From Rembrandt to Holbein, Borgianni to Mattia Preti: the 2020 exhibitions of the Barberini-Corsini Galleries

The Barberini Corsini National Galleries announce a rich program of exhibitions for 2020.

It will begin with Rembrandt at the Corsini Gallery. Self-Portrait as Saint Paul, curated by Alessandro Cosma; the exhibition will be held at the Corsini Gallery from February 20 to June 15, 2020. Rembrandt’s Self-Portraitas St. Paul, from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, will be displayed in the exhibition intending to bring to light a forgotten but crucial event in the history of European collecting. The painting was the protagonist of a significant episode in the dispersal of works of art during the French occupation of 1799, when the master of the Corsini household, apparently unbeknownst to Prince Thomas, sold it to merchants Luigi Mirri and William Ottley to meet the forced contributions imposed by the new government. The work, which belonged to Neri Corsini, returns to Italy for the first time since 1799. A selection of engravings by Rembrandt owned by the Corsini family and other works will also be present.

Palazzo Barberini, on the other hand, will feature Orazio Borgianni from March 5 to June 30, 2020, with a monograph entirely dedicated to the artist: this is the first monograph devoted to Borgianni. Curated by Gianni Papi, the exhibition Orazio Borgianni, a restless genius in Caravaggio’s Rome will focus on his Roman season, between the first and second decades of the 17th century. Some 20 autograph paintings from important museums and collections, both Italian and foreign, will be on display, alongside theSelf-Portrait and Holy Family with St. John and St. Elizabeth from the National Galleries collection. Also on view will be a series of works by painters, among the major protagonists of the Roman scene, for whom Borgianni’s influence was significant: among them, Antiveduto Gramatica, Giovanni Lanfranco, Carlo Saraceni, Giovanni Serodine, and Simon Vouet.

From May to November 2020 Palazzo Barberini will host theexhibition The model of Etienne Monnot for the funeral monument of Innocent XI Odescalchi, curated by Maurizia Cicconi, Michele Di Monte, Paola Nicita and Yuri Primarosa. It will be a focus around the large preliminary model in painted wood and gilded terracotta for the funeral monument of Pope Innocent XI in St. Peter’s in the Vatican, sculpted in Rome by Etienne Monnot under Maratti around 1695. The work, a rare example of a collaboration between Monnot and Maratti, has always been in the private chapel of the Odescalchi Palace and has never been on public display. A terracotta sketch by Monnot and a series of works with the subject of The Apostles that Maratti painted for the Barberini family, rarely exhibited as a whole, will also be on display.

From September 2020 to January 2021, the restoration of Mattia Preti’s Cananea will be presented; the exhibition, curated by Alessandro Cosma and Yuri Primarosa, will be mounted at Palazzo Barberini. On the occasion of the exhibition The Triumph of the Senses. New Light on Mattia and Gregorio Preti, which was held at Palazzo Barberini in 2019, the National Galleries funded the restoration of the private collection painting Christ and the Canaanite Woman by Mattia Preti. Upon completion of the restoration, carried out by the National Galleries’ Laboratory, the work will be exhibited at Palazzo Barberini in the room dedicated to Mattia Preti. On the occasion of the exhibition, the results of the intervention will be presented and to delve into the painter’s Roman phase. Some works by Mattia and Gregorio Preti will also be exhibited.

And again, Palazzo Barberini will host from October 2020 to January 2021 the exhibition Hans Holbein, The Lady with the Squirrel, curated by Maurizia Cicconi. Created in collaboration with the National Gallery in London, the exhibition will bring to Rome, for the first time, Hans Holbein’s The Lady with the Squirrel, one of the artist’s absolute masterpieces and one of the most remarkable portraits of the first half of the 16th century. The Portrait of Henry VIII, a work by Holbein belonging to the museum’s collection, will be placed next to the painting as part of the new layout of the rooms dedicated to the 16th century.

The exhibition program will conclude with The Spectator’s Hour. How images use us, curated by Michele di Monte. From November 12, 2020 to February 14, 2021, at Palazzo Barberini, the centrality of the spectator in the aesthetics of painting between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries will be explored, highlighting the ways in which images “include” the spectator within their aesthetic, narrative, affective and symbolic dynamics. The exhibition aims to stimulate the viewer’s concrete experience according to a progression of involvement and reflective awareness. About thirty works from the collections of the National Galleries and from Italian or European institutions will be exhibited.

For info: www.barberinicorsini.org

Image: Rembrandt, Self-Portrait as Saint Paul (1661; oil on canvas, 91 x 77 cm; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum)

From Rembrandt to Holbein, Borgianni to Mattia Preti: the 2020 exhibitions of the Barberini-Corsini Galleries

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