CINCINNATI.- Tranquil, stormy, or epic, landscape painting can take on many moods. A selection of 40 landscape paintings from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, surveys the evolution of landscape painting in Italy over three centuries, from the Renaissance through the 18th century. Included are works by such great painters as Botticelli, Guercino, Poussin, Claude Lorrain, and Canaletto.

The earliest paintings are from the late 15th century, when landscape often served as a backdrop for sacred and historical subjects. The exhibition then progresses to the great period of the development of pure landscape, the 17th and 18th centuries. The arrival in Italy of Northern European artists such as Paul Bril, Claude Lorrain, Nicholas Poussin, Jacob Pynas and Adrien van de Velde helped to stimulate the new genre. Italian artists contributed to this evolution, too: Filippo Napolitano of Naples, Alessandro Magnasco of Genoa and Giovanni Antonio, called Canaletto, from Venice introduced original and influential new forms of landscape. Altogether, the landscapes painted in Italy formed the basis of the European landscape tradition, as seen in the Taft Museum of Art’s own collection.

The exhibition curator, Antonio Natali, is the former head of the department of late Renaissance–17th-century art at the Uffizi and recently assumed the directorship of the renowned museum. The exhibition organizers are Contemporanea Progetti in Florence and the Trust for Museum Exhibitions, Washington, D.C.