Cathy's Art Diary

Charming installation at Museo Archaeologico Nationale de Napoli of works by Manoli Valdès. The works were life sized sculptures based on the Spanish Infanta in Las Meninas by Velazquez. Picasso was also influenced by the painting and did a series of works riffing on it so this complimented another exhibition about him in the museum. They looked beautiful in the space but would have had more effect if there had been less information boards in the impressive space, the Meridian Hall, to detract from them. I loved this quote in the explanation “Does Valdés cite these "old masters" as a reference or a memo, or does he regard them as a battlefield for his own pictorial exploration?”. What an interesting idea! Again there is nothing on the museum’s website about this show despite lots of advertising of it within the building. Closes 6 January 2024    

Confusing exhibition at the Museo Archaeologico Nationale de Napoli of photographs by Giancatlo De Luca. I say confusing as the information boards were only in Italian, which I don’t speak or read. I can’t find anything about it on their website either. The haunting works were of the derelict II Real Albergo dei Poveri, a former hospital, which the museum plans to open as an extension for the collection and were shown in one of the galleries of Roman statues from the Farnese Collection. The works were beautifully atmospheric and it would have been good to know more about them and the project. I love the museum so I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for developments. Closes 11 December 2023    

Intriguing exhibition at the Museo Archaeologico Nationale de Napoli looking at how Picasso was influenced by classical art. Picasso made two trips to Naples in 1917 and was Influenced by his trips to this museum and in particular the Farnese Hercules and Bull as well as frescos from Pompeii.   The exhibition was in the room where the two sculptures are based and cleverly wove the narrative around them. The main works by Picasso used to illustrate the influence was the Vollard Suite of prints from the 1930s and I was interested to see that they used the set from the British Museum. It was a nice touch to include a display on what the museum would have looked like in 1917. Closed 2 October 2023  

Interesting exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology in Naples looking at sundials found at Pompeii. These were not particularly beautiful objects but they had been examined scientifically and a fascinating video showed you how a sundial could tell the time throughout the year. It showed how daylight was divided into 12 but each of those divisions of 12 was a different length depending on the time of year. It had been discovered that some must have been ornamental and brought from other places as they would not calibrated to work in Pompeii. There was one made specifically made for Pompeii. I also loved one from the bath house which had been used to regulate sessions at the complex. It was nice touch to display the Farnese Atlas, a Roman copy of a Greek work showing Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders, at the centre of the room. It shows a high level of astronomical knowledge and records discoveries made in the same period that it was made. 

Fascinating exhibition at the Archaeological Museum in Naples looking at how the news and information about the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii were recorded and circulated from their discovery to the invention of photography. Having been to Pompeii two days before we did this exhibition in filled in the gaps between the then of what we saw and the now of us experiencing it. I’d also done a course last year on classicism and this illuminated a lot of the points made on it about the re-emergence of classical style in art and architecture when these cities were discovered. I loved seeing the notebooks of the engineers who discovered Herculaneum when preparing a site to build a royal villa. They included Jakob Weber’s survey of the Villa of the Papyri. Some of his notes are the only record we have of sites as in digging them they were destroyed. They also had an early notebook showing the finds shown alongside the finds themselves and Francois de Paule’s first overall ...