Milan, November 2025 – The great Christmas exhibition at Palazzo Marino returns from 3 December, the now traditional event which every year offers Milanese people and tourists an extraordinary, free exhibition, set up in Sala Alessi, the large and historic representative hall of the Municipality of Milan. Until January 11, 2026, it will be possible to admire one of the greatest masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance: the Polyptych of Monte San Martino by Carlo and Vittore Crivelli, a fifteenth-century work that has rarely left its original location in the church of San Martino Vescovo in Monte San Martino (Macerata).
The complex pictorial ‘machine’, dated around 1490, is composed of ten panels with a predella depicting Christ blessing between the twelve apostles. At the centre, the Virgin and Child evoke the Christmas Mystery, offering visitors an artistic and spiritual experience of great intensity. In its over five centuries of history, the polyptych has only been moved three times: Ancona 1950, Fermo 1951 and Venice 1961. The installation in Milan therefore represents an event of extraordinary importance, made possible thanks to a complex work of institutional and cultural collaboration between institutions and administrations.
Produced and promoted by the Municipality of Milan, the Archdiocese of Fermo and Intesa Sanpaolo, the Polyptych of Monte San Martino by Carlo and Vittore Crivelli is a project of Palazzo Reale and Gallerie d’Italia, in collaboration with the Municipality and Parish of Monte San Martino, created by Civita Mostre e Musei with the support of Rinascente.
Curated by Giovanni Morale and Marcello Smarrelli, the exhibition is part of the program of the Milan Cortina 2026 Cultural Olympics. The catalogue, which includes introductory and in-depth essays, as well as descriptions of the works, is published by Allemandi. The Crivelli brothers were originally from Venice, a commercial and artistic crossroads of the fifteenth century together with Florence. The connections between the Venetian Republic, the Adriatic coasts and the manufacturing centers of the Umbria-Marche Apennines favored the exchanges and movement of artists. In fact, Carlo and Vittore Crivelli also stayed in Zara, one of the main cities of Dalmatia, which at that time was under Venetian rule, but they operated mainly in the Marche region. Here they created, usually working separately, numerous golden polyptychs, the majority of which are preserved today in important national and international museums.
The polyptych of the church of Monte San Martino is the only work created together by the two brothers: started by Carlo, who interrupted the work for unknown reasons, the altar was subsequently completed by his younger brother. The exhibition in Milan therefore allows both the appreciation of Carlo’s mastery and the rediscovery of the lesser-known figure of Vittore, constituting an important opportunity for in-depth study for scholars and the public.
Milan is profoundly ‘Crivellesque’, above all thanks to Napoleon who ordered the transfer of many of Carlo Crivelli’s paintings from central Italy: around fifteen of these are kept in the Pinacoteca di Brera, two are in the Sforzesco Castle and another two in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, testimony to the collecting foresight of Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli. It was therefore the Napoleonic historical period that brought to Milan the works of a then little-known author who today has become part of the city’s cultural heritage, and two important exhibitions are dedicated to this period in Milan, also open during the Christmas holidays: a monographic exhibition at Palazzo Reale on Andrea Appiani, Napoleon’s ‘first painter’ and follower of Neoclassicism in Milan, a prominent exponent of the Pinacoteca precisely when Crivelli’s paintings arrived; an exhibition at the Gallerie d’Italia on ‘Milano Capitale’, which recalls the Napoleonic period in Italy (1796-1815), a time of profound political, economic and social transformations which also marked the world of art. Rome, guardian of the ancient heritage, remains the universal capital of the arts, while Milan, the political and cultural heart of the North and seat of the Kingdom of Italy, becomes a lively center of artistic innovation. The exhibition celebrates the dialogue between these two cities, symbols of an extraordinary creative season, suspended between the legacy of the past and the aspirations of modern Europe.
The exhibition of the Polyptych of Monte San Martino by Carlo and Vittore Crivelli is free to enter, open every day from 3 December to 11 January 2026. Visitors will be welcomed by art historians, coordinated by Civita, who will accompany them on free guided tours.
This year too, the exhibition is accompanied by the Christmas in the villages initiative, created thanks to the collaboration between the Municipality of Milan and the Antichi Borghi Milanesi Association. From 13 December 2025 to 4 January 2026 it will be possible to take part in free guided tours in around 20 sites distributed across the nine city municipalities, an initiative designed to enhance villages, churches, sanctuaries, abbeys and oratories and discover works linked to the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi and the Holy Family, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century.
Carlo Franza