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The timeless beauty of La Renaissance à Prato (Exhibit/Paris)

After all the recent noise and media coverage lavished on Koons, Warhol, and others of similar ilk (Arcimboldo, Raetz and Dali), it was something of a soulagement to slip back some six hundred years into the timeless beauty of La Renaissance à Prato, an important exhibition currently showing at the Musée du Luxembourg, the oldest museum in Paris.

Over fifty paintings and sculptures from the Prato City museum, currently closed for renovation, recount the artistic legacy of the city from the 14th to the 16th century. It was in 1452 that Filippo Lippi (1406 – 1469), who had studied painting under Fra Angelico (1400 - 1455), arrived in Prato, a flourishing commercial centre situated some twelve miles from Florence. The face of religious paintings was about to break away from the rigid medieval style with its lavish use of gold. His work, bringing in perspectives and landscapes, was more colourful and full of life and vitality, and for the first time, babies really looked like infants rather than little old men....
Read entire article at http://www.culturekiosque.com