Capodimonte
September 27, 2006
The big museum of fine arts here is the Museo di Capodimonte, which is located in a big palace on a hilltop that overlooks the city from the east. I took a nice leisurely tour of their collection yesterday. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed inside the museum ... and they were very serious about it.
Here is a photo of the museum from the outside, though.
The museum was founded in the 18th century by Charles of Bourbon, who inherited one of the most fabulous art collections in Europe from his mother, Elizabeth Farnese. The Farnesi were a family of Roman popes, senators and aristocrats who, over the previous two centuries, had acquired some of the world's most famous paintings and antiquities.
In the Farnese collection are one of Titian's Danae and the Portrait of Pope Paul III with his grandsons, Bruegel's Parable of the Blind and The Misanthrope, a lovely portrait or two by Parmigianino, some Raphaels, some El Grecos and this painting, by Artemesia Gentileschi, of Judith slaying Holofernes. I saw the Gentileschi when it paid a visit to the Metropolitan Museum a few years ago.
Titian's Danae was stunning.
It's one of those paintings that you can't stop looking at.
I thought that the portrait of Paul III with his grandsons was a bit strange. Are members of the clergy supposed to have a large family of their children and grandchildren hanging around? I guess that in the 16th century, the popes could pretty much do whatever they wanted.
I wonder how many children that Ratzinger guy has ...
My favorite painting was this one by Simone Martini, which was located in a separate collection of Neapolitan painters from the Medieval period. It shows St. Louis of Toulouse on a field of gold -- real gold -- crowning his brother, Robert the Wise, as the King of Naples. The painting was originally displayed in the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore here in Naples, but it is just way too valuable to be hanging about casually anywhere like that these days.
Louis was a member of the Spiritual faction of the Franciscans and he is wearing a Franciscan robe under his cape in the painting. If you've ever read The Name of the Rose, you might remember a bit about the battle between the Emperor and the Pope during this period and how it involved the Franciscan order. Robert the Wise and his wife, Sancia of Mallorca, were big supporters of the Spirituals, one faction of the Franciscans, and built the church of Santa Chiara here, in part, as a refuge for them.
Cool painting ... and a great museum visit.