Largest Italian Renaissance artwork in US back on display after 70 years

The largest Italian Renaissance work of art in the United States will emerge from the storage underworld at the Minneapolis Institute of Art for the first time in 70 years. It is a tapestry 17.4 feet high and 15.5 feet wide depicting Dante’s meeting with Virgil in Canto I of Inferno designed by Florentine painter Francesco Salviati between 1546 and 1548.

The monumental tapestry was created in one of two workshops Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici founded in 1545 to rival the famed tapestry weavers of Belgium. He hired Brussels master weaver Jan Rost to get the Florentine workshop off the ground, staffing it with Flemish weavers who brought the secrets of their art from Brussels to Florence. Flemish artist Johannes Stradanus made the cartoon from Salviati’s design and weaving began on The Meeting of Dante and Virgil in 1547. It was completed in 1549.

It captures Dante emerging from the “selva oscura” where he had lost his way. His path is blocked by three animals — a leopard/lynx, a lion and a she-wolf, symbolizing three major categories of sin punished in Hell — but the poet Virgil emerges on a mountain, quiets the animals and gestures to Dante. This scene is set in border with swagged banners, fantastical figures and scrolls.

The ownership history of the tapestry is not fully documented. It was in Rome in the 17th century, part of the collection of the noble Rospigliosi family. Banker John Pierpoint Morgan acquired it there. He loaned it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which he co-founded). After his death in 1913, his son J.P. Morgan, Jr., sold the tapestry along with many thousands of objects his father had collected.

The Minneapolis Institute of Art acquired the tapestry in 1915, a donation from Ella Martin in memory of her husband. It was removed from display in the 1950s due to its dire state of conservation. Centuries of light exposure have caused fading, ironically the image of the sunrise suffered the most loss. There are threadbare areas, and despite being extraordinary light (it weighs less than 100 pounds) for its monumental size, the pull of gravity took its toll on the weaving.

For its long-term preservation, the tapestry needed to be exhibited in very low light levels with a new custom-made hanging system. Gaps in the woven silk are being bridges with tulle, invisible to the naked eye but far less complex and invasive than attempting a new weave.

The masterpiece will be the exhibited in the Fiterman Gallery, the only space in the museum large enough to display so enormous a work of art. The exhibition, “Back from the Underworld: Mia’s Dante Tapestry Restored,” runs from July 11, 2026, through January 31, 2027.

* This article was originally published here