Exceptional guests. Pieter Paul Rubens and Giovanni Baglione, Exhibition Capodimonte Museum, Naples

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Exceptional guests. Pieter Paul Rubens and Giovanni Baglione

From 11 March to 7 July 2025

Capodimonte Museum

Via Miano, 2, Naples

Closed now: open at 08:30

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Rubens at Capodimonte: from March 11th on display 'Saint Sebastian healed by the angels' (1601-1602, oil on canvas, 155.5 x 119.5 cm) one of the masterpieces of the National Galleries of Ancient Art in Rome kept by the Corsini Gallery. The work by Pieter Paul Rubens (Siegen, June 28, 1577 - Antwerp, May 30, 1640), is in dialogue with some powerful depictions of the martyrdom of the Saint in the collections of the Museum and Royal Park of Capodimonte (room 61): the paintings by Domenico Cresti known as il Passignano, Bartolomeo Schedoni, Andrea Vaccaro, Mattia Preti. From Palazzo Barberini, another venue of the Galleries, on loan (set up in room 62) also 'Sacred Love and Profane Love' by Giovanni Baglione (1602, Oil on canvas, 240 x 143 cm), painter and biographer, also known as anti-Caravaggio (Rome, circa 1573 - December 30, 1643), protagonist of the famous rivalry with Merisi, which led to a trial for insults in Rome in the early 1600s. The arrival of these two masterpieces is part of a significant exchange with the National Galleries of Ancient Art, explains Eike Schmidt, director of the Museum and Royal Park of Capodimonte. "It will be an opportunity for visitors to Capodimonte, especially for citizens who regularly visit the museum, to admire these paintings, rarely loaned out, in a different context and moreover in Naples. A dialogue that will stimulate new reflections and comparisons, in the case of Rubens' Saint Sebastian with a setup from an iconographic point of view that is a true seventeenth-century compendium on the theme. I like to remember that Baglione's masterpiece returns to Naples exactly 40 years after the epochal exhibition 'Caravaggio and his time' signed by Causa and Spinosa." "Sebastian, a Roman soldier, converted to Christianity and was sentenced to death for spreading the faith among his companions. Bound and pierced by arrows, his body was left to the animals, but the widow Irene found him still dying and healed him with the help of a servant. Sebastian was then able to resume his proselytizing activities, but he was soon subjected to a new martyrdom: flogging. His body was then to be thrown into the Cloaca Maxima as a sign of contempt, but it was recovered by the matron Lucina who gave him a proper burial. The figure of the martyr soldier has been very popular in art, initially depicted as a bearded man in armor, then increasingly as a young nude, pierced by arrows, an opportunity to show an attractive anatomy, one of the few that had the right to be displayed even in sacred settings."

	opens - closes	last entry
monday	08:30 - 19:30
tuesday	08:30 - 19:30
wednesday	Closed now
thursday	08:30 - 19:30
friday	08:30 - 19:30
saturday	08:30 - 19:30
sunday	08:30 - 19:30

Exceptional guests. Pieter Paul Rubens and Giovanni Baglione

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