The Baroque Underworld - Vice and Poverty in Rome

The clandestine, shady world of the Italian capital is evoked in some 70 paintings; it is an unexplored aspect of the astonishing production of 17th century Roman artists ranging from Manfredi to Nicolas Régnier. The exhibition was presented at the Villa Medici in Rome in the autumn of 2014. For the Petit Palais, it has been bolstered by some new, prestigious loans. This Roman netherworld, in which vice, poverty and every kind of excess flourished, has never been presented in France before. Thanks to some exceptional loans from private collections and international museums (including the National Gallery, London; the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; the National Gallery of Ireland; the Louvre; the Galleria Borghese; the Palazzo Barberini; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), visitors will be treated to works by school of Caravaggio painters of the first order, and works by the Bamboccianti and the principal Italianate landscape painters. Work by painters from all over Europe will be displayed: French artists include Valentin de Boulogne, Simon Vouet, Nicolas Tournier, and Claude Lorrain; artists from Northern Europe include Pieter Van Laer, Gerrit van Honthorst, and Jan Miel; and from the South painters such as Bartolomeo Manfredi, Lanfranco, Salvator Rosa and Jusepe de Ribera. What they all have in common is an artistic production in which they preferred to depict a naturalistic vision of ordinary life in Rome, rather than a hymn of praise to idealised beauty.
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