Happy 2023 everyone! In this first post of the new year we thought of dealing with two exhibitions of national importance that take place in our city, Naples, in two truly special locations that we have extensively tested, such as the Gallerie d'Italia and the National Archaeological Museum (MANN). The first exhibition is entitled Artemisia Gentileschi in Naples and is dedicated to the long Neapolitan stay of the seventeenth-century painter, daughter of the renowned painter Orazio Gentileschi, a pupil of whom he indelibly marked the life of the young Artemisia using brutal violence on her. The exhibition is held at the Gallerie d'Italia in Naples (*), in Via Toledo 177 and will be open until 19 March 2023 (https://gallerieditalia.com/it/napoli/mostre-e-iniziative/mostre/2022/12/03/artemisia-gentileschi-a-napoli/). Below is an introductory text taken from the Gallerie d'Italia website:
The exhibition, created in special collaboration with the National Gallery of London and in collaboration with the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the State Archives of Naples and the University of Naples L'Orientale, presents a careful selection of works from from public and private, Italian and international collections which makes the exhibition an opportunity to update scientific studies on the subject. The exhibition narration intends to proceed according to a thematic and iconographic scansion, covering the chronological arc in which Artemisia was in Naples, to explore the enormous success met in the capital of the Viceroyalty, and to return a reliable image of the artistic greatness of this complex historical moment . In Naples, in fact, Artemisia set up a thriving workshop that made use of the collaboration, or simply interacted, with the best local artists, from Massimo Stanzione to Onofrio Palumbo to Bernardo Cavallino. Iconographies and themes already tested by the painter, mainly linked to the representation of female heroines (Judith, Cleopatra, etc.), were taken up and put on the market with countless variations and entrepreneurial methods. The exhibition aims to shed light on these issues, thanks also to the results of an extensive archival research campaign, conducted for the occasion. So let's proceed with our images:
The exhibition takes place on the ground floor of the Gallerie d'Italia, but it is also worth admiring the permanent collections on the first floor (Neapolitan nineteenth century) and on the second (contemporary art and Magna Graecia).
It should be noted that an excellent café-bistro has opened on the ground floor of the Gallerie d'Italia for a few months, where you can refresh yourself before leaving the museum:
Luminist Cafè Bistrot (*)
Via Toledo 177, Naples
+39 081 1975 8023 facebook.com/luministnapoli/ We leave the powerful images of Artemisia Gentileschi and move to the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN) (*) , where until 13 February 2023 it is possible to visit the grandiose Byzantine exhibition. Places, symbols and communities of a millennial empire. From the museum website (https://mann-napoli.it/bizantini/) we report the following text: The exhibition on the Byzantines, curated by Federico Marazzi (Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples), develops the historical phases following the Western Roman Empire in fifteen sections, dedicating a focus to Naples (a "Byzantine" city for about six centuries , after the conquest by Belisarius and his armies in 536 AD) and deepening the ties between Greece and southern Italy.
Various topics were addressed - the structure of power and the state; urban and rural settlement; cultural exchanges; religiosity; the arts and the expressions of both literary and administrative written culture - over four hundred works on display, coming from the MANN collections and from loans granted by 57 of the main museums and institutions that house Byzantine materials in Italy and Greece (33 Italian institutes, 22 Greek museums including the islands, the Vatican Museums and the Fabbrica di San Pietro). Thanks to the prestigious collaboration with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, many of the exhibited materials are visible for the first time: several artifacts were found, in fact, during the excavations for the construction of the Thessaloniki subway. Other finds, loaned by the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Municipality of Naples, were found in the excavations of line 1 of the underground. The exhibition recounts the fascinating and complex world of the Byzantine Empire: that Eastern Roman Empire (Romèi were called and its inhabitants called themselves), which survived for almost ten centuries the fall of the pars Occidentis, when the barbarian Odoacer in 476 succeeded to depose the last emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus. It was then that Constantinople, the city on the Bosphorus, the ancient Byzantion re-founded in 330 by the Emperor Constantine as "New Rome", became the political, institutional and cultural center and heart of the Roman Empire. An Empire which, in fact, continued to exist until 1453 (the year of the fall of the capital into the hands of the Turks of Mohammed II), over time assuming different connotations: the Greek language, for example, was used for official documents and Christianity it had been assumed as the state religion, founding the identity of the Empire. The exhibition tells the characteristics of Byzantine society using different elements that contribute to the realization of the visit experience: the finds, obtained on loan from many prestigious institutions; multimedia contents, room graphics, maps, timelines, blow-ups and detailed reproductions of Orthodox worship sites, interiors of churches and monasteries, magnificent mosaics of Ravenna churches and immovable iconic works. So let's move on to the images we took in the atrium and in the Sala della Meridiana of the Museum:
Here we are at the end! We have bombarded you with tons of images, but they are only a small part of the things we have seen in this exhibition, and we hope we have inspired you to visit it. Among other things, it is now possible to have a tasty breakfast at the MANN Cafè; this allows you to take a suitable break during a visit to the Museum, in which various sections that were closed in the past have now been reopened, so much so that now you can even spend the whole day there. In short, Naples and its exhibitions are waiting for you!! (*) symbol indicating the presence of toilets equipped for the disabled