Naples, an exhibition around Caravaggio's Flagellation at the Royal Palace

The only Caravaggio work in the Capodimonte National Museum in Naples moves a few kilometers and reaches the Royal Palace where, from March 16 to May 9, the exhibition Dialogues around Caravaggio, set up in the Genovese Gallery at the Royal Palace in Naples, and launching a collaboration between the Royal Palace and the Capodimonte Museum and Real Bosco centered on the dialogue between their respective art collections, both the result of Bourbon collecting between the 18th and 19th centuries.

The exhibition, as anticipated, has as its centerpiece the Flagellation of Christ by Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio, which-though not part of the royal collections-is a work that marked the course of seventeenth-century art, with particular reference to Neapolitan painting. The work, owned by the Fondo Edifici di Culto and now kept in the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, aims to initiate a double dialogue in the exhibition, focusing on the one hand on the fortunes of Caravaggio’s painting in the Bourbon collections, and on theother on the treatment of the iconographic theme of the Flagellation, to which Caravaggio gives a spiritual dimension not aligned with the principles of the Catholic Counter-Reformation by emphasizing the human condition, superimposing two episodes of the Passion, the Flagellation,Ecce homo and the iconography of Christ at the Pillar. The exhibition, curated by the directors of the two museums, Mario Epifani and Sylvain Bellenger, displays 15 works in the historic connecting rooms between the Palazzo and the Teatro di San Carlo, with two important new features.

For the first time, 7 of the 118 paintings acquired in 1802 in Rome by Domenico Venuti on behalf of Ferdinand IV of Bourbon are being exhibited together, with the aim of expanding the royal collections and the holdings of the Bourbon residences stripped by the French militia. Venuti, who had already won the king’s trust as director general of the Kingdom ’s excavations and director of the Royal Porcelain Factory that succeeded the Capodimonte Manufactory, described the authors of the seven canvases on display in this exhibition in a document (now preserved in theNaples State Archives), referring to some of them as “schoolboys of Caravaggio.”

Another first is the display of the Saint Praxedes from the storerooms of the Royal Palace, purchased by Venuti as a work by Valentin de Boulogne and now assigned an anonymous Caravaggio painter, since the attribution to the French painter is not reliable. This exhibition will offer scholars the opportunity to explore the subject in depth, and reason for study will also be the observation of a gap present in the center of the canvas, at the height of the hand clutching the sponge. A reproduction reconstructing the missing portion based on a hypothesis developed by the painting’s restorers and Palazzo Reale restorers will be on display next to the painting.

The history of the Royal Palace’s picture gallery is closely interconnected with that of the Capodimonte picture gallery, and the curators have chosen to trace the tour in two sections. The first part of the exhibition, curated by the Royal Palace, focuses on collecting, with the display of the seven Caravaggesque paintings, while the second has an iconographic character, chosen by the directorate of the Capodimonte Museum and Royal Wood, offering a comparison of the representation of the theme of the Flagellation and Ecce homo by different artists between the 16th and 17th centuries, culminating with Caravaggio’s Flagellation.

The tour begins in the connecting corridor between theApartment of Etiquette and the San Carlo Theater, where the focus is immediately on St. John the Baptist, an early copy (attributed to Bartolomeo Manfredi) of Caravaggio’s painting now in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. The work is so faithful (even in size) to Caravaggio’s canvas that the painter Tommaso Conca, in an 1803 listing for Ferdinand IV, recognized it as an “original.” Also on display in the corridor are St. John the Evangelist in Patmos recently recognized as an autograph work by Antiveduto Gramatica, the Return of the Prodigal Son by Mattia Preti and Jesus among the Doctors by Giovanni Antonio Galli known as the Spadarino (the last two restored for this exhibition); on the back wall stands the splendid Orpheus by Gerrit van Honthorst. Also in the same room is a reproduction of a document from the State Archives of Naples, which lists some of the paintings Venuti purchased in Rome.

The first room displays the unpublished Saint Praxedes by an anonymous Caravaggesque painter, alongside a reproduction of Johannes Vermeer ’s painting depicting the same, rare iconographic subject; the painting from the Royal Palace, restored for the occasion, is compared with the photograph taken before the intervention and with a digital reworking that proposes a hypothesis of reconstruction of the lacuna. Carlo Saraceni’s San Rocco closes this first section.

From the second room begins a reflection on the iconography of the flagellation and the interpretation of the Gospels, an invitation to the analysis of the painting from an iconographic and spiritual point of view, with subjects related to different moments of the Passion: the Flagellation, Ecce homo and Christ at the Column. Two sculptures are on display: the 18th-century Ecce homo carved in wood and painted, on loan from the Deputation of the Royal Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, and Christ at the Column carved in ivory by Alessandro Algardi, from the Farnese Collection. Completing the exhibition are a Christ at the Column by Moretto da Brescia from the Farnese Collection, an Ecce homo by an unknown 16th-century Hispano-Flemish painter (formerly attributed to Jacopino del Conte), from the Farnese or Bourbon Collection, and a painting of the same subject by Battistello Caracciolo, purchased by the State.

The third room displays three different seventeenth-century pictorial interpretations of the Flagellation theme: a painting from the ambit of Leonello Spada (known as the “Caravaggio Monkey”) from the Bourbon Collection, the famous canvas by Battistello Caracciolo, and finally the large altarpiece painted by Caravaggio in 1607 on commission from the de Franchis family for a chapel in the Neapolitan basilica of San Domenico Maggiore, the masterpiece of the exhibition, moved for the occasion from the rooms of the Reggia di Capodimonte to those of the Royal Palace.

The project is co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and the Campania Region, as part of the POC Campania 2014-2020.

Sylvain Bellenger, director of the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, says, “With this exhibition Dialogues around Caravaggio, the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte intensifies its dialogue with other museums in the area and the city’s cultural institutions, thanks to its art masterpieces, applying a cultural model that Mayor Gaetano Manfredi is experimenting with his ’control room.’ I thank the director of the Royal Palace, Mario Epifani, for his openness and collaboration on this cultural model for the city of Naples. In this exhibition, by bringing Caravaggio’s Flagellation into a context other than the halls of the Capodimonte Museum, we invite the public to reflect on the iconography of a painter too often limited to the concept of ’shadow and light’ to emphasize, instead, the iconographic sophistication of Caravaggio who, in the midst of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, is not a painter of the Reformation but reflects on the human condition. It will be well understood, thanks to the dialogues proposed in the exhibition with the other works, that the Flagellation is not a flagellation, it is not a Christ at the Column, it is not an Ecce homo but a cross-reading of the humility of humiliation, suffering and the sublimation of pain.”

Mario Epifani, director of the Royal Palace of Naples, says, "The idea of dialogue is the basis of this exhibition. Applied to Caravaggio, the concept extends to the relationship between the Royal Palace of Naples and the Capodimonte Museum, museums that derive their origins from Bourbon collecting between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and thus to the Neapolitan museum system. The exhibition of Caravaggesque paintings purchased in Rome in 1802 for Ferdinand IV of Bourbon sees once again reunited-for the first time in nearly two centuries-works that were already then divided between the royal residence and the Royal Bourbon Museum. The common provenance of the art collections preserved at the Royal Palace and Capodimonte fosters a collaboration that may develop around other ’dialogues’ in the near future.

The third exhibition organized in the Genovese Gallery’s new exhibition space also continues the research work on the collections of the Royal Palace. Three of the paintings have been restored for the occasion, and one among them is to all intents and purposes an unpublished one: the Saint Praxedes that in 1802 was thought to be the work of Valentin de Boulogne, long relegated to storage, is proposed as the work of an unknown Caravaggesque painter, prompting a debate on its attribution. Finally, the exhibition offers the possibility of showing to the public in a modern exhibition space the works usually set up in the visiting path of the Apartment of Etiquette, inviting them to rediscover paintings that within the royal residence took on the role of complement to the sumptuous furnishings of the state rooms."

Vincenzo de Luca, president of the Campania Region, says, “We support the exhibition, organized by two great cultural entities, which thanks to this collaboration presents Caravaggio’s Flagellation, one of the symbolically strongest images of Italian painting and the author’s history. It is an opportunity to present works of art in Bourbon places in a modern key, because Caravaggio is an artist of extraordinary modernity, and to promote culture and tourism.”

Massimo Osanna, director general of Museums, says, "The exhibition is the outcome of the synergistic collaboration between two major state museums in Naples, the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte and the Palazzo Reale. The initiative fully reflects the inspiring principles behind the constituting National Museum System, the network of public, state and non-state and private museums with which the Directorate General for Museums aims to enhance the cultural heritage with a view to collaborative reciprocity and expanded fruition in terms of accessibility and quality.

The cooperation between the two Neapolitan museums, made up of common research, restoration and promotion activities, is a virtuous example of good practice in the recovery of the historical-artistic connective tissue underlying what are now distinct exhibition realities but which, previously, constituted different places of the same historical world and cultural temperament. It is in this “reconstructive” perspective, of openness to the territory, that today it is possible to offer the public new connections and itineraries among the Bourbon collections in Naples, as well as to provide new insights and renewed keys to interpreting and contextualizing the work of a key artist such as Caravaggio, whose Flagellation is the centerpiece of the fine exhibition organized in the Genovese Gallery of the Royal Palace."

For all information, you can visit the official website of the Royal Palace of Naples.

Naples, an exhibition around Caravaggio's Flagellation at the Royal Palace

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