The exhibition Italian Renaissance Masters, presented in conjunction with Milwaukee's Fourth Annual International Arts Festival, showcases the Italian art of the late fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. This exhibition brings together for the first time a selection of works from museums, galleries and private collections across the country. The majority of the forty-five pieces in the exhibition are panel paintings, which rarely travel. Among the artists represented are such important Renaissance painters as Tintoretto, Ghirlandaio, Jacopo Bassano, Bordone, Giovanni Larciani, and Michele Tosini. The exhibition also includes some of the more important early Italian pieces in the Haggerty collection such as Christ at the Column by Giovanni Pietro Pedrini [Rizzoli], The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine by an artist within the circle of Lorenzo Sabatini, and an important Florentine Adoration of the Shepherds.

Italian Renaissance Masters features a broad range of styles. The gold ground paintings of individual saints are examples of a medieval tradition that continued to be popular among some patrons. The introduction of geometrical perspective and greater naturalism in painting can be seen in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries or Early Renaissance works. Examples of the anti-classical style known as Mannerism include the Portrait of a Young Man by Francesco Salviati, the Virgin and Child with St. John by an artist within Rosso Fiorentino's circle and Giovanni Larciani's Madonna and Child.