Baroque palace and national art collection · 18th century · Rome

National Gallery of Ancient Art at Palazzo Corsini alla Lungara

Palazzo Corsini is a late-Baroque palace in the Trastevere district of Rome, on the Via della Lungara beside the Villa Farnesina. Built for the Corsini family between 1730 and 1740 to designs by Ferdinando Fuga, it now houses one of the two sites of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, the principal national collection of older paintings in Rome.

At a glance

Type: Baroque palace and national art gallery
Period: Built 1730–1740
Style: Late Baroque
Location: Via della Lungara, Trastevere, Rome, Italy

Overview

The Palazzo Corsini is a prominent late-Baroque palace in Rome, erected for the Corsini family between 1730 and 1740. It elaborated a prior building on the site, a 15th-century villa of the Riario family, following designs by Ferdinando Fuga. Today it hosts part of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica.

History

The site previously held a 15th-century villa belonging to the Riario family. When the Corsini family acquired the property in the 18th century, they commissioned the architect Ferdinando Fuga to remodel and enlarge it into a grand residence. The works were carried out between 1730 and 1740, producing the late-Baroque palace that survives today.

What you see

The palace stands on the Via della Lungara in Trastevere, beside the Renaissance Villa Farnesina. Its late-Baroque façade and interiors reflect the work of Ferdinando Fuga. The interior galleries now display paintings from the national collection, mostly dating from before 1800.

Cultural significance

Palazzo Corsini is one of the two seats of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, the principal national collection of older paintings in Rome. It preserves an important Baroque architectural ensemble in the historic Trastevere quarter.

Practical information

Located on Via della Lungara, Trastevere, Rome. For opening hours, tickets and current exhibitions, check the official website.

Getting there

The palace is in the Trastevere district on the west bank of the Tiber. It is reachable on foot from central Rome and served by city buses and tram lines crossing into Trastevere.

Sources & resources

The National Gallery of Ancient Art of Palazzo Corsini is an art museum in Rome, housed in the Palazzo Corsini alla Lungara, in the Trastevere district. The museum, part of the collection of the National Gallery of Ancient Art, preserves a nucleus of refined works, mostly of Italian and Flemish painting between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.



The collection, enriched thanks to Corsini bequests and donations starting from the eighteenth century, boasts a refined nucleus of paintings ranging between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, with a predominance of Italian Baroque painting (especially Roman, Bolognese and Neapolitan) and important examples of works of bamboccianti and landscape painters.



The first room of the gallery boasts a large number of large canvases from the 17th and 18th centuries, mostly with a landscape and religious subject. The next room houses a nucleus of the so-called &quot;primitive&quot; painters, among which the Triptych with Pentecost, Universal Judgment and Ascension by Beato Angelico, a rare fifteenth-century work present in the gallery since 1740. Renaissance art is represented by some works, including which the Adoration of the Shepherds, painted by Jacopo Bassano.



Baroque art is made up of an exceptional number of masterpieces, such as the San Sebastian curated by the angels (1602-1603), a Roman work by the painter Pieter Paul Rubens, the Madonna della Paglia, a canvas linked to the Italian stay of Antoon van Dyck, the Madonna and Child by Bartolom&eacute; Esteban Murillo and Saint John the Baptist by Caravaggio (1603). Next to him is the Madonna and Child, a fascinating work by Orazio Gentileschi, already attributed to Caravaggio himself.



In the room dedicated to the eighteenth century there is a vast nucleus of works by Carlo Maratta, such as the Madonna and Child, Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, Rebecca at the source and the Flight into Egypt, as well as the Triumph of Ovid by Nicolas Poussin. The following rooms offer exquisite examples of Emilian art (with works by Giovanni Lanfranco) and seventeenth-century Neapolitan painting. In the latter category, the works of Salvator Rosa should be mentioned, whose production is linked to the bloody Prometheus and the airy canvases depicting Battles and Landscapes. In the same room the grandiose Venus discovers dead Adonis is kept, a masterpiece by Jusepe de Ribera (1637) in which the clear colorism typical of Diego Vel&aacute;zquez predominates. Exemplary is also the canvas depicting Christ among the doctors, the work of Luca Giordano, a pupil of Ribera.

https://culturalheritageonline.com/places/national-gallery-of-ancient-art-of-palazzo-corsini-alla-lungara-l4318/

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National Gallery of Ancient Art of Palazzo Corsini alla Lungara