The Making of an Exhibition: Inventing Nature. Leonardo, Arcimboldo, Caravaggio

Dr Barbara Furlotti and Prof Guido Rebecchini will discuss their recent experience of curating an exhibition on the relationship among the natural world, scientific interests, artistic production and courtly culture during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Through an accurate selection of paintings, drawings, ancient and Renaissance sculptures, tapestries, scientific illustrations, but also fossils, Aztec masks, African oliphants, cups made out of nautilus shells and automata, the exhibition leads the visitor from the idea of nature as generative and primordial power to the experience of nature as a phenomenon reproducible through science, art and technology.

Inaugurated in September 2026, the exhibition is organised in the historic rooms of Palazzo Te on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of its foundation and establishes a dialogue with the exceptional decorative apparatus designed by Giulio Romano, especially with the Hall of the Giants.

Installation views of ‘Inventing nature. Leonardo, Arcimboldo, Caravaggio’, Palazzo Te, Mantua, Italy. September 26, 2026, to January 10, 2027.