A Duccio in Bern: The Kunstmuseum Reopens Its Cabinet of the Old Masters
"Das volle Leben. Alte Meister von Duccio bis Liotard"
Kunstmuseum Bern, CH 🇨🇭, February 13 – September 27, 2026
For a few months this year, one of the most remarkable holdings of early Italian painting in Switzerland is on public view again. The Kunstmuseum Bern has drawn its finest older works out of storage for Das volle Leben ("The Full Life"), a wide-ranging presentation of its collection of Old Masters — and, tucked into a single cabinet, it offers gold-ground enthusiasts a rare reason to make the trip to the Aare.
The exhibition itself is expansive, spanning the Bernese Renaissance through the Baroque and on to the eighteenth-century pastellist Jean-Étienne Liotard. Its curatorial premise is thematic rather than chronological: martyrdom set against self-fashioning, asceticism against opulence, morality against desire. Visitors move from the carved altarpieces of the Bernese Carnation Masters (active c. 1480–1510) and the works of Niklaus Manuel — painter, poet, mercenary and reformer — through the opulent still lifes and civic portraits that mirror Bern's Baroque prosperity.
The cabinet that matters to us
Duccio di Buoninsegna, Maestà, c. 1288 – 1300, photo credits: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
For readers of Fondo Oro Magazine, the heart of the show sits in one room: a group of altar retables and fragments from the Italian Trecento and Quattrocento that, as the museum rightly notes, has few equals in Switzerland.
At its centre is a small, precious devotional panel by Duccio di Buoninsegna — a name that needs no introduction to anyone who has followed the Sienese tradition. Around it hang works by Bernardo and Taddeo Daddi, carrying the Florentine line from Giotto's circle into the fourteenth century; a panel by Fra Angelico, whose gold grounds bridge medieval devotion and early Renaissance clarity; and a work from the workshop of Sandro Botticelli, marking the moment the gold ground gives way to something new.
It is an unusually concentrated survey. Within a few metres, the visitor traces the arc that Fondo Oro Magazine exists to document: from the hieratic Sienese icon to the threshold of the Renaissance, gold leaf still catching the light throughout.
Practical notes
The exhibition runs until 27 September 2026 and is curated by Anne-Christine Strobel, with curatorial assistance from Michelle Fritschi. The museum provides a Digital Guide to the Old Masters, and Sunday guided tours run through August and September in both German and French. A full work list is available from the museum.
For anyone within reach of Bern, the Duccio alone justifies the visit — and it will not stay on the wall for long.
Kunstmuseum Bern, Hodlerstrasse 8–12, 3011 Bern, kunstmuseumbern.ch
Open Tuesday 10:00–20:00, Wednesday–Sunday 10:00–17:00, closed Monday.
