, marked by meticulously detailed and intense brushwork, bring to mind the serenity and gravitas often found in Venetian religious paintings. While his practice cannot be more different from that of the Venetian painters working at the time of the European Renaissance, both inspire contemplation and analysis.

“Chan’s piece takes the audience on a journey through the water and mountains,” Mok explains. “This immersive ink art installation provides a fresh and unique experience, allowing viewers to simultaneously appreciate old Western masterpieces and Chinese contemporary gongbi paintings.”

Art historian and independent curator Francesca Marcaccio Hitzeman, who studied Renaissance art in Florence, contends that getting to see works by the likes of Bellini and Giorgione alongside those by Titian is particularly edifying. “It helps us understand why all of these paintings are worth appreciating today, hundreds of years after they were created. At the time, these artists pushed the boundaries of technique and subject matter. They went beyond religious conventions and started exploring portraiture, mythological plots and complex landscapes. All these artists, in a way, broke the rules.”

Portrait of Charles William Lambton (1825) by Sir Thomas Lawrence, from the collection of the National Gallery in London, now showing at the Hong Kong Palace Museum. (PHOTO BY CALVIN NG / CHINA DAILY AND COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, AND THE HONG KONG PALACE MUSEUM.)

The Renaissance master painters, she adds, brought about a revolution by introducing the depiction of human emotions. “Titian’s Ecce Homo (c 1550) is a great example of his mastery in depicting strong facial expressions,” she points out. Even the small figures in the periphery or background of a Titian painting wear a distinct expression, adds the art historian.

Browsing her way through the exhibition at the HKMoA, she was particularly struck by Cima da Conegliano’s Saint Jerome in the Desert (1500-10). “This piece attests to the strength of iconography at the time,” she explains. “In it, St Jerome has a dual role — he’s a hermit in the wilderness as well as a humanist. And the depiction of a city in the background represents a contrast between nature and civilization — a great instance of a Christian figure taken out of a purely religious context.”

A selection of paintings from the collection of the National Gallery in London, spanning a period from the Renaissance to the early 20th century, are now on show at the Hong Kong Palace Museum. Highlights include Raphael’s The Virgin and Child with Infant Saint John the Baptist (1510-11). (PHOTO BY CALVIN NG / CHINA DAILY AND COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, AND THE HONG KONG PALACE MUSEUM.)

Best of the West

Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London opened at the HKPM on Wednesday. This is the National Gallery’s first exhibition in Hong Kong, preceded by stops in Shanghai and Seoul. Featuring 52 internationally renowned paintings by Botticelli, Titian, Van Gogh, Turner, Constable and Monet, this exhibition might be the most ambitious attempt to introduce Hong Kong audiences to the Western master painters.

“Before the pandemic, Chinese visitors were growing in numbers in the National Gallery,” says the museum’s director, Gabriele Finaldi. Besides, he adds, the museum is going through a major renovation, which, by default, created opportunities to tour a part of its collection.

Paintings from Joachim Beuckelaer’s The Four Elements series (1569-70). (PHOTO BY CALVIN NG / CHINA DAILY AND COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, AND THE HONG KONG PALACE MUSEUM.)

Finaldi hopes the HKPM show can provide an overview of the classics of Western European painting to Hong Kong audiences. “We start with a wonderful panel by Botticelli, Three Miracles of Saint Zenobius (1500), go to Raphael’s A Virgin and Child (1504-08) and then to Caravaggio’s Boy Bitten by a Lizard (1594). The kind of realism expressed in this painting still impresses us who live in the 21st century,” Finaldi says. “And as the exhibition flows into the 20th century, we have Rembrandt’s self-portraits, painted months before he died, five paintings of Van Gogh and, of course, Monet.”

He believes Botticelli to Van Gogh offers valuable insight into the development of painting styles and portraiture in particular. “The Renaissance is very important because a lot of the fundamentals of the European painting tradition were established during that period, whether it’s to do with the development of genres of portrait or that of landscape painting,” he says.

Turner’s The Parting of Hero and Leander — from the Greek of Musaeus (painted before 1837). (PHOTO BY CALVIN NG / CHINA DAILY AND COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, AND THE HONG KONG PALACE MUSEUM.)

Long Grass with Butterflies (1890) by Vincent van Gogh. (PHOTO BY CALVIN NG / CHINA DAILY AND COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, AND THE HONG KONG PALACE MUSEUM.)

And while it’s helpful to have a general idea of European art while viewing Botticelli to Van Gogh, Finaldi recommends that viewers “really should enjoy the beauty of these pictures first, and then, little by little, research what speaks to them”.

If you go

The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Titian and the Venetian Renaissance from the Uffizi

Dates: Through Feb 28

Venue: Hong Kong Museum of Art, 10 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

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Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London

Dates: Through April 11

Venue: Hong Kong Palace Museum, 8 Museum Drive, West Kowloon Cultural District, Kowloon