Napoli Ottocento

The Scuderie del Quirinale presents Napoli Ottocento, a tribute to the significant role and lively cosmopolitan spirit of the Neapolitan city in the 19th century.  

Curated by Sylvain Bellenger with Jean - Loup Champion, Carmine Romano and Isabella Valente, the exhibition takes you on a journey through the beauty, art, culture and innovation that enlivened Naples during those days.

The 250 masterpieces on display - an overview of paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, history and science - are the extraordinary testimony of a centuries-old and still living artistic and cultural tradition, fully integrated into contemporary European culture.

The variety of Campania's landscapes has inspired the greatest Italian and international artists, such as Constantin Hansen, Silvestr Ščedrin, Simon Denis, Karl Böhme, Ludwig Catel, William Turner, Thomas Jones, Thomas Fearnley, Eduard Hildebrandt, Hans von Marées, John Singer Sargent and the naturalist painters of Posillipo, Portici and Resina, Anton van Pitloo, Giuseppe De Nittis, Ercole and Giacinto Gigante, Teodoro Duclère and Salvatore Fergola. 

Among the protagonists of Napoli Ottocento is Edgar Degas. Of Neapolitan origin on his father's side, the artist refined his peculiar realist style during his stays in the shadow of Vesuvius. Thanks to the focus dedicated to the brilliant French painter, you can admire five of his masterpieces, brought together in the same place, on loan from the Musée d'Orsay, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as the Castel Sant'Elmo from Capodimonte from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. 

The exhibition highlights the theme of neo-Pompeian historicist imagination with works by Domenico Morelli, the transitions, contaminations and fusions from academicism to realism to verism, with material creations by Antonio Mancini and Medardo Rosso, whose works inspired artists such as Fontana and Burri, displayed in the exhibition, and multimedia video installations by Stefano Gargiulo, recalling the peculiarities of the Zoological Station commissioned by Anton Dohrn and Vesuvius in eruption, the brutal force of nature transformed into beauty.

The exhibition is also accompanied by an interdisciplinary programme: appointments, conversations and meetings, in which the curator Sylvain Bellenger dialogues with some of the leading experts and academics on the topics discussed, and Viaggi nello spazio e nel tempo, a cycle of four short documentaries that tell the story of how Naples became one of the European capitals at the time.

The exhibition project is organised by the Scuderie del Quirinale and the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in collaboration with the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, the Direzione Regionale Musei Campania, the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli and the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn.  

Photo: Filippo Palizzi (Vasto 1818 - Napoli 1899), Fanciulla sulla roccia a Sorrento, 1871, oil on canvas, Collezione Fondazione Internazionale Premio E. Balzan, Svizzera, on loan to Comune di Badia Polesine © Fondazione Internazionale Premio "E. Balzan" - Fondo - Zurigo"/ photo by Mauro Ranzani – Milano