Capodimonte Museum - Naples

January 9, 2016


The three-storey museum is organized, not chronologically, but by collections: between them the Borgia, Farnese and Bourbon rulers amassed some superb Renaissance and Flemish works. On the first floor there are fine portraits of the Farnese pope, Paul III, by Titian, and, in the Borgia collection, an elegant Madonna and Child with Angels by Botticelli, Lippi's soft, sensitive Annunciation, and other works by Renaissance masters – Bellini's impressively coloured and composed Transfiguration, Giulio Romano's dark and powerful Madonna of the Cat and Marcello Venusti's small-scale 1549 copy of Michelangelo's Last Judgement – probably the only chance you'll get to see the painting this close up.

On the second floor there are some outstanding Italian paintings from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of which the most famous is the St Louis of Anjou by Simone Martini, a fascinating Gothic painting glowing with gold leaf. An overt work of propaganda, it depicts an enthroned Louis crowning Robert of Anjou and thereby legitimizing his rule. Elsewhere there's a delicate Annunciation by Titian from San Domenico Maggiore – and the long series of rooms finishes off in fine style with one of Caravaggio's best-known works, The Flagellation.

The Capodimonte Porcelain Factory was next to the Palace.

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Michael the archangel

Flaggelation of Christ by Caravaggio

Cain slew Able (notice Cain escaping in the background)

Abraham sacrificing Isaac

David and Goliath (notice the stone in the forehead)

Golden Calf

Each color is a different kind of marble