First-ever Correggio exhibition outside Italy opens in Dresden: “Correggio. Movingly Human”

The exhibition “Correggio. Movingly Human” (September 19, 2026 – January 10, 2027) opened to the public today at Dresden’s Zwinger — the first complete retrospective of Antonio Allegri da Correggio (1489–1534) ever organized outside Italy. The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister exhibition brings together roughly a third of the Renaissance master’s painted oeuvre, dozens of drawings and works by his contemporaries and followers.

The star of the show is the altarpiece “Madonna of St. Sebastian” (c. 1524), which underwent a deep restoration lasting nearly four years: restorers removed old layers of varnish and later centuries’ overpainting, returning the work as close as possible to Correggio’s original. The work was treated in a specially built studio — so fragile it could not even be moved to the museum’s main laboratory.

Also on display is curator Andreas Plackinger’s so-called “trinity”: the “Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” (c. 1525/1527) from the Louvre, on loan for the first time ever, and the “Noli me tangere” (c. 1521/1523) from Madrid’s Prado. Other works include Dresden’s own “Holy Night” (c. 1528–1530) and “Madonna of St. George” (c. 1530), the “Venus and Cupid with a Satyr” from the Louvre and the “Danaë” from Rome’s Galleria Borghese.

The exhibition’s focus, according to the museum, is Correggio’s mastery in depicting emotion — the painter who “gave the divine a deeply human face.” Although today less known than Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael or Titian, for more than two centuries he was ranked alongside Raphael and well ahead of Leonardo; the exhibition aims to remind 21st-century visitors why there was once such a fuss about him.

Tickets cost 14 euros (reduced 10.50 euros; pupils under 20 pay 2 euros). From November 27 to December 30, hours are extended Friday to Sunday, 10:00–18:00.

Source: Air Mail, The Art Newspaper