The most beautiful picture of 2025 is What Our Lord saw at first glance Of Giovanni Gasparro: the jury of the Excellent Painters Award – Brazzale, the artistic event now in its twelfth edition.
The work of Giovanni Gasparro (born in Bari in 1983) was chosen from a shortlist of paintings painted in the last twelve months, published on the Eccellenti Pittori website and therefore selected as the most representative of the most recent Italian pictorial production.
«It is the first time that the prize has been awarded to a painter who has already won in the past», explains the creator of the Prize, Camillo Langone«Gasparro’s case is very particular because he won not just any of the past editions, but the first one, in 2014. The jury was completely different from the current one (it included, for example, Franco Maria Ricci and Roger Scruton) and this also demonstrates the universality of the Apulian artist, capable of communicating to different generations and nationalities. What Our Lord saw at first glance I was lucky enough to admire it in preview, in Adelfia’s studio, immediately after the last stroke of the brush. I immediately understood that I was in front of an extraordinary painting, unprecedented in almost two thousand years of Christian art: an Adoration from the point of view of the Child. Evidently a great artist can innovate even while remaining faithful to traditional themes and techniques. We therefore have a nativity scene with a beautiful Madonna, of pure grace, and shepherds who are realistically rough and yet miraculously illuminated by the divine manger. It’s impossible not to be impressed.”
Giovanni Gasparro
The jury of the twelfth edition of the Excellent Painters-Brazzale Award is made up of the founders Camillo Langone and Roberto Brazzaleby illustrious exponents of industry, business and culture, active in the most diverse sectors: Luciano Barbetta (Barbetta Industria Abbigliamento), Giovanni Baroni (X3 Energy), Marco Bartolomei (8a+ Investimenti), Corrado Beldì (Laterlite), Maria Stella Busana (University of Padua), Beatrice Carollo, Roberta Casagrande (Casagrande), Lionello Codognotto (General Membrane), Angelo Inglese (G. Inglese Sartoria), Barbora Kralikova, Silvano Merlatti (Fila Sport Australia), Savino Muraglia (Frantoio Muraglia), Leonardo Spadoni (Molino Spadoni), Fabio Spinosa Pingue (Pingue Group), Andrea Tovo (Mut Meccanica Tovo).
The Excellent Painters–Brazzale Award, in addition to the recognition dedicated to the best painting of the year, is periodically organized at the Asiago Prisons Museumphysical exhibitions with the aim of presenting new Italian painting to the public. The last one took place in summer 2024 with the title “Gran Turismo”. The next exhibition is scheduled for the summer of 2027.
Among the Italian art awards, Eccellenti Pittori-Brazzale is the first dedicated exclusively to painting. Furthermore, it is the only one whose jury is not made up of professionals, but of illustrious lovers of beauty. The freedom of a jury that is both qualified and disinterested, the absence of discrimination regarding age, style, curriculum, the non-request of registration fees or availability of the works make it possible to offer the most complete panorama of today’s best pictorial production. Conceived by Camillo Langone, curator of the site and of the Eccellenti Pittori project, with the support of the Brazzale dairy group, a historic dairy company founded in 1784, with strong green sensitivity and a great passion for art and beauty, Eccellenti Pittori – Brazzale is “the diary of living Italian painting”.
Who is the winner of 2025
Giovanni Gasparro was born in Bari on 22 October 1983. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 2007, as a pupil of the painter Giuseppe Modica, with a thesis in art history on Van Dyck’s stay in Rome.
His painting Last supper is exposed in the film Saturn Against by Ferzan Ozpetek. The first solo exhibition, in Paris, was in 2009. In 2011 the Archdiocese of L’Aquila commissioned him to 19 works including cymatiums and altarpieces for the Basilica of San Giuseppe Artigiano (13th century), damaged by the 2009 earthquake, which constitute the largest pictorial cycle of sacred art created in recent years. In 2012 he created the work Anomaly with Largillière’s hat for the Costa Fascinosa, the largest cruise ship in Europe, in the Costa Crociere fleet. In 2013 he won the Bioethics Art Competition of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights with the work Chaste marriagesagainst abortion, inspired by the homonymous encyclical of Pope Pius XI (1930), exhibiting in Hong Kong, Houston and Mexico City. The following year, with Quum memoranda – portrait of Pope Pius VIIwon the Pio Alferano Award and the Excellent Painters Award – Brazzale.
He exhibited at 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi and at the National Gallery of Cosenza in comparison with Mattia Preti, the National Art Gallery of Bologna, the Royal Basilica of Superga in Turin and the Roman Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Palazzo Venezia in Rome, the National Alinari Museum, the Museum of the Innocents and the Museums of Villa Bardini in Florence, Castel Sismondo and the Museum of the City of Rimini, the Casino dell’Aurora by Guido Reni in Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi in Rome, the San Severino Marche Art Gallery compared with the Pinturicchio, the Corrado Giaquinto Art Gallery in Bari, the Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa, Franco Maria Ricci’s Labyrinth in Fontanellato, the diocesan museums of Imola and Molfetta, the Napoleonic Museum and the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome, the Eremitani Museum in Padua, the Grand Palais in Paris, the MART in Rovereto, the MEAM – Museu Europeu d’Art Modern in Bercellona (Spain), the Pilotta Monumental Complex in Parma and the Stadtgalerie in Kiel (Germany).
His works are exhibited in important public and private collections in Europe and the United States, as well as in various Italian churches and basilicas in Siena, Trani, Rome, Turin and L’Aquila and abroad in Malta, Switzerland, Greece and Austria. In 2021 he won the 100 Italian excellences award in Campidoglio, Rome, and inaugurated the portrait of the King of Spain Felipe VI of Bourbon for the Royal Pontifical Basilica of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli in Naples. In 2022 he made his debut as a theater set designer at the Teatro Coccia in Novara, with Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, directed by Fabrizio Maria Carminati and directed by Renato Bonajuto.
For 2024, the Mayor and the municipal council of Siena have appointed Gasparro as painter of the banner of the famous Palio in July, dedicated to the Madonna of Provenzano, an honor reserved for artists of recognized international fame. In the same year he received the Art Global Award – Art and Culture at Palazzo Montecitorio – Chamber of Deputies.
Many of the exhibitions in which he participated have enjoyed the patronage of the Presidency of the Italian Republic, the Senate of the Republic, the Chamber of Deputies and numerous Ministries, as well as regional, provincial and municipal institutions.
