The royal palace, which once served as a hunting lodge for Naples’s Bourbon monarchs, is now one of the largest museums in Italy, as well as one of the most important picture galleries in Europe in terms of both number and quality of works. Capodimonte is one of the few museums in Italy whose collection covers all schools of Italian painting. It also houses the second largest department of drawings (after the Uffizi) and a remarkable collection of porcelain. Currently under renovation, it has lent some of its most important paintings and drawings to the Louvre until January 2024.

The display features 33 paintings considered some of the greatest Italian masterpieces. They resonate with the Louvre’s collection of Italian paintings and include masterpieces by Masaccio, Bellini, Titian, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, El Greco, Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni and by the Neapolitan school, characterized by the dramatic and expressive style of artists such as Jusepe de Ribera, Francesco Guarino and Mattia Preti. On view also are remarkable peraparatory drawings by Raphael, Michelangelo and Giulio Romano, first collected by the humanist scholar Fulvio Orsini, librarian to the ‘Great Cardinal’ Alessandro Farnese.

This is an extraordinary chance to see the Capodimonte masterpieces in an entirely new context.