The Spanish in Naples. The Southern Renaissance - Series of lectures at the Instituto Cervantes in Naples

April 20 – June 15 – June 22 at 17:30 pm

On the occasion of the exhibition “The Spanish in Naples. The Southern Renaissance”, on display at the Capodimonte Museum until June 25, 2023, the Instituto Cervantes of Naples presents a series of conferences to delve deeper into the contents of the exhibition and the very high quality of the works on display. Three meetings with international experts, free of charge, upon reservation, scheduled from April 20 to June 22 at the Neapolitan headquarters of the Cervantes Institute, in via Chiatamone 6G.

Paths and interweavings of the exhibition, between painting and sculpture, is the theme of the first meeting scheduled for April 20 at 17.30:XNUMX p.m., dedicated to the work of Spanish artists in Italy in the early XNUMXth century. The protagonists of the event that inaugurates this cycle will be Manuel Arias, head of the Sculpture Department of the Museo Nacional del Prado and the curators of the exhibition Riccardo Naldi – professor of History of Modern Art at the University L'Orientale of Naples – and Andrea Zezza, professor of History of Modern Art at the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”.

Introduced by the director of the Instituto Cervantes in Naples, Ana Navarro Ortega, the three speakers will talk about the works of Spanish artists in the lesser-known thirty years of Neapolitan art (around 1503-1532). The innovations introduced by the great masters of the Renaissance such as Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo, received and reinterpreted by Spanish artists in the Naples of those years. The exhibition, in fact, offers a wide range of works by artists such as Pedro Fernández, Bartolomé Ordóñez, Diego de Siloe, Pedro Machuca, Alonso Berruguete, who became the protagonists of the exceptional artistic season of Naples in the early sixteenth century.

The conference series will continue in June with two more meetings: on the 15th, “Spanish artists in the collections of the Capodimonte Museum: provenance, acquisition, musealization”, with art historians Patrizia Piscitello and Alessandra Rullo and on the 22nd with the last meeting entitled “From Corona to Viceroyalty: musicians and mourning for Aragonese Naples in the first decades of Spanish Naples”, with musicologist Dinko Fabris.

The exhibition “The Spanish in Naples. The Southern Renaissance” is organized in partnership with the Museo Nacional Prado in Madrid, in collaboration with the Embassy of Spain in Italy and the Italian Embassy in Madrid, with the Ministry of the Interior-FEC Fondo Edifici di Culto and the Curia of Naples, and is financed thanks to the project POC Capodimonte. Le strade dell’arte della Regione Campania, and is sponsored by the Municipality of Naples.

For info and contacts: cultnap@cervantes.es – tel. 08119563311

THE PROTAGONISTS OF THE FIRST MEETING:

Manuel Arias holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Valladolid. In 1992, he joined the Faculty of Museum Conservators and served as deputy director of the National Sculpture Museum of Valladolid until June 2021, when he joined the Prado Museum. His research focuses on the use of sources and the diffusion of models in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, with works studying sculptors such as Juan de Juni Gaspar Becerra and Alonso Berruguete. He is also active in the fields of collecting and patronage. He is an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Valladolid.

Andrea Zezza teaches modern art history at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli. His research focuses primarily on Renaissance art in Southern Italy. His edited books include a monograph on the Sienese painter Marco Pino (2003), the annotated edition of Bernardo de Dominici's Lives of Neapolitan Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, the volume Arts and Letters in Naples between the 16th and 17th Centuries: Studies on Matteo di Capua, Prince of Conca (2021), and the exhibitions Raffaello a Capodimonte. The Artist's Workshop (with A. Cerasuolo and M. Cardinali, 2021) and Otro Renacimiento. Spanish Artists in Naples at the Beginning of the 16th Century at the Prado Museum (with R. Naldi, 2022–23).

Riccardo Naldi teaches History of Modern Art at the University of Naples "L'Orientale." His primary field of study is figurative art in Naples and Southern Italy, focusing on its relationships with Italy and Europe and the connections between artworks and their social and cultural contexts. His research has been accompanied by collaboration with art conservation bodies, promoting initiatives to raise public awareness of conservation issues. Among other works, he has published a series of volumes on 16th-century Neapolitan sculpture and its relationships with Tuscany and Spain.

Topics