Image: Gallerie d'Italia – Milano
Gallerie d'Italia – Milano is presenting 'Beauty and Ugliness. Ideal, Real, Caricature in the Renaissance', an exhibition that examines the shifting visual language of beauty, physical difference and caricature in Renaissance art. The museum said visitors can see the show until 18 October, and described the presentation as offering a behind-the-scenes look at the project.
The exhibition is being mounted at Gallerie d'Italia – Milano in partnership with Bozar-Centre for Fine Arts Brussels. Beyond that collaboration, the source material does not provide further curatorial details, but the title indicates a focus on how Renaissance artists navigated ideals of appearance and the representation of the real, including satirical or exaggerated forms.
By bringing together the terms ideal, real and caricature, the exhibition points to a broad art-historical field that extends beyond polished likenesses and into images that test, distort or question convention. The framing suggests an interest in the Renaissance not only as a period of harmony and proportion, but also as one in which artists engaged with imperfection, humor and visual contrast.
Gallerie d'Italia – Milano is part of the Intesa Sanpaolo museum network and has positioned its Milan venue as a site for major temporary exhibitions. In this case, the museum is using the final months of summer and early autumn to present a show that connects Renaissance art to themes of representation that remain immediately legible to contemporary audiences.
The museum's social post describing the exhibition as an "inedito" look behind the scenes was issued on 3 August 2026, while the exhibition itself runs from 18 July to 18 October 2026. The partnership with Bozar-Centre for Fine Arts Brussels places the project within an international institutional collaboration, though the source material does not specify loans, artists or individual works.
'Beauty and Ugliness. Ideal, Real, Caricature in the Renaissance' is on view at Gallerie d'Italia – Milano through 18 October 2026.
