The Palace of Justice in Naples opens its doors to art: 12 masterpieces of the Italian Baroque will be exhibited to reflect on the meaning of justice and on the value of culture and beauty. The exhibition event, organized by the Meeting del Mare Crea Foundation, in collaboration with the Ordinary Court of Naples and the Criminal Chamber of Naples and curated by Don Gianni Citro and Nicola Graziano, entitled ‘justice and beauty – dramaturgy of Law in Baroque Painting’ it will be visible from 15 February to 15 March 2023 in the covered square of the business center in Naples. The inauguration is scheduled for the same Wednesday 15 February in the Piazza Coperta of the Palace of Justice in Naples.
The canvases of Carlo Sellitto to those of Filippo Vitale, from Pietro Novelli to Agostino Beltrano, from Giuseppe Piscopo to Simone Cantarini will therefore give life, together with those of Johann Carl Loth, Luca Giordano, Giovanni Battista Beinaschi and Giuseppe Bonito to an exhibition that will together Justice and Beauty. An unusual and certainly ‘difficult’ initiative as the curator, Don Gianni Citro explains: “transporting 12 canvases from the 17th century into the gloomy and busy habitat of a courthouse is undoubtedly an operation outside the canons, beyond the difficult details of the logistics. It’s an inconvenient and somehow even counterproductive initiative,” he says.
“The purpose of the exhibition is to bring the seed of a cultural revolution to the covered square of the Court of Naples, to take root in the human soul, through the astonished gaze of those who suddenly see prestigious ancient paintings by the great masters of the European Baroque appear. Twelve paintings, of rare beauty and intensity, which through key words exemplify the color spectrum of Justice: Cruelty and Crime, Courage and Struggle, Deceit and Innocence, Hope and Judgement, Care and Vision, Peace and Beauty are a sort of subtitle of wonderful works that are also revealed in the daily attitude of the activity that takes place in the spaces of the Neapolitan Palace of Justice”, adds Graziano co-curator of the event.
A location therefore “far from casual”, adds Graziano even if decidedly atypical, as noted by the president of the Court of Naples, Elisabetta Garzo. “I imagine the unusual amazement, and perhaps the enthusiasm, of Magistrates, Lawyers, Clerks , Officials, Police Forces and parties to the most varied civil and criminal proceedings go to the Court in order to be able to experience, in the confusion that animates the judicial offices every day, the wonder that inevitably generates, in the minds of human beings, the vision of prestigious paintings by great masters of the European Baroque depicting sacred and/or allegorical subjects, in which the theme of Justice in art is combined with the paradigm of Beauty”.
The Meeting del Mare Foundation C.r.e.a., on the other hand, is not new to daring and provocative enterprises. “The art exhibitions in assets confiscated from organized crime, in shopping malls, in historical archives, have traced a path of recomposition between art and the spaces that host it, in order to generate amazement where expectations are weak and where the terrain is apparently arid. Breaking into the justice administration with the project of an exhibition of ancient paintings is a destabilizing action and leads to triggering a dense web of curious solicitations and sudden desires”, explain the organizers.