So, dear friends, we are entering a new period of travel restrictions; here in Campania we cannot move from one province to another, we are also advised to stay in our town, so what do we do? Luckily there are museums open, so we can make some prudent trips out of the house by car, avoiding public transport and, as in this case, have a very intense and pleasant experience. On 29 October we went once again to the Capodimonte Museum (*) where we visited the important exhibition Luca Giordano. From nature to painting, open until 10 January 2021. The website from which to obtain all the information on the exhibition is the following:
http://www.museocapodimonte.beniculturali.it/portfolio_page/luca-giordano-dalla-natura-alla-pittura/. And from the museum website we get some news about Luca Giordano:
Luca Giordano was born in Naples on 18 October 1634. When he was just twenty, between 1654 and 1655, he made two paintings for the church of San Pietro ad Aram and the altarpiece in the transept of the church of Santa Brigida. In the early years he moves in the wake of Jusepe Ribera, the teacher who remains inside him and who will be like a guide for his voracious learning ability, thanks to which he assimilates the experiences of Tiziano, Lanfranco, Cortona and Rubens. Youth trips to Rome, Venice and Florence were fundamental. Precisely in Florence, Giordano developed a project of illusionistic and continuous decoration of the spaces that had never taken root in Naples: in the Corsini chapel of the Carmine church, and above all in the frescoes of Palazzo Medici Riccardi. The commissions for the major churches and for the high Neapolitan and Spanish aristocracy paved the way for a long stay in Madrid in the last decade of the 1600s. He stayed in Spain for about ten years, working with unparalleled alacrity and producing an endless amount of canvases and frescoes, including royal residences and churches under the high patronage of the Crown. In 1694, the delivery of the keys to the Studio of the Palazzo by the Sovereign Charles II consecrated him as the head of the court painters. Giordano spent the last years of his life in Naples, working for the Certosa di San Martino and for the churches of the Girolamini and Donnaregina. He died in 1705, and is buried in the church of Santa Brigida in Naples. Luca Giordano is undoubtedly the greatest Neapolitan painter of the sixteenth century, as well as the most prolific with thousands of drawings, paintings and frescoes, to the point of earning the nickname "Luca is quick". So let's see these paintings by the Neapolitan master, some of which are gigantic in size, so you will forgive some défaillance in our photographs. As for the frescoes, at the end of the exhibition path, there is a room where the visitor, by operating the dedicated switches, can see on the walls and ceiling some videos that illustrate the frescoes painted by Luca Giordano in Neapolitan churches, to be precise. Santa Brigida, Certosa di San Martino, Girolamini and San Gregorio Armeno:
What powerful images, is it? It should be noted that this exhibition was also held in Paris, at the Petit Palais, between November 2019 and February 2020, and had considerable international prominence.
A final word on the set-up: the works were exhibited in the Sala Raffaello Causa of the museum, an underground hall served by two lifts easily accessible for our vehicles.
Luca Giordano's paintings are juxtaposed on many occasions with those of the same subject by painters of his time, so that the visitor can get an idea of the reciprocal influences. In short, an exhibition that is really worth visiting!
(*) symbol indicating the presence of toilets for the disabled