You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.
A bright and joyful morning as we leave our little flat on the 'island' and head for the taxi rank across the Partenope road.
Four or five restaurants in a row (a certain percentage of the total here in the borgo)
There's an open channel under the causeway, so that small boats can pass through from the marina (but does that make this still an island?)
The lower lengths of the Via Toledo north-south shopping street are for pedestrians (and the odd car with a purpose), but here near the Piazza Dante we can rejoin the Via Toledo and bolt street up the mountain. In our taxi.
[I always gets the feeling that he's waving particularly to me . . . or at least to all serious Dante fans.]
But I think that this is the first time I've seen him here without a bird perching on his head.
The Palazzo di Capodimonte came into state hands in 1950, with its Bourbon art collections, and was inaugurated as a national museum in 1957. The building was commissioned in 1738 by the Bourbon King Charles VII of Naples and Sicily (later Charles III of Spain), who needed a larger establishment for his court followers and more importantly to house the wonderful Farnese Collection that he'd inherited from his mother, Elisabetta, the last survivor of the dynasty of the sovereign Dukes of Parma and Piacenza.
The Bourbons looted the collections from the palaces in Piacenza and Parma, whose museums still have photographic copies of the missing pieces on the walls-- the winners got the treasures they wanted to Naples quickly, which was just as well, because the Dukedom of Parma and Piacenza went over to the Austrian Habsburgs four years later, in 1735.
The museum is decidedly one of our favorities, but we've never had enough time to appreciate all of it, or any of the other ones either. There's always just too much.
Actually, the ticket office is down at the other end, so we'll get to pace some halls.
-- Excuse me. Which way is the bar?
Welcome back. The masterpieces are at home.
(Capodimonte: Open during the works.)
Ah, 'the works', yes.
No worries, we can do it.
-- Are you sure the bar is this way?
We'll just be wandering all round the halls today, so there may not be much of a coherent progression through the ages.
But in any case, we do need to gallop through the Farnese armaments collection, which . . .
. . . we do in some haste. (Any one of those things would have made the educational point.)
Here we begin: this is labeled 'Ascension of the Virgin', 1423-1428, by the so-called Masolino da Panicale, part of the Farnese Collection like much of what we'll see today.
'Santa Cecilia and the Vision of Saint John'. Jan Soens (aka Giovanni Sons, c.1547-c.1611/14) was from 's-Hertogenbosch but was working in Rome in 1573 and particularly active from 1575 with the Farnese in Rome and in Piacenza and Parma into the early next century.
Saint Cecilia of Rome, said to have been martyred in ca.176 or 230, is for various reasons known as the patroness of music and musicians. There is a Basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome.
Now! The Joachim Beuckelaer Room
One of our very favorite artists, we've been following Beuckelaers all over. Here's a whole corridor full of six market and kitchen scenes by the wonderful Joachim Beuckelaer of Antwerp (c.1533-c.1574). This is likely the largest single collection of his work, we could suppose, though we've seen others elsewhere -- the Uffizi, the Louvre, the Prado [No Photo!!], the Palazzo Bianco in Genoa, the Château Rohan in Strasbourg, the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma.
In the Butchers' Shop. The overhead lighting here is not ideal . . . but we've put together a webpage of somewhat better versions of the ones we've personally seen: it's here.
This is 'Market in the Square' (1566), including all his market activities with for the most part the same cast of models for the parts, but this picture also demonstrates his subtle interpolation of religious hints here and there. In this case, the best one is largely hidden behind the effect of the lighting: the tax collectors are in their building, and the figure in white just left of the worst of the whiteout, in front of some stairs, is Jesus summoning St Matthew to leave the others and join him in his mission.
Beuckelaer specialized in an elaborate cornucopia of food and household stuff in market and kitchen scenes, as well as some more sobering brothel scenes. He also painted some purely religious works, but few of these survived the Calvinist iconoclasm frenzy in the Low Countries in 1566.
Hijinks in the market square
Still another fish market. Beuckelaer's 'development of the genre of market and kitchen scenes was influential on the development of still life art in Northern Europe as well as Italy and Spain' (Wikipedia).
Another almost-Beuckelaer level painter of market and household populist scenes is Vicenzo Campi -- we've seen 'Fruit Seller' (1580) and 'Kitchen' (1590) in the Brera, Milan, and the 'Ricotta Eaters' in Lyon.
A few rooms full of antique objets d'art
This appears to be an intriguing Mary Magdalene by a unknown artist in Lombardy, early 16th century.
Renaissance-era majolica, very nice, but we're busy at the moment.
This is entitled in Italian the equivalent of 'Three half-figures and a child', ca. 1529, by Callisto Piazza of Lodi (1500-1561).
This is a self-portrait at the age of about 24 of the amazing Sofonisba Anguissola of Cremona (1532-1625). She got started in Rome at 22, where Michelangelo recognized her talent and advised her for two years, and in Milan, and she was then recruited to join the royal Spanish Court in Madrid as a lady-in-waiting and artistic tutor to Philip II's queen, Elizabeth of Valois, and later as official painter to the king. After the queen's death, the king arranged an aristocratic marriage for her and she moved to Sicily, and later to Pisa and Genoa, practicing as a leading portrait painter, in declining eyesight, up to five years before her death in Palermo at age 93.
Van Dyck visited her in Palermo in 1624, when she was about 92, got lots of good advice and made some sketches of her.
'Madonna col Bambino e devoti', ca. 1504, by Giovanni Agostino da Lodi. Baby Jesus can see something that no one else can.
'Madonna con Bambino e San Giovanni', early 16th century, by Fernando Llano (1480-1510)('restored by the Istituto Centrale del Restauro di Roma', 2019-222). The holy bambini seem to be getting along swimmingly.
'Madonna col Bambino', 1515-1520, by Bernardo Luini (c.1481-1532)
And here's the rambunctious Bambini without Mom: 'Gesù e San Giovanni', ca.1540, by Joos van Cleve ['copia da Leonardo da Vinci']
Cesare Magni's 'Vergine delle rocce', ca. 1530-1533; the artist, c.1495-1534, apparently spent his life working in Milano.
Giovanni Bellini (c.1430-1516) of Venice, entitled 'Trasfigurazione' (1478-1479)
An affectless Madonna with a Baby practising benedictions and a 'devoto' whose mind is elsewhere, by Antonio Solario, aka Lo Zingaro, early 16th century. And a balancing rock in the background.
Poor old Lorenzo/Lawrence on his gridiron. This is identified as by the workshop in Venice of Girolamo da Santacroce and dated precisely to '1500-1556 circa'). ['It is unclear if he is related to a sculptor named Girolamo Santacroce in Naples.']
Botticelli, of course, 'Madonna, Bambino, and two angels', ca.1468-1469
This haunting apparition is identified as Sant'Eufemia (1454), by Mantegna.
St Euphemia was widely venerated, especially in the eastern churches; she's said to have refused to offer sacrifices to Ares and was martyred in the arena at Chalcedon in AD 303 (the lions wouldn't touch her but the bear got her). She later did lots of miracles, but the best one was that during the Church Council of Chalcedon in 451; when there was no consensus, the two feuding parties wrote out their manifestos and placed them on Euphemia's chest in her sarcophagus, and when they checked in three days later the text of the Chalcedonian Definition was clutched in her right hand, and that of the Monophysites [i.e., Christ has only a single nature, not human plus divine] was on the floor.
This is Vasari's 'Allegoria della Giustizia, della Verità e dei Vizi' (1543) -- 'Allegory of Justice, Truth and Vices', oof, a tall order.
A few more Bambini! This is 'Madonna con il Bambino, san Giovannino, e santa Elisabetta', dated 1560-1570, by Bronzino of Florence.
The 'Annunciazione con i santi Giovanni Battista e Andrea' (c. 1470-76), by Filippino Lippi, restored in 2019.
A fine Pietà (ca.1599), an acknowledged masterpiece by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609)
Don't wake the Baby! This is by Alessandro Tiarini of Bologna (1577-1668), dated to 1625-1630.
Everyone needs a favorite Canova, and this one, a portrait of 'Letizia Remolino' (1807) is a good candidate (second perhaps only to the Penitent Magdalene in Genoa). The lady was the mother of Napoleon Bonaparte.
This allegorical sort of thing is called 'The Four Seasons', by Guido Reni, done c.1615-1620. Perhaps some sort of explanatory text came along with it when it was first purchased.
This is called 'Ola', which translated as 'Throat' doesn't mean too much, but it is one of a seven part series by Jacques de Backer on the "Seven Deadly Sins", bought in Antwerp by Alessandro Farnese's secretary Cosimo Masi in 1594 and taken to Italy. Apparently all of these are now here in the Museo di Capodimonte, but the only other one we noticed as we plunged along from room to room was . . .
. . . 'Invidia', i.e., Envy. Weird stuff going on in the background!
The 'Adorazione del Bambino' (1512) by Jacob Cornelisz (aka van Oostsaanen) may seem a little overdone at first sight, and for a long time afterward. But the little putti in front, holding the music and playing on trombones, are a nice touch.
A few colorful altarpieces in a row here. This is by Joos Van Cleve, 'Crufixion and donors', ca. 1515.
And another, also by Van Cleve, 'Adorazione dei Magi' (c.1515).
These didn't come out well, but this is the well-known Brueghel, 'The Misanthrope' (1568), and . . .
. . . 'The parable of the blind' (1568).
'Madonna del velo', of the veil, by Sebastiano Liciani 'del Piombo' (c.1485-1547). This is one of at least two of his with the same theme and name; the other is dated to c.1525. The Venetian artist came to Rome in his 20s (in 1511) and was apparently friends with all the other painters there, including Michelangelo; in 1531 he was named the Keeper of the Papal Seal, which was made of lead, and he thus gained the nickname 'del Piombo'.
'Ritratto di Leone X con due cardinali', the classic portrait of Leo X Medici, but this is described as a copy by Andrea del Sarto in 1523 from Raphael's original now in the Uffizi. The cardinals are (left) Leo's cousin Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII) and Luigi de' Rossi, also a cousin and made by Leo a cardinal-priest of the titular San Clemente church, in 1517, though he died in 1519.
Giulio Romano's 'Madonna della gatta', of the cat (lower right corner), 1519-1520. Giulio Pippi was an apprentice of Raphael's and worked with him in Rome as a young man, then accepted a residency in 1524 in the Gonzagas' court in Mantua, where he remained for the rest of his life (d. 1546). His luxury retreat just outside of Mantua, the Palazzo Te, is very impressive.
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All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 28 December 2024. 
