Botero sculptures are on display around Rome.

The largest exhibition in Italy ever dedicated to Colombian artist Fernando Botero will be held at Palazzo Bonaparte in Rome from 17 September until 19 January 2025.

The show charts the more than 60-year career of the artist, famed for his paintings and sculptures of corpulent figures, who died last September aged 91.

Curated by Lina Botero, daughter of the artist, and Botero expert Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz, the show will comprise more than 120 works including paintings, watercolours, charcoal, sculptures and some pieces never seen by the public.

Among the important Botero works never exhibited before include Homage to Mantegna (1958), recently discovered by Lina Botero through auction house Christie's, and a version of the infanta from Las Meninas by Velázquez which had always hung in the artist's Parisian studio.

The exhibition also includes the artist's versions of masterpieces from art history including Raphael's Fornarina, the Montefeltro diptych by Piero della Francesca, portraits by Rubens and van Eyck, up to the final works that Botero created in 2023 such as a large watercolour of the Odalisque.

Organisers say the exhibition features all the classic themes dearest to Botero including his beloved Latin America, the circus, religion, still life, bullfighting and mythology.

Earlier this summer Rome launched an outdoor exhibition of eight monumental sculptures by Botero in locations around the city centre, on display until 15 October.

Botero had strong connections to Italy, a country he travelled around in the 1950s to study the works of Italian Renaissance painters, in particular Piero della Francesca.

The artist is buried in the Tuscan town of Pietrasanta where he worked from a studio every summer in a holiday home he bought in the 1980s.

For exhibition details see Palazzo Bonaparte website. Cover image: Fernando Botero Ballerina on the bar, 2001 Oil on canvas, 164x116 cm, private collection.