Napoli Ottocento

The new exhibition, at Scuderie del Quirinale, is an homage to the Neapolitan Nineteenth Century, a time of extraordinary value for arts and culture in Italy and all over Europe. The time frame described in exhibition is not just a century but a much longer time. The Nineteenth Century in Naples starts from the cosmopolitan charm of the Grand Tour and ends with the outbreak of the First World War. The exhibition summarizes the great cultural and artistic production that took place in Naples. During that time, artists from all over Europe and the United States decided to work in Naples to contemplate and paint the charms of Pompei and Herculaneum, the sea, the mountains, the islands of Capri, Ischia and Procida, the sceneries of the Amalfi and Sorrento coasts, the folklore, the muddy earth of Vesuvius, the lush vegetation of Campania, the splendor and the decay, the urban planning and picturesqueness of Neapolitan life, all blending together in a constant dazzle.

The Nineteenth Century in Naples is still a little-known and little-discovered century. The exhibition will take the public on an incredible journey through the visions that Naples has managed to stimulate and produce, and which have pervaded art, architecture, and imagination for over a century as few other cultures have been able to do. “Napoli Ottocento” at Scuderie del Quirinale is a chance to learn about some of the artistic and cultural creations that were made during that time in Naples. In the exhibition halls it’s possible to observe many works by great artists like: Ludwig Catel, William Turner, Thomas Jones, John Singer Sargent. As well by many exponents of the school of Posillipo, Portici and Resina like: Anton van Pitloo, Giuseppe De Nittis, Ercole and Giacinto Gigante, who with their work have gone beyond the classic idea of landscape and have produced extraordinary and very important visions.  During the same century, Mariano Fortuny, the Palizzi brothers, and Domenico Morelli tried with their art to show the stories and the feelings that were winding through the city. And then, almost surprisingly, a French artist whose family had Neapolitan roots: Edgar Degas. Finally, among others, at Scuderie del Quirinale will be exhibited the works of Achille d’Orsi, Antonio Mancini and Vincenzo Gemito, up to Burri and Fontana.

Italian capital of the Enlightenment, Naples in the 19th century becomes an important scientific metropolis, home to the oldest Italian universities, the first school of oriental languages ​​in Europe, the first museum of mineralogy, the first scientific observatories. It was also the city of positivist debates, of legal and mathematical sciences, where an intense dialectic linked the new sciences to an aesthetic that remained faithful to the great realist tradition that has defined Neapolitan art since the Baroque and Caravaggio periods.