Reaffirming the importance of collaboration between European museum institutions, the Louvre Museum has entered into a partnership of unprecedented scope with Naples’s Capodimonte Museum.
Capodimonte is one of few museums in Italy whose collections make it possible to present all the schools of Italian painting. It also houses the second drawing cabinet in Italy after that of the Uffizi as well as a remarkable set of porcelains.
More than 70 of the greatest masterpieces of the Neapolitan museum are exhibited in three different places in the Louvre : in the prestigious Grande Galerie, a spectacular dialogue will be established between two collections of Italian paintings that are among the most important in the world; in the room of the Chapel, the origins and the diversity of the collections of Capodimonte are recounted and brought to light, brought together essentially by the Farnese and the Bourbons; finally, in the Clock Room are exhibited the four masterpieces of drawing from the former Farnese collection: an autograph cartoon by Michelangelo, one by Raphaël as well as two others by collaborators opposite those of Raphaël or his pupils preserved in the Louvre.
“The most beautiful masterpieces of the Capodimonte museum will dialogue with those of the Louvre, within the museum itself, within the framework of an unprecedented system. An abundant musical and cinematographic program will enrich this invitation to permanently settle Naples in Paris for nearly six months. Royal palaces transformed into museums, rich in collections inherited from the greatest sovereigns, symbols of the historical links between France and Italy, the Louvre and Capodimonte have a lot to share and say,” says Louvre director Laurence des Cars.
“I am very honored by the invitation of the president-director of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, and great is the prestige that this exhibition brings to Naples and to the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte. The history of Capodimonte is inseparable from the history of the Kingdom of Naples just as the history of the Louvre Museum is inseparable from the French Revolution.
“Many of Capodimonte’s masterpieces, such as Titian’s Danae , the Portrait of Paul III Farnese , again by Titian, the AnteaParmesan will not be a surprise to many visitors, as they appear in many art history textbooks, but the surprise will be to link them to Capodimonte, a museum famous for amateurs but yet to be discovered for a more wide audience. Despite the historical attachment of the French to Naples, visitors to Pompeii do not always think of integrating this museum into their modern ‘grand tour’, which is nevertheless one of the first museums in Europe”, says Sylvain Bellenger, director of the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte.
The collaboration continues until January 8.
