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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Boy with fruit basket, oil on canvas Opening hours, admission, location, guided tours, Café, Shop, ...

Still World - Italian Still Life  6th December 2002 - 9th March 2003 Strawberries, cherries, grapes and melons are heaped up in abundance; bunches of flowers, posies and garlands celebrate the beauty of Mediterranean culture. Nevertheless, even in the most luxuriant splendour, a 'memento mori' lies concealed, reflecting its morbid charm. 'Still World - Italian Still Life', with masterpieces by Arcimboldo, Caravaggio, Baschenis, Porpora, Recco, the anonymous masters of Hartford, Acquavella or the mysterious Pensionante dei Saraceni, shows a facet of Italian painting which for many years has been unjustly neglected. Nearly forty years since the last big exhibition of Italian still life (in Naples in 1964), the exhibition looks at the various cultural centres in Italy, from Lombardy through Tuscany to Rome and Naples, and presents the subdivisions within this extremely rich genre. It affords us a new view of the magnificence of Italian Baroque, at the same time demonstrating the great difference between the Italian still life on the one hand, and on the other, the French or Dutch paintings in this genre. Many of the 200 or so works from three centuries of Italian painting are to be publicized and shown for the first time in an exhibition; these are new discoveries made by the curator of the project, Prof. Mina Gregori of Florence... more.