ROME EXHIBITIONS AT CAPITOLINI MUSEUMS
- Reviews of all major exhibitions taking place in the past -

Running Exhibition from December 7th 2004 to February 27th 2005

"Mario Mafai. A calm fever of colours"
PALAZZO VENEZIA, ROMA

The exhibition Imago Urbis Romae has been opened in the suggestive rooms of Palazzo dei Conservatori. It has been promoted by Comune of Rome, Assessorato alle Politiche Culturali - Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali and the curator is Cesare De Seta. Approximately a hundred works are on display, oil paintings, engravings, drawings and water-colours which all together represent the monument grandeur of Rome. The exhibition consists of six sections : Roma Moderna, i Grandi Panorami , le Vedute, Roma Antica, il Tevere e le sue sponde, S. Pietro and il Vaticano. The fist section, dedicated to the theme Roma Moderna, opens with two landscape paintings by Giovanni Paolo Panini, Piazza di Monte Cavallo and Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore, exceptionally granted by the Quirinale, and it ends with the ''analytic vedutism'' of Gaspar van Wittel, whose work demonstrates his topographic accuracy, his strong realism representing urban landscapes and architectures like those depicted in the landscape view of Piazza e Palazzo di Monte Cavallo e Piazza del Popolo. Among these ''landscape views'' can be admired works by Israel Silvestre, Giuseppe Vasi, Julius Eugen Ruhl, Wilhem Noak, Alfred Guesdon. Important works coming from abroad are present in the section "Grandi Panorami" like the extraordinary nine sheet series by Louis-François Cassas belonging to the Bibliothèque Mazarine, for the first time in Italy, the landscape view by Claude Lorrain illustrating Trinità dei Monti from the London National Gallery, and the gorgeous Panorama da Monte Mario by Giovan Battista Lusieri from Wien Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der Bildenden Künste. "Roma Antica" is dedicated to the various roman monuments : Fori, Colosseo, Pantheon, Basilica di Massenzio painted by Wilhelm Van Nieulandt, Canaletto belonging to Szépmüvészeti Múzeum in Budapest, Jan Frans Van Bloemen, Bernardo Bellotto, Abraham Louis Ducros from Goethe-Museum in Düsseldorf, François Marius Granet from Musée Granet di Aix-en-Provence and Ippolito Caffi. The last section ''Tevere e le sue sponde'' is dominated by an original and a little eccentric painting coming from Thyssen-Bornemisza Madrid Museum : Veduta di Roma con porto fluviale e Castel Sant'Angelo (the landscape view of Rome with its fluvial harbour and Castel Sant'Angelo), signed by IDM, belonging to the followers of Joss de Momper. In the section "San Pietro e il Vaticano" we can admire two important works that are Piazza San Pietro by Panini and Le Mura Vaticane by Thomas Jones.