In 1738 Charles of Bourbon decided to build on Capodimonte hill a rest-home for the hunting, upon a plan by Antonio Medrano, and it was completed a century later. From 1758 to 1806, the historical and artistic cores of the Farnese collection, which Carlo di Borbone had inherited from his mother Elisabetta, and from the Roman palace of the family were placed in the Neapolitan palace. During the French decade from 1806 to 1815, the Reggia became a residence. The rooms of the Palazzo were furnished to accommodate the new sovereigns, and all the art works and the antiques were brought to the Palazzo degli Studi. At the end of the 18th Century, a true Gallery of Modern Art, made up of paintings and sculptures by living Neapolitan artists, was created in some halls of the palace. In 1920, the palace passed from the Crown to

the State property, and, in 1957, the Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte opened to the public.

The Museo di Capodimonte is one of the most important Italian museums; its art collection is made by the Farnese and Borbone collections. The Farnese collection was initiated by Alessandro Farnese (later Pope Paul III), and it can be divided in 2 branches: the Roman collection (that includes works by Raffaello, Sebastiano Del Piombo, Tiziano, El Greco, the Carracci brothers and Botticelli) and the Parmesan collection (important works by emilian and flemish painters).The Farnese collection was inherited by Charles of Bourbon, and it was enriched in the course of two centuries of important acquisitions in the Bourbon age, forming what now is named the Borbone collection.
The museum preserves also a series of paintings coming from Neapolitan churches, among them two Caravaggio masterpieces.
In the rooms of the museum one can admire paintings from the Ligurian - Provençal school, from Tuscany and Verona of the Fifteenth century, from the Emilia and Veneto schools of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries; works by mannerists and Flemishes of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries and a rich collection of neapolitan school of Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries.
At the second floor of the museum is located the collection of contemporary art. These works of art are praiseworthy because they are emblematic of the production of famous artists, who worked in the last decades artistic movements.

The collection parmense
With the duke Ranuccio I the branch parmense of the collection acquires great thickness. The inventory of his good, compiled in 1587, it lists about forty pictures, for him more than school parmense among which the Galeazzo Sanvitale of the Parmigianino and the Zingarella of the Correggio. A decisive increase happens with the requisitions of the good of the rebellious vassals (1611), when they reach in the harvests of family paintings of Giulio Romano, of the Correggio, and of Bruegel.Mentre continues the dispossession of the Roman collection, in the building of the Garden in Parma, recently, restore a considerable patrimony of art of extreme importance meets.
In the last decade of the century, Ranuccio II (1646-1694) it matures the idea to move the best pieces of this harvest to a " Gallery " conceived in the sixteenth-century Building of the Pilotta to Parma, where they find setup 329 paintings. The successors of Ranuccio II, Francis (1694-1727) and Anthony (1727-1731), they increase the harvests with a series of acquisitions effected on the territory of the Dukedom. Big part of this material, constituted from over 170 paintings, it meets in the apartment of the Pictures, other nucleus expositive, distributed in the six rooms. Among the paintings, a lot of cloths of clear ecclesiastical provenieneza. The last duke of Parma, Anthony, dies in 1731.
Charles of Borbone happens him, child of Phillip V king of Spain and Elizabeth Farnese. From mother it inherits, besides the title, the immense artistic patrimony of family. Entered to Naples 1734, it prepares the transfer of all the harvests of family preserved in the buildings of the Dukedom in Parma and Piacenza in the capital of his new Kingdom.

The collection Borbone
With the patrimony of art inherited by the Farneses it doesn't exhaust the activity collezionistica of Charles of Borbone, of child Ferdinando IV, and of their descendants. A collezionismo that feeds according to different formulas: or with a relationship of direct committenza to painters, at least to the origin of prevalence non Neapolitan, which the assignment is asked for to furnish (with views, landscapes, representations of customs and popular life, as well as portraits and commemorative images of the ruling monarchy) the most important real sites, among which the Palace of Capodimonte; or feeding, above all after the transfer of all the harvests of art and antiquity in the Real Museum Borbonico, the acquisition of works of the past, to integrate how much it was already possessed for hereditary right by the family Farnese. To Capodimonte, the collections are increased entrusting to painters, of preference non Neapolitan, the commemorative images of the dynasty. In the years of Charles (1734-1759) and in those of Ferdinando they work for the Court artists as Giovanni Paul Pannini, Francis Liani, Raphael Mengs, Philipp Hackert, Angelika Kauffmann and Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun.
Besides recovering in Rome the loot of art plundered by French in the Palace of Capodimonte, during the 1799 convulsive stories, the Borbones have the opportunity of acquiring a discreet number of important paintings, among which the "Atalanta and Ippomene" of Guido Reni and the "Landscape with the nymph Egeria" of Lorrain. You send to Naples, these works find setup, among 1801 and 1805, in the Gallery of the Building of the Prince of Francavilla to Chiaia.
During the French decade, you gather all the collections of art and antiquity in the Building of the Studies, the greatest increases are had following the expropriations of the patrimony of churches and suppressed convents with prevalence of works of artists of southern school.
In 1814 it sets out the negotiation, defined then in 1817, for the acquisition of Cardinal Stefano Borgia's articulated collections (the so-called Museum of Velletri). With this acquisition they enter the collections borboniche objects of oriental and western art, archaeological manufactured articles and works medioevali and modern, as the famous Sant'Eufemia of the Mantegna.
From the second Restoration borbonica up to the continuous unity, the increase of the harvests, with a series of acquisitions of single works, for him more than Neapolitan or Flemish artists, and of whole harvests. Worthy of it notices the acquisition in the 1842 of the collection of Domenico Barbaja, entrepreneur of the Theater of St. Charles, from which it arrives, among the others, the Sacred Conversation of Palm the Old one.

To the 1799 date the Gallery of Capodimonte counts well 1783 paintings. To the native nucleus of origin Farneses were assistant, besides paintings of court, also a consistent number of works of Neapolitan artists, reached to Capodimonte, probably through donations or acquisitions.
After the French decade, destined the palace to exclusive use of residence of the court, and you move all the harvests of art to the Real Museo, then Real Museum Borbonico, him it proceeds to Capodimonte as in other residences borboniche, to the confiscation of contemporary works of art, with prominent function of I furnish, deriving both from gifts offered to the sovereign, and from tests performed by young retired artists to Rome, both still from acquisitions operated by the same Short borbonica during the periodic exposures of the Real Istituto of Belle Arti. These acquisitions will go to meet in the Gallery of Modern art that Annibale Sacco, Manager of the Real House Savoia, will found in the Building of Capodimonte among 1864 and 1884.
With the unity of Italy the collections of art medioevale and modern of the ancient Kingdom of the two Sicilies, I am of made uniforms in two stumps and separately you administer.
On one side the Palace of Capodimonte, destined Savoia to residence of House, where him went constituting to work of the administrator of the Real Casa, Annibale Sacco, a real Museum constituted by the whole furnishing (weapons, biscuits, porcelains, tapestries) coming from the dismesses it holds up borboniche, and from a Gallery of Modern art, formed by works of artists
living, of prevalence napoletani. 
On the other side the National Museum, ex Real Museum Borbonico, to the addictions of the Office of the public education, where the harvests are increased promoting acquisitions and donations. The transfer of all the collections of art medioevale and modern in the Museum and National Galleries of Capodimonte it restores of fact the unity of the harvests. After the unity the collections farnesiane and Borboniche acquired to the Italian state are subsequently increased, favoring donations as that of the
tied up of Avalos, and proceeding to a prudent politics of acquisitions, even though reduced to the main point to privilege the quality rather than the quantity.
With this optics that you/they are acquired for the Pinacoteca in Naples, in 1901, the famous Crocefissione of Masaccio and, in 1903, the splendid one "Luca's Pacioli Portrait", attributed Barbaric de' to Jacopo.
While it is being recorded in 1927 the immission of the "St. Ludovico of Tolosa", masterpiece of Simone Martini coming from the church of St. Lawrence, sets out also a systematic process of dispossession of the harvests, withdrawing works destined abroad to furnish institutional centers and of representation of the new capital of the Kingdom of Italy and the Italian delegations or to decorate churches, offices and Neapolitan barrackses. In 1926 they are transferred in Parma 138 painted farnesiani as reimbursement of the presumed " usurpations " operated by Charles of Borbone two centuries before.
More definite and substantial increases happened after the second world conflict when it was realized the project of Bruno Molajoli to create the Museum and National Galleries of Capodimonte. In the 1862 Alfonso of Avalos, last exponent of the branch of Vast, Pescara, Francavilla, Sow and Montesarchio, leave his harvest to the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Naples. Legacy contested by the heirs, for many years object of a judicial controversy, concluded him in 1882 with the title provisional transfer of the collection in the National Museum in Naples, to the epoch center of the Pinacoteca.

Piece esteemed of the harvest is the series of Five hundred Flemish manufacture seven tapestries, performed on cardboards of Bernard van Orley, preserved to the Louvre. They represent episodes of the "Battle in Pavia" of 1525, with the imperial troops of Charles V, commanded by Ferrante of Avalos, victorious on the French army of Francis I.
The rest of the donation of Avalos includes paintings, embroideries, miniatures, presses, weapons; a non homogeneous whole for quality neither for orientation of taste, that spaces from the modest Flemish landscapes and from the cloths of private devotion, to the works of great Neapolitan seicentisti (Ribera, Pacecco, Vaccaro, Jordan), up to the dead natures of Recco, Ruoppolo and Abraham Brueghel besides the usual collection of the portraits of family. With the end of the second world conflict it sets out a program of general redefinition of the patrimony Neapolitan museale, mainly hinged on the ambitious project of Bruno Molajoli to transfer the Pinacoteca with all the collections of art medioevale and modern from the center of the National Museum to the building of Capodimonte in use up to 1926 to the Real Casa of Savoia. Inaugurated the new Museum in 1957, already in that year they are introduced in the collections you square of Bernard Cavallino given by Joseph Cenzato and an eight hundred paintings hundred coming from the harvests of Alfonso Marino. The year later Mario De Ciccio gives over 1300 works, for the more objects of applied art, to a large extent porcelains and maioliche, picked in over fifty years of activity antiquariale and of impassioned, competent collezionismo. In 1960 it comes transferred to Capodimonte, to title of deposit, the rich harvest of the Bench in Naples, articulated in the two principal nucleuses of had painted since Five hundred to the Seven hundred one, with the presence of some of the greatest southern artists (Andrew from Salerno, Equine, Guarino, De Mura, Solimena), and of works of the eight hundred Neapolitan.
Among the numerous acquisitions happened subsequently by to signal that coming from the donation, of 1971, of Angel and Mario Astarita composed from more than four hundred oils, water-colors and sketches of Giacinto Gigante and the School of Posillipo. To title of deposit cautelativos are also presents in the harvests of Capodimonte the Scourging of Caravaggio and the "Annunciazione" of Titian both coming from the church of St. Domenico Maggiore.

Visiting time: Tuesdays to Sundays   8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
                      Closed on Mondays
Closure: December 25th and January 1st

Access:  Euro € 8,00

Back --- Forward

We wait you and Good Fun with ALENAPOLI TOUR
Office: +39 081.283247 - Mobile: +39 349.5307545