The treasures of the Porcelain Gallery in the Royal Apartments, where a selection of Neapolitan and European manufactured porcelain from the Bourbon collections is exhibited. The most famous piece of the section is the artifact in gilded and embossed silver, lapis lazuli, enamel and carved rock crystals.
In rooms 35 and 36 they constitute the so-called Porcelain Gallery: composed of over three thousand pieces, of which, for reasons of space, only a small more representative part of the services of Italian and European manufactured porcelain is exhibited, in particular porcelain of Capodimonte, the Meissein of Sevres, with some pieces decorated with Naples, to Vienna and Berlin. All the works, except the Immaculate Conceptionpurchased in 1972, they come from the Bourbon collection; until 1860 these pieces were normally used, while later, starting from 1873, at the behest of Vittorio Emanuele III, a museum-building work began on the porcelains, edited by Annibale Sacco.
Room 35 displays the creations of the Real Fabbrica di Napoli, while room 36 displays the most important European manufactures: among the main works there is the Service of the Goose on whose dishes are painted views of Naples and its surroundings, while those no decorations are in storage, an altar set comprising six candelabra and a crucifix, a work by Giuseppe Gricci for the Royal chapel of Portici, a desk service, a chocolate service with a garland of flowers and then numerous vases, statues, risers and plates.
The De Ciccio collection is housed in rooms 38, 39, 40 and 41: it is a collection, ordered according to the original layout, of about one thousand three hundred pieces, mostly applied arts, including paintings and sculptures but also bronzes, ivories, majolica, porcelain and sometimes archaeological finds, donated to the National Museum of Capodimonte in 1958 by the collector Mario De Ciccio, who had collected them over the course of about fifty years of acquisitions between Naples, Palermo and various international markets.
Among the various works, the ceramics are in Hispanic-Moorish style, Renaissance majolica, including a star tile from the Persian manufacture in Rey, the porcelains from Meissen, Vienna and Ginori; among the statues those of a Madonna and Child of the school of Lorenzo Ghiberti, San Matteo, in bronze, attributed to Alessandro Vittoria, while among the paintings a panel by Marco del Buono and Apollonio by Giovanni, already decorated with a chest. And still vases, plates, cups, among which some Chinesefrom the K’ang Hsi and Chien Lung periods, Renaissance bronzes by Andrea Briosco, Alessandro Vittoria and Tiziano Aspetti, Murano glass and archaeological finds such as Attic vases from the 6th and 5th centuries BC, rhyta from the 4th century BC and Italic sculptures and Etruscan.
The setting will tell the story of Naples, capital of the Kingdom during the eighteenth century and beyond, from the years of Charles of Bourbon to those of Ferdinand II, like a fairy tale, with the succession of scenes of everyday life characterized by extreme aesthetic refinement and existential joy but which have as their background the passage of power, the changes in history, fashions and aesthetic tastes.
An exhibition with over 1000 objects, over 300 porcelain from the collections of the Royal Factories of Capodimonte and Naples, other European manufactures and original Chinese pieces, more than 150 costumes from the Teatro di San Carlo with prestigious brands (Ungaro, Odette Nicoletti, Giusi Giustino and others), musical instruments of the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory of Naples, paintings, works of art and furnishings.
Capodimonte National Museum
The National Museum of Capodimonte is a museum in Naples, Italy, located inside the eponymous palace in the Capodimonte area, which houses several ancient art galleries, one of contemporary art and an apartment historical.
It was officially opened as a museum in 1957, although the palace rooms have housed works of art since 1758. It predominantly preserves paintings, distributed mainly in the two main collections, the Farnese, which include some of the greatest names in Italian and international painting. such as Rafael, Tiziano, Parmigianino, Brueghel the Elder, El Greco, Ludovico Carracci or Guido Reni; and the Neapolitan Gallery, which is made up of works from churches in and around the city, transported to Capodimonte for security reasons after the suppression of religious orders, and features works by artists such as Simone Martini, Colantonio, Caravaggio, Ribera, Luca Giordano or Francesco Solimena. The contemporary art collection is also important, in which Vesuvius by Andy Warhol stands out.
The Capodimonte Museum boasts 47,000 works of art that form one of the largest and most complex collections of medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary art in the world. In 126 galleries spread across 151,000 square feet, works of the great artists are exhibited such as: Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Simone Martini, Giovanni Bellini, Colantonio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Jusepe de Ribera, Battistello, Luca Giordano, Mattia Preti, Francesco Solimena, the Carracci, Guido Reni, Lanfranco, Bruegel the Elder, and Van Dyck to name a few.
It all began with the Farnese Collection that Charles I of Bourbon, son of the King of Spain, inherited from his mother Elisabetta and took with him to Naples in 1735, with the desire to display it in this hilltop Palace. Construction of the Palace began in 1738, to function as a picture gallery and hunting lodge. Capodimonte is the only Italian museum that in addition to representing almost all the schools of early modern Italian art, can also boast works by contemporary artists such as Burri, Paolini, Bourgeois, Warhol, and Kiefer.
The Royal Park of Capodimonte, with its 300 acres and more than 400 plant species, is an unspoiled green space that overlooks the city and Gulf of Naples. Exotic species were planted here, including the first mandarin trees in Italy. It is the largest urban park in Italy, with roughly 1,500,000 visitors a year. Within the Royal Park you can admire the last baroque garden of sino-english design replete with rare oriental fragrances.
Majestically nestled within its Royal Park overlooking the Bay of Naples – Capodimonte offers a truly singular combination of artistic and natural beauty that is utterly unique throughout the world.