Napoli Ottocento Dal Sublime alla Materia

The volume accompanies the exhibition of the same name presented in Rome at the Scuderie del Quirinale from 27 March to 16 June 2024. “Napoli Ottocento” identifies and describes a long period that begun under the cosmopolitan aspiration of the Universal Italy of the Grand Tour, unfolded in the dialectic between aesthetics and new sciences, transforming Naples from the capital of the Enlightenment into an Italian scientific metropolis. The 19th century in Naples, the largest and richest in the entire peninsula, started from the philosophical sublime of the views of Vesuvius erupting, traversed the realism of painting en plein air and verismo, and led to the material experiments of the Italian avant-garde. A journey through a cosmopolitan school: from Voltaire to Wright of Derby, Pitloo, Fergola and Turner, from Jones to Gigante, from Palizzi to Cammarano, De Nittis and Morelli, from Michetti, Toma and Degas, Gemito and d’Orsi to Antonio Mancini’s experiments with matter, a prelude to the informal art of Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri and Salvatore Emblema.