The summer season is at its peak, and we suggest a selection of exhibitions to visit after the summer break. The destinations? Venice, Milan and Florence

THE PAINTINGS OF PIETRO BELLOTTI AT THE GALLERIE DELL’ACCADEMIA IN VENICE
From 19 September 2025, the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice will pay homage to the paintings of Pietro Bellotti with the exhibition Stupore, realtà, enigma. Pietro Bellotti e la pittura del Seicento a Venezia, curated by Francesco Ceretti, Michele Nicolaci, and Filippo Piazza. Bellotti, who was originally from Brescia but worked in the lagoon city for most of his career, contributed to the development of the seventeenth-century Venetian style of painting, distinguishing himself within the local scene. As Giulio Manieri Elia, director of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, emphasizes, “This is an ambitious exhibition, the first that a Venetian museum has dedicated to seventeenth-century Venetian painting since the major show of 1959. It is a work of study and research, but also a fundamental effort to showcase the works in our collections, following the rediscovery of seventeenth-century Venetian painting that began with the reorganization of the ground-floor spaces of the Gallerie dell’Accademia and continued with two conferences in the following years”. Two paintings recently acquired by the Gallerie dell’Accademia stand out: Self-Portrait as an Allegory of Amazement and Commoners in a Landscape, symbols of the concepts of amazement and reality encapsulated in the exhibition’s title. The interpretative “enigmas” are the starting point for a journey through Venetian painting of the Baroque period, thanks to a series of loans from the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. These loans also allow for a dialogue between Bellotti’s artistic philosophy and those of colleagues with ties to Venice, such as Ribera, Giordano, Langetti, and Cagnacci, as well as exponents of the Lombard scene, such as Monsù Bernardo and the so-called Master of the Blue Jeans.

INFO
Stupore, realtà, enigma. Pietro Bellotti e la pittura del Seicento a Venezia
from 19 September 2025 to 18 January 2026
GALLERIE DELL’ACCADEMIA
Campo della Carità ‒ Dorsoduro 1050, Venice
https://www.gallerieaccademia.it

Captions:

Pietro Bellotti, Indovina Martina, Milan, Koelliker Collection. Ccourtesy BKW Fine Art

Pietro Bellotti, Self-Portrait as an Allegory of Amazement, 1658 ca., Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia. Credit: courtesy Matteo Panciera for Gallerie dell’Accademia

Pietro Bellotti, Parca Lachesi, 1654, Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie. Credit: Foto Scala, Florence/bpk, Bildagentur fuer Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin

 

FEDERICO GARIBALDI AND ANDREA FRANCOLINI AT THE STANZE DELLA FOTOGRAFIA IN VENICE
While Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs will continue to welcome visitors to the Stanze della Fotografia until 6 January 2026, the first floor of the institution, inaugurated in 2023 on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, will serve as the backdrop for exhibitions by Federico Garibaldi and Andrea Francolini. Titled AttraversaMenti, and running from 27 August to 5 October 2025, in its four sections ‒ Le spiagge degli altri, blueShores, Through, and NowHere/NoWhere ‒ Federico Garibaldi’s solo exhibition summarizes the photographer’s artistic journey by highlighting his ability to combine art and interpretation through the use of surreal perspectives and autobiographical elements. As the curator Denis Curti explains, “The images Federico Garibaldi presents originate from a search for surreal perspectives and angles. These are fluid compositions, necessary to his narrative freedom. Each frame appears as the product of a meeting between art and interpretation – something far from reality, as Federico’s world is viewed through a lens that might best be described as a constant crossing”.
From 11 October to 23 November 2025, the first floor of the Stanze della Fotografia will host over eighty works by Andrea Francolini as part of Eye2Eye, the artist’s largest solo exhibition, presented for the first time in Italy. Tracing Francolini’s production over the past ten years, the exhibition presents a visual triptych inspired by portraiture, aiming to explore human vulnerability and dignity. “By lifting the veil of appearance”, says curator Denis Curti, “the artist invites us on a journey without borders, where the act of photographing goes beyond simply representing reality. It becomes a sensory breath that celebrates the human landscape in all its forms. The photographer’s work represents a continuous tribute to discovery”. The exhibition is made up of three sections: Eyedentify, dedicated to Sydney’s transgender community; Truck Art, focusing on the Pakistani tradition whereby truck owners decorate their vehicles with poems, drawings and stories believed to bring them good luck in their job; and My First School, dedicated to the children of the eponymous nonprofit founded by Francolini.

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Federico Garibaldi. AttraversaMenti
from 27 August to 5 October 2025
Andrea Francolini. Eye2Eye
from 11 October to 23 November 2025
LE STANZE DELLA FOTOGRAFIA
Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
https://www.lestanzedellafotografia.it

YUKO MOHRI IN MILAN
Entanglements is the title of Yuko Mohri’s most extensive solo exhibition ever displayed in Europe. It is hosted by Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, curated by Fiammetta Griccioli and Vicente Todolí. Right from its title, the exhibition highlights the belonging of each element to an interconnected system, following the Japanese artist’s reflections. Her site-specific kinetic sculptures are composed of everyday objects that become assignees of new meanings, like the musical instruments reworked by Mohri and connected to electronic circuits in response to phenomena such as gravity, magnetism, and humidity. Sound thus becomes a fundamental tool for reading the balances on which the world we live in is based, interpreted by the artist with an approach that can also be ironic and playful.

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Yuko Mohri. Entanglements
from 18 September 2025 to 11 January 2026
PIRELLI HANGARBICOCCA
Via Chiese 2, Milan
https://pirellihangarbicocca.org/

BEATO ANGELICO IN FLORENCE
Seventy years after the last Florentine monographic exhibition devoted to Beato Angelico, the Tuscan city returns to celebrate the painting of the 15th-century artist with an exhibition created in the wake of the dialogue between the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, the Ministry of Culture-Regional Directorate National Museums Tuscany and the Museo di San Marco. Curated by Carl Brandon Strehlke, curator emeritus of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with ‒ for the section of the Museo di San Marco ‒ Stefano Casciu, Regional Director National Museums Tuscany, and Angelo Tartuferi, former Director of the Museo di San Marco, the exhibition is the result of a work that has lasted more than four years and brings together drawings, sculptures, paintings and miniatures from Italian and international museums, collections and libraries, as well as from churches and institutions in the area. The aim is to highlight Beato Angelico’s extraordinary talent in the Renaissance panorama by tracing his production and establishing a comparison with fellow painters such as Lorenzo Monaco, Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, and sculptors like Lorenzo Ghiberti, Michelozzo and Luca della Robbia.

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Beato Angelico
from 26 September 2025 to 25 January 2026
Palazzo Strozzi
Piazza Strozzi, Florence
https://www.palazzostrozzi.org/
Museo di San Marco
Piazza San Marco 3, Florence
https://museitoscana.cultura.gov.it/