Masterpieces from Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, coming to Brisbane

From the Italian Renaissance to van Gogh and Monet, the exclusive exhibition spans 500 years of painting.

Chris Saines at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art on Thursday. Picture: Nigel Hallett

Masterpieces by Italian artists Fra Angelico and Titian through to Impressionist favourites van Gogh and Monet are coming to Brisbane in an exclusive exhibition from the Metropolitan ­Museum of Art, New York.

The display of 65 European paintings is due to open in June next year, and has been hailed by Chris Saines, director of Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art, as “the most extraordinary exhibition that we have ever brought in from overseas”.

Paul Cezanne’s Still Life with Apples and Pears.

Renovations in the European picture galleries of the Metro­politan — one of the world’s great encyclopaedic art museums — have made the loan to Brisbane possible.

European Masterpieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York will encompass 500 years of art history, beginning with a small panel of the Crucifixion by Fra Angelico, dated to the 1420s.

Saines described the exhibition as a kind of grand tour, leading the viewer to the major regions, crucial periods and celebrated masters. It will take in Dutch artists Rembrandt, Vermeer and van Gogh, Spanish painters Velazquez and Goya, and French modernists Manet, Gauguin and Cezanne.

A highlight is Titian’s painting of Venus and Adonis. Several major exhibitions at other galleries have been postponed because of the pandemic.

Exhibitions of Matisse and Bonnard have been postponed by, ­respectively, the Art Gallery of NSW and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Caravaggio’s The Musicians.

A showcase of masterworks from Britain’s National Gallery was due to open at the National Gallery of Australia in November but has been pushed back to next March.

Bringing a major exhibition to Brisbane during a pandemic may be challenging but not insurmountable, Saines said. An ­advantage is that the paintings will be from a single ­institution.

“The scope of works that are presented here is unlike anything that we have presented previously in Queensland,” Saines said. “If we simply stopped in our tracks and delayed or cancelled a project like this, the truth is it may never happen again.”

News Corp Australia, publisher of The Australian, is the ­exhibition media partner.