The Idea of Beauty. Baroque painting in Rome
More than forty paintings and drawings from the 17th and 18th centuries chronologically illustrate the development of this theme: from naturalism, which depicted unembellished reality often emphasized by dramatic light and shadow (Cecco del Caravaggio, Caroselli), through the High Baroque, characterized by decorativeness and dynamic forms (Cortona, Mola), and its rival Classicism with its calm, balanced compositions and idealized figures (Maratti, Calandrucci), to Rococo with its characteristic lightness and playfulness (Trevisani, Pesci). Thematically, the selection of exhibits focuses on religious, mythological, and historical subjects; landscape painting and genre painting are not represented.
The title of the exhibition, The Idea of Beauty, is based on a lecture given by the famous Italian art theorist and antiquarian Giovanni Pietro Bellori (1613–1696), entitled “The Idea of the Painter, Sculptor, and Architect,” which he delivered in 1664 at the Academy of St. Luke in Rome. The term “idea del Bello” has its origins in aesthetics and philosophy and follows a tradition dating back to ancient Greece. Bellori’s theory of Beauty is based on the belief that artists should not merely blindly imitate nature, but should idealize it – “purify” it of imperfections according to the idea of Beauty. According to him, true Beauty does not stem from random observation of reality, but from an inner ideal (idea) that the artist carries within himself. This ideal is eternal, universal, and harmonious. “Let’s simply imagine that, according to Bellori, nature is imperfect; only art based on the idea of Beauty can be perfect,” explains exhibition author Zdeněk Kazlepka. “That is why even the most beautiful woman in the world could not exist—Helen never sailed to Troy, but instead only her statue was transported there, for whose beauty a ten-year war was fought and for which famous Greek and Trojan heroes died.”
The exhibition in brief
- EXHIBITION: The Idea of Beauty
- TERM: 29 01 – 19 04 2026
- OPENING: 29 01 2026 v 18:30
- PLACE: Arcidiecézní muzeum Olomouc, Galerie
- AUTHOR AND CURATOR: Zdeněk Kazlepka
The selection of paintings and drawings is based on the actual possibilities of borrowing works of art, which are often part of permanent exhibitions in museums or tours of state castles and chateaux, and are therefore difficult for lenders to replace during the main visitor season. For this reason, the exhibition takes place in the winter and spring months, when institutions are willing to temporarily release them from their home exhibitions.
The exhibition will feature loans from public and private collections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. On display will be paintings from the Archdiocese of Olomouc (including Annibale Carracci, Latona and the Peasants), the Olomouc Museum of Art (Pier Francesco Mola, Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert), the National Gallery in Prague (including Carlo Maratti, Portrait of František Antonín Berka of Dubá; Giovanni Battista Salvi, known as Sassoferrato, Madonna Appearing to St. Francis of Paola), the Moravian Gallery in Brno (including Filippo Lauri, Venus and Satyr; Girolamo Pesci, Bathsheba), from the collections of Prague Castle (Carlo Saraceni, St. Sebastian), from the Silesian Regional Museum (Niccolò Renieri, Allegory of Wisdom), from the Museum in Bruntál (Volterrano, Holy Family), from the collection of Jiří Lobkowicz (Ludovico Mazzanti, Death of St. Francis Xavier), from the former Šternberk collection (Michele Desubleo?, Joseph and Potiphar), from a private collection in Prague (Carlo Maratti, Death of St. Francis Xavier; Francesco Guarino, St. Ursula) and also from the National Heritage Institute, the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava, the Bratislava City Gallery, the Slovak National Museum – Bojnice Museum, and the art collections of the Memorial of National Literature.
CATALOGue
The exhibition will be accompanied by a Czech-English catalog with a comparative study on the theme of “Baroque Painting in Rome” and individual catalog entries presenting interesting—and in some cases little-known—paintings of Italian provenance from the early 17th to the mid-18th century.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)