From February 21 to April 27, 2025, the Secret Apartments of Palazzo Doria Pamphilj in Rome present the exhibition Chiara Lecca. From the egg to the goddess in the Secret Rooms of Doria Pamphilj.

The exhibition, curated by Francesca Romana de Paolis, realized with the support of Princess Gesine Pogson Doria Pamphilj and her spouse Don Massimiliano Floridi, in collaboration with the Fumagalli Gallery in Milan, opens the doors of the Secret Apartments Doria Pamphilj to contemporary art: a series of hybrid rooms, halfway between home and museum, visitable from 2021, decorated and furnished according to different tastes until the current configuration, reflecting the arrangement desired by the Genoese branch Doria Landi, who moved to Rome in 1763.

On the occasion of the exhibition, two paintings rarely exhibited to the public are also drawn from the deposits of the Palace: the Melon Seller by Leonello Spada, a late sixteenth-century painting long believed to be a work by Caravaggio, and Male Figure and Dog with Still Life of Flowers and Fruit, oil on canvas from the mid-seventeenth century, created by the Genoese artist Pasquale Chiesa and the Flemish artist Alexander Coosemans.

The eleven works by Chiara Lecca – sculptures, installations, individual works and composite groups – interact with the furnishings, paintings, and ancient statues, in a path linked to the four elements (Fire, Air, Earth, and Water), an esoteric theme dear to the Pamphilj family, exploring issues related to the cyclical nature of the seasons and the alternation of day and night.

The title of the exhibition, From the egg to the goddess in the Secret Rooms of Doria Pamphilj – in addition to visually outlining the exhibition itinerary, which starts from the artist's oval sculptures and pays homage to Diana, the protector goddess of forests and animals – evokes the birth and spirit of the Wunderkammer, the original rooms in vogue between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, collections of relics, unusual objects, and rarities, such as artifacts, stones, corals, shells, and fossils. Not by chance, in some of the showcases of the Secret Apartments Doria Pamphilj, there are real mirabilia, such as rhinoceros horns and other rarities, objects collected by the Jesuit Camillo Pamphilj, nephew of Pope Innocent X, in the same years (mid-seventeenth century) when the wunderkammer of the Jesuit father Athanasius Kircher arose at the nearby Roman College.