For Gucci’s Spring/Summer 2018 season, creative director Alessandro Michele presented an imaginative runway collection featuring his signature delirious mix of colourful, vintage-inspired, mismatched pieces trimmed with sequins, ribbons, pearls and brocade — all shown on a huge darkened set decorated with Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Aztec props.

To convey the magic and mystery of the collection in the Spring advertising campaign, Michele eschewed fashion photography and instead mixed his cutting-edge styles with Old Master paintings. Long overshadowed by Modern and Contemporary art, Old Masters are now inspiring fashion, culture and art, as well as attracting new collectors.

Alessandro Michele was a relatively unknown Gucci accessories designer when in 2015 he was promoted to Creative Director of the brand. Since then, his whimsical, eclectic, completely fearless reinvention of Tom Ford’s sexy, sleek, 70s-style version of Gucci has been an explosive success, resulting in phenomenal global sales growth of the brand.

Looking to art history and Old Masters for the Spring advertising campaign, Michele hired 27-year-old Spanish artist Ignasi Monreal, who produced the dreamy digital paintings on his computer and tablet.

“I wanted to use the opportunity to create kind of a love letter to painting itself, to the big masters and the works that we love”

The Garden of Earthly Delights by the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516), which hangs in the Museo del Prado in Madrid where Monreal once lived, offered the basis for one ad. In the modern, digital version, figures wearing Gucci clothes and accessories populate a verdant landscape filled with birds and animals. Into the centre Monreal has inserted a fantastically-clad couple inspired by a second Old Master painting, The Arnolfini Marriage, by Dutch artist Jan van Eyck (1390-1441).

Check out Gucci‘s Spring/Summer 2018 campaign by Ignasi Monreal