Fort Pietro Leopoldo I – Forte dei Marmi
March 27, 2026 – September 27, 2026
Forte Pietro Leopoldo I – Forte dei Marmi
March 27, 2026 – September 27, 2026
The works of the De Vito Foundation in Forte dei Marmi for a major exhibition dedicated to 17th-century Neapolitan art.
The renovated spaces of Forte Pietro Leopoldo I (Piazza G. Garibaldi 9A, Forte dei Marmi, Lucca) will host, from March 27 to September 27, 2026, the exhibition promoted by the Municipality of Forte dei Marmi and by the Villa Bertelli Foundation, in collaboration with the Giuseppe and Margaret De Vito Foundation for the History of Modern Art in Naples.
Entitled Painting in Naples after Caravaggio. The Seventeenth Century in the De Vito Foundation Collection, the exhibition is curated by Nadia Bastogi, an art historian specializing in seventeenth-century painting and scientific director of the De Vito Foundation.
Following its success at the French museums Magnin in Dijon and Granet in Aix-en-Provence and at the Diocesan Museum of Naples, a significant corpus of paintings from the De Vito Foundation is being presented in Tuscany for the first time. Only a limited number of the Foundation’s works had, in fact, been exhibited in the exhibition After Caravaggio, held in Prato in 2019 and closed early due to the pandemic.
The exhibition does not intend to offer a comprehensive overview of seventeenth-century Naples, but rather to retrace the evolution of Neapolitan painting after the turning point brought about by the presence in Naples of Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio between 1606 and 1607 and between 1609 and 1610, through the paintings collected by Giuseppe de Vito, a collector and scholar of this artistic period.
With the presentation of 39 exemplary paintings by the major protagonists of the “golden age,” a chronological sequence is traced that ranges from the first interpreters of Caravaggio’s naturalism to other artists who, subsequently, They showed themselves ready to rework its language in forms more oriented towards classicism and baroque.
A tale of seventeenth-century Naples seen through the lens of the collector, whose unique figure can be explored by visitors, including through the exhibition of unpublished documents and other materials.
Sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, the Tuscany Region, and the Province of Lucca, with the collaboration of the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the provinces of Lucca and Massa Carrara, the exhibition is organized with the support of Mutua BVLG, Fondazione Banca del Monte di Lucca, and Live Emotion Group Ltd.
