The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston presents Ornament and Illusion: Carlo Crivelli of Venice, Oct. 22, 2015 through Jan. 25, 2016.

The Gardner Museum will be the sole venue for the first ever monographic exhibition dedicated to Carlo Crivelli in the United States. Carlo Crivelli (c. 1435 – c. 1495) is one of the most important but historically neglected painters of the Italian Renaissance. Pushing the boundaries between painting and sculpture, his works are distinguished by their radically expressive compositions, luxuriant ornamental display, and bravura illusionism.

The exhibition brings together twenty-three paintings and the artist’s only known drawing – newly cleaned and restored, the Gardner’s iconic Saint George Slaying the Dragon forms the touchstone for a two part installation. The first reunites four of six surviving panels from Crivelli’s Porto San Giorgio altarpiece, of which the Gardner painting is a fragment. The second part introduces visitors to the artist’s repertoire of dazzling pictorial effects with some of his most important works in Europe and the United States. Included are unprecedented loans from The National Gallery, London, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Together, the works assembled in Boston will reveal the artist’s remarkable ambition, restoring Crivelli to his rightful place in the pantheon of Renaissance painters.

The exhibition is co-curated by Stephen J. Campbell, Henry and Elizabeth Wiesenfeld Professor, Johns Hopkins University, Oliver Tostmann, Susan Morse Hills Curator of European Art, Wadsworth Athenaeum, and Nathaniel Silver, Assistant Curator of the Collection, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum •  www.gardnermuseum.org