ABOUT The Awakened. The ruins of Antiquity and the dawn of the Italian Renaissance

The exhibition coincides with the 500th anniversary of the death of Pietro Perugino, the eminent early Renaissance painter and draughtsman, pupil of Piero della Francesca and teacher of Raphael Santi, eyewitness and participant in the transformations depicted.
The theme of the exhibition is the role played in early Renaissance art by the fascination with fragments of the ancient world, manifested in the study of the material remains of Roman civilisation and the surviving ancient writings – largely forgotten and ignored or even destroyed throughout the Middle Ages. The story is maintained in the convention of a dreamlike vision – the issues presented are linked together by a sequence of dreamlike associations.
This is the first exhibition in Poland to explore the subject in such a thorough and comprehensive way, using so many valuable monuments of ancient and early Renaissance art – sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints. The more than 160 exhibits on display have been borrowed from over fifty institutions and private collections, including the Uffizi Gallery (Florence), the Borghese Gallery (Rome), the Louvre, the British Museum and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
The exhibition features works by Antico, Bellini, Botticelli, Bramante, Bramantino, Filarete, Lombardo, Mantegna, Verrocchio and the aforementioned Pietro Perugino.