The exhibition “I Fasti di Elisabetta Farnese” opens on 2 December 2023. Portrait of a Queen", organized by the Civic Museums of Palazzo Farnese in Piacenza with the support of the Municipality of Piacenza and in collaboration with the Electa publishing house.

Conceived and curated by art historians Antonella Gigli and Antonio Iommelli, the exhibition revolves around a group of canvases, today known by the name of “Elisabetta's Fasti”, painted in the first half of the eighteenth century by the court painter Ilario Mercanti known as Spolverini (Parma 1657 - Piacenza 1734).

For the first time, after almost three hundred years from their migration to Naples - the city where Charles of Bourbon, son of Elisabetta Farnese and Philip V of Spain, transferred the Fasti and a large part of the artistic treasures belonging to the Farnese - six paintings, already of the cycle, will be exhibited in Piacenza, extraordinarily loaned for four months by the Royal Palace of Caserta and the Municipality of Parma.

Six important loans, therefore, which in addition to another twenty works - many of which come from public and private collections - will allow the public to admire together, for the first time, the Glories of Caserta and Parma, brought together for this occasion with those already present in Piacenza since 1928. An ambitious project that will also make it possible to understand the extraordinary greatness and culture of a singular woman like Elisabetta (Parma 1692 - Madrid 1766), whose ambition and intelligence were widely known and appreciated by all her contemporaries, in particular by King Philip V, her consort since 1714.