SO you’ve never been to Italy, but you’ve always wanted to go? No problem.

The National Gallery of Australia has an instant solution in its newest exhibition, “Renaissance: 15th & 16th Century Italian Paintings from the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo”.

“People will love it… it’s very, very moving and there are around 70 works of great variety – the kind of works Australians would see if they went to Italy.”

That’s Christine Dixon talking. She’s the NGA’s senior curator of international painting and sculpture and the Australian curator of the exhibition.

Dixon brings a wealth of knowledge and linguistic skill to the task of mounting this show. Together with co-ordinating curator Giovanni Valagussa, from the Accademia Carrara; Prof Jaynie Anderson, from Melbourne University and the NGA’s Ron Radford, she’s making sure that the painting scholar and the layperson will be satisfied.

The little hilltop city of Bergamo (emphasis on the first syllable) might be something of a backwater now, but it was described by architect Frank Lloyd Wright as “the most perfect city in the world” and was the hometown of Donizetti, whose opera “L’elisir d’amore”, runs at the ANU Arts Centre through the first week of the exhibition.

Only an hour by train from Milan, it was once part of the Republic of Venice and a thriving centre of the textile trade. Dixon feels sure that after this, a lot of the 9000 Aussie tourists who visit Italy each year will sidetrack to Bergamo.

The Accademia Carrara’s present rebuilding program has been the NGA’s good fortune. Just as with “The Great Impressionists: masterpieces from the Courtauld Collection” in 1984, French Paintings from the Musée Fabre in 2003 and “Masterpieces from Paris” from the Musée d’Orsay in 2009-10, the Bergamo museum is being refurbished. As Dixon says: “It’s only because they are homeless that you get the opportunity to borrow these paintings.”

So, prepare to have your breath taken away.

There are early and high Renaissance paintings from Venice, Florence, Padua, Ferrara, Bergamo and Siena by Raphael, Botticelli, Bellini and Titian. It’s the first time paintings (as opposed to drawings) by Raphael and Botticelli have been seen in Australia.

The 15th-century part has an altarpiece from Vivorini, Madonnas, crucifixions and heroic saints such as St. Peter, holding the keys and St. John, holding a quill. But there are plenty of secular subjects, too, many to do with notable patrons, recognisable in the works.

There will also be works by lesser-known artists, just as fascinating in Dixon’s eyes. Take Giovanni Battista Moroni, whose sumptuous yet restrained Reformation-era “Portrait of a Child of the House of Redetti”, shows a little girl dressed in rich textiles wearing a crystal necklace and also a coral bracelet to ward off the plague. Such detail!

The 16th-century section will be of particular interest to art students, as it shows the transition from tempera on wood panel to oil on canvas around 1472-80 with Bellini. “They look different,” Dixon says, with the tempera works painted on gold backgrounds, in contrast to the greater realism of oils.

But most breathtaking of all will be what she calls “the glamour of Raphael and Botticelli.”

“Renaissance”, 10am-5pm daily (except Christmas Day) until April 9. Timed ticketing bookings to ticketek.com.au or 13 28 49. For visitors with mobility difficulties phone 6240 6411.