A Gift From Italy

Guido Reni's "The Ascoli Piceno Annunciation," a masterpiece of High Baroque painting that has never been seen in this country, is making a special visit to the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, where it will be on exhibit beginning Saturday, through January 10.

The Institute's new director, Renato Miracco, said he wanted to do something special to mark a new era there. "It's my gift to the city of New York," Mr. Miracco said.

Reni painted "The Annunciation" in 1628 for Santa Maria della Carità, a church in Ascoli Piceno in the Marche region of Italy. In the 19th century, it was moved to the city's Municipal Art Gallery for security reasons. Mr. Miracco said that "The Annunciation" was recently on exhibition at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Montreal, which made the visit to New York convenient. The painting is on loan from the government of the Marche, a region adjacent to Tuscany in Northern Italy.

Mr. Miracco, who is an art historian, was previously an adviser to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has curated art exhibitions around the world; earlier this year, he collaborated with the New York Philharmonic on an exhibition of the art collection of Arturo Toscanini.

Mr. Miracco said he hopes to revitalize the Institute by opening up more of its six-story building, and creating gallery space on the first and second floors.

"We have to rediscover the relationships between Italian and American cultural institutions," he said. He is interested in doing exhibitions on American artists who moved to Italy, such as Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg, and Italian artists who moved to New York, such as Afro (whose full name was Afro Basaldella) and Alberto Burri.

He would also like to do an exhibition of paintings by Titian, along with Renaissance madrigals that were inspired by them.