New Kimbell Art Museum exhibit brings a glimpse of Italy to Fort Worth

Suppose you wanted to see some breathtaking Italian masterpieces, like a huge Caravaggio, but you didn’t have the time or money to go visit a museum in Italy.

Well the Kimbell has brought an incredible selection of paintings from a museum in Naples, including a huge Caravaggio, to Fort Worth. It’s almost like they brought an Italian museum to North Texas, saving you thousands of dollars and some long flights.

On view now through June 14, Kimbell Art Museum’s new exhibit, “Flesh and Blood,” features forty Italian masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. The show includes Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings from Caravaggio, Titian, Raphael, El Greco, Annibale Carracci, Artemisia Gentileschi, Jusepe de Ribera, and Luca Giordano.

Organized by the Capodimonte Museum, the Kimbell, and the Seattle Art Museum where it was first shown minus the Caravaggio, this is also the first show with the Kimbell’s new curator of European Art, Guillaume Kientz. His El Greco retrospective opened at the Grand Palais in Paris last year and will be on view at the Art Institute of Chicago next month.

With paintings that are tremendous in scale and stature, it is no exaggeration to say this show is breathtaking. Arranged in an open installation, iconic paintings like Parmigianino’s “Antea,” Titian’s “Danae,” and Annibale Carracci’s “Pietà” might be the first works you glance at walking into the gallery.

“This is without question one of the greatest assemblages of Italian painting ever seen in Texas,” said Kimbell director Eric M. Lee.

Titian’s 1543 portrait of “Pope Paul III Without A Cap” captures the powerful man who started the Capodimonte Museum’s Farnese Collection of art as an elderly man. This is in stark contrast to an earlier painting, “Portrait of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, Future Pope Paul III,” from the Pope’s official painter, Raphael.

“It’s a political image that says I’m very powerful because I managed to get the official painter of the Pope and I am very close to the Pope,” Kientz said.

Another political image is an early painting by Parmigianino. “Lucretia” captures a noblewoman whose suicide led to the overthrow of the Roman Monarchy in 1509. Parmigianino’s “Antea,” on the other hand, is an intimate portrait of a woman that also highlights chic Renaissance fashion.

“It is a typical love gift that a lover would present to his or her lover,” Kientz said. “She is staring at us, right in the eyes. It was intended for a private context.”

Religious paintings include Giovanni Lanfranco depicting Mary Magdalene’s ascension to heaven and Annibale Carracci’s rendering of the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, “Pietà.”

Titian’s “Danae” is an essential Renaissance painting from a Venetian master. From Greek mythology, it depicts Danae, who was locked up by her father, King Acrisius. The king locked up his daughter to prevent her from having a son, but Zeus still found her and the two had a child, Perseus.

“We know that this painting was kept in a room concealed behind a curtain,” Kientz said, before suggesting that it was actually the painting of a mistress.

These paintings also capture the beauty and danger of Naples, and there are some strange ones. Agostino Carracci’s “Hairy Harry, Mad Peter, and Tiny Amon,” for instance, features a dwarf, a jester, and a man with hair all over his face, even his forehead. The trio are surrounded by two monkeys, two dogs, and a parrot.

“This painting is about the interest in diversity, curiosity, and wonder of nature,” Kientz said. “It is quite the humanistic spirit of the Renaissance.”

There is also a section dedicated to violence and seduction. Massimo Stanzione’s “Massacre of the Innocents” looks gorgeous at first glance, but closer inspection reveals screaming faces and the severed body parts of children along the bottom.

“Beauty for an artist is a tool to get people’s attention,” Kientz said.

In the back with several other large format Baroque paintings, Caravaggio’s “Flagellation of Christ” is the stunner here. Painted as an altarpiece in 1607, it captures the artist at the peak of his powers as a chiaroscuro master. After murdering a man, Caravaggio fled Rome and painted it for a church in Naples. The painting was just confirmed for this exhibit on February 6. (The Kimbell also owns an early Caravaggio painting, “The Cardsharps.”)

Stunningly realistic, the painting does a remarkable job of bringing a religious scene to life with classical movement. The dramatic contrast between light and dark is so intense that the figures almost appear to be on a stage in a beam of particularly soft light from heaven as a spotlight.

This story was originally published February 29, 2020 at 5:45 AM.