National Museum and Galleries of Capodimonte

museum, Naples, Italy
Also known as: Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte
Quick Facts
Italian:
Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte
Date:
1738 - present
Areas Of Involvement:
art

National Museum and Galleries of Capodimonte, art museum in Naples housed in the Palazzo of Capodimonte (begun 1738).

(Read Sister Wendy’s Britannica essay on art appreciation.)

Charles VII, the Bourbon king of Naples and later Charles III of Spain, who set out to purchase the land at Capodimonte in 1734, initially planned to use the palazzo as a hunting lodge and royal residence. By 1755 the king had decided to apportion part of the royal apartments as a library and museum. From 1758 to 1806, the works from the Farnese collection (an immense patrimony that Charles had inherited from his mother, Isabella [Elisabetta] Farnese of Parma) were transported from Farnese estates in Parma and Piacenza and the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. The latter collection had been started by Alessandro Farnese (later Pope Paul III).

(Read Glenn Lowry’s Britannica essay on "Art Museums & Their Digital Future.")

Over the centuries the collection was enlarged by various means, and by the turn of the 19th century it included some 1,780 works. For a time the Palazzo of Capodimonte served largely as a residence and the art was transferred elsewhere. The palace was designated as a museum site in 1950, and the large collection, which includes many outstanding Flemish and Italian pieces, was opened to the public in 1957.

As well as presenting a representative survey of Italian painting from the 13th through the 17th century, the museum maintains collections of arms, armour, gold- and silverwork, and examples of other decorative arts, including Capodimonte porcelain. Its three major divisions are the Museum, the 19th Century Gallery, and the National Gallery. Its small contemporary art collection includes works by Alberto Burri, Sigmar Polke, and Andy Warhol.

Also spelled:
maiolica

majolica, tin-glazed earthenware produced from the 15th century at such Italian centres as Faenza, Deruta, Urbino, Orvieto, Gubbio, Florence, and Savona. Tin-glazed earthenware—also made in other countries, where it is called faience or delft—was introduced into Italy from Moorish Spain by way of the island of Majorca, or Maiolica, whence it derived the name by which it was known in Italy.

The majolica painter’s palette was usually restricted to five colours: cobalt blue, antimony yellow, iron red, copper green, and manganese purple; the purple and blue were used, at various periods, mainly for outline. A white tin enamel was used also for highlights or alone on the white tin glaze in what was called bianco sopra bianco, “white on white.”

The shapes most often employed were the albarello, or drug jar, of Middle East origin; a type of ewer evidently derived from the Greek oinochoe; and, above all, the piatta da pompa, or show dish, in the istoriato, an Italian narrative style from the early 16th century that uses the pottery body solely as support for a purely pictorial effect. Although violating aesthetic rules in their subordination of shape to decoration, such wares remain works of great skill, as well as beauty.

Hohokam pottery
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This article was most recently revised and updated by Virginia Gorlinski.