The Belgian artist Luc Tuymans has created two major new works for the altar of a 16th-century church on a Venetian island. Tuymans’s paintings, entitled Heat and Musicians (2025), go on show in the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore next month, across from St Mark\u2019s Square.<\/p>\n
Tuymans\u2019s works replace a pair of canvases by the 16th-century artist Jacopo Tintoretto\u2014The Last Supper\u00a0and\u00a0The People of Israel in the Desert\u2014which will undergo restoration funded by the Save Venice conservation charity.<\/p>\n
Tuymans\u2019s paintings were commissioned by Benedicti Claustra Onlus, the non-profit branch of the Benedictine Community of San Giorgio Maggiore, and the Draiflessen Collection, which was founded in 2009 by the German-Dutch Brenninkmeijer family.<\/p>\n
\u201cTuymans\u2019s intervention for the Basilica, which is a unique and unrepeatable occasion, should not be misunderstood as a reinterpretation of Jacopo Tintoretto\u2019s works. That is not the aim of the project,\u201d explains a project statement. \u201cRather, he was invited to engage with the sacredness of the space and its history, just as Tintoretto once did centuries ago.\u201d <\/p>\n
Tuymans\u00a0has also painted a contemporary illuminated manuscript which will be displayed on the lectern of the\u00a0badalone (bookrest) in the centre of the choir. This manuscript will join other examples in a collection founded by Benedicti Claustra Onlus, to which the Italian artist Nicola Samor\u00ec donated a manuscript earlier this year.<\/p>\n
In 2019, Tuymans showed more than 80 works in a vast exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi, the French billionaire Fran\u00e7ois Pinault\u2019s gallery on the Grand Canal. The show was entitled\u00a0La Pelle\u00a0(skin) after a 1949 novel by the Italian writer Curzio Malaparte. The book is set in Naples at the tail end of the Second World War\u2014when \u201cEurope was in chaos, just like today\u201d, said Tuymans at the time<\/a>.<\/p>\n The basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, with its imposing columns and fa\u00e7ade made of white marble, was designed by the renowned Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. Its silhouette at dusk has been captured by Claude Monet, while inside there are also paintings by the 16th-century Italian artist Jacopo Bassano.<\/p>\n\n