The autography of this painting has long been doubted, although there are other versions of the same subject made by Caravaggio in a rather similar way. We see a young St. John the Baptist without a beard, half-naked and covered in a red cloak, with the cross-shaped staff resting at his side, but without the traditional camel fur that appears in other versions. Caravaggio depicts a moment of rest during John's life of penance in the desert, but compared to traditional iconography the saint's attributes are almost marginalized: the bowl, with which John poured the water in the baptism of Jesus, is as if deprived of its role sacral, while the cross is barely visible, hidden by the edge of the painting. In this way Caravaggio has updated the representation of the young Baptist in the desert, giving greater immediacy to a theme that has often lent itself to interpretations in which the sacred and the profane are mixed.

Judith is the only female character to whom a book of the Old Testament is dedicated. The heroine, with a cunning stratagem, succeeds in saving her people from the siege of the Assyrian army, commanded by Holofernes. Pretending to want to betray the Jewish people, she is welcomed into the enemy camp. After a sumptuous banquet, he sneaks up to the general's bed, now overcome by the abuse of wine, and kills him with his own scimitar. While many artists had focused on the worst moment of the episode, the beheading of Holofernes, here Piazzetta depicts the moment immediately preceding it. Judith with one hand unties the lace that holds the scimitar tied and with the other pulls aside the curtain surrounding the bed. The scene thus takes on a strong theatrical flavor: the curtain-curtain opens, sheds the light on Judith, represented here as a sophisticated woman of rank, and reveals to the viewer's eyes a moment of suspense, marked by strong contrasts of light, in which the body of Holofernes already seems unmade and lifeless.

In Orazio Gentileschi's painting neither the Virgin nor the baby Jesus look towards the observer: everything remains as if held within the canvas and the essence of the work is played on the mutual exchange of glances and contacts between mother and child. We do not perceive that ritual solemnity that characterizes the depictions of the Virgin with the Child: if it were not for the golden border of the halo it might seem like a profane subject, a moment of family intimacy. This effect is also obtained thanks to the use of color: on a dull background, based on ocher and brown tones, the painting lights up with light in the incarnations of mother and son and in the tripartition of pure colors (red, yellow, blue) chosen for clothes. The naturalness of the scene and the luminous setting, close to the Caravaggesque aesthetic, testify how much Gentileschi understood the innovative scope of the works of his Lombard colleague, with whom he had had direct contact during the years he lived in Rome.

Sebastian, a Roman army officer who converted to the Christian faith, was sentenced to death during the persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian. He was tied to a pole, or a tree, and pierced by arrows shot by the soldiers, who then abandoned him in agony. However, the Roman noblewoman Irene took pity on him and healed him, but according to another tradition it was the miraculous intervention of the angels that saved him. Sebastian was led again in the presence of the emperor who ordered him to be scourged to death and to throw his body into the city sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, so that it could not be buried. The painting, created by Rubens during his first stay in Rome, presents the iconography of the saint cured by the angels: Sebastiano is in the center of the scene, now almost completely free from ropes and arrows, while on the left a wonderful armor resting on the ground. remember the military career. The balance of the composition, the references to the classicism of ancient Rome and the palette of warm tones, in addition to the lively flourishes of the drapery, are some of the most characteristic elements of the Flemish artist's Italian period.

The Virgin, sitting with her arm resting on the crib, supports the Child asleep on her lap, wrapping him in the white sheet. The work takes its title from the straw protruding from the manger, which together with the presence of the donkey and the ox recalls the theme of the Nativity and makes the scene something more than a simple Madonna and Child. The image is in fact interwoven with multiple references to the Passion of Christ: Jesus is lying on his mother's knees, as in the Pietà, wrapped in a sheet, just as he will remain for three days in the shroud; on the right, the wooden planks nailed and crossed, could allude to the Crucifixion; and the ears that sprout on the left recall the sacrifice of the Eucharist. All this explains the Virgin's worried and veiled gaze of sadness. Although similar symbolic allusions to the passion motif are not uncommon in such a subject, in this case we wanted to capture in the sad atmosphere of the painting a personal memory of the death of Van Dyck's sister, Cornelia, which led to the definitive return of the artist. in Antwerp after his stay in Italy.

The figure of Salome stands out against a gray and indistinct background, from which she emerges carrying the severed head of the Baptist on a plate, to be delivered to her mother Herodias. The Gospel (Mt 14, 1-12) narrates, in fact, that Herod Antipas had the saint arrested for open criticism of his union with Herodias, former wife of his brother, but who did not have the courage to have him killed. During a banquet in her honor, Salome performed a sensual dance that struck Herod so much that he promised her to fulfill any of his wishes; the girl, instigated by her mother, then asked to have "the head of John the Baptist on a tray". Guido Reni's version focuses on the staging of the contrast between the narrative episode - a girl carrying a severed head on a plate - and the face of Salome, who sets her eyes on the viewer, while maintaining a cold and impersonal distance, accentuated by the skilful painting technique used by Reni, who brings out his rich robes and headdress from the canvas, through long and full-bodied brushstrokes. The work is probably the one purchased by Cardinal Francesco Barberini on 13 December 1639 and which entered the Corsini collection as a gift from Monsignor Bardi to Pope Clement XII (1730-1740), immediately becoming one of the most appreciated paintings, as evidenced by the numerous copies and the praises that are dedicated to it in the guides of Rome between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

When Berentz, a German painter who spends most of his life in Rome, paints The Elegant Snack, still life took on the dignity of an autonomous pictorial genre for a century. The peculiarity of this painting is the contrast between the frugality of the meal and the preciousness of the objects, between the refinement of the context and the apparent disorder of some details: the raised edge of the tablecloth that reveals the underlying wood and reveals the half-open drawer, the orange caps, the bread almost poised. The sophisticated goblets, the silver cutlery, the golden snuffbox indicate the social level of the diners. The lower right corner of the table points towards the observer and the non-frontality of the scene increases the sense of provisionality of the vision. Still lifes, especially from the seventeenth century onwards, in their built realism, are not exempt from symbolic meanings, which have to do with the fragility of matter and the transience of time. The painting is signed and dated in the inner left corner of the tablecloth (C.B. 1717).

The so-called Corsini throne is one of the most fascinating and problematic objects in the collection. The sculpture was found between 1732 and 1734, during the excavations carried out to build the foundations of the Corsini family chapel in the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano. The back is divided into two registers delimited by a frame with a branch of ivy, with a series of soldiers in the upper one and wild boar hunting scenes in the lower one. On the base, above a plant frieze, the main figured band develops with scenes of sacrifice, struggle and procession of unclear interpretation. By type and decoration, the work is part of the series of funerary thrones widespread in the Etruscan environment and mainly made of bronze or terracotta. The use of marble and the place where it was found, however, bring the object back to the Roman context and make it unique in the panorama of ancient sculptural production. Its uniqueness, together with the events relating to the place of discovery, has, however, allowed us to hypothesize its function and role: it would, in fact, be the symbol of the royal descent of the most important of the women of the Plautii Silvani family, Urgulania, of Etruscan lineage and married around 40 BC. by M. Plautius, vir praetorius. The work is, therefore, a faithful Roman copy of the late Republican age of an Etruscan princely throne from the end of the fifth century BC, as proof of the royalty of the gens of Urgulania.

The myth of Venus and Adonis has reached its last act here. Adonis, the beautiful young man loved by Venus, was fatally wounded by a wild boar during a hunting trip. The goddess bursts onto the scene with a real leap, which is not simply a scenic gimmick but is linked to the narrative. Ovid, in fact, in the 10th book of the Metamorphoses, narrates that Venus is on her chariot pulled by swans, returning to Cyprus, when from a distance he hears the moans of dying Adonis and rushes down from heaven. Behind Adonis we see a hunting dog, a broken trunk and a dusky landscape. The young man's body stands out against the red of the drapery, a probable allusion to the color of the anemone, the flower into which his blood will be transformed. The episode is reinterpreted in a Christological key, as had already happened in the literary sphere with the poem Adonis (1623) by Giovan Battista Marino. The wound of Adonis is on the side, not on the groin, as in Ovid's poem, and the way in which Venus raises her arms, as a sign of desperation, has been related to the iconography of the Magdalene.

The episode depicted in the painting is narrated in the Gospel of Luke (2, 41-50): Joseph and Mary, having lost the young Jesus in Jerusalem, find him inside the temple, intent on questioning experts on theological questions. The painting brings together two moments: Jesus' dispute with the doctors of the temple and the finding by Joseph and Mary, the latter visible at the bottom of the picture, between the leg of Jesus and one of the doctors. The setting of the painting is divided into two visual centers: the young Jesus sitting on the right and the column of the temple to represent the new faith as opposed to the old. Around the crowd of doctors are arranged, who listen in amazement and bewildered, or they discuss alarmed, comparing the words of Jesus with the sacred scriptures.

Prometheus, a figure from classical mythology, lies on his back chained to a cliff in the Caucasus. From the tension of the limbs, as well as from the grimace of the face, one can perceive all the brutality of the torture. One hand is clenched, the other is wide open, and the tendons almost protrude from the wrist; the legs apart are both very tense; the torn belly offers a piece of human anatomy; the eagle is devouring the intestine, even if the myth speaks only of the liver, which, growing back every day, is the daily meal of an endless torture. What identifies the character as Prometheus is the lit torch in the lower right corner, the instrument with which the titan had given humanity fire. The eagle, an attribute of Zeus, becomes the ambassador of the revenge of the father of the gods. The torture of Prometheus is a theme in which figurative issues, linked to the correct representation of passions (including pain, wonder, death, madness), are intertwined with philosophical and literary motifs, congenial to the multifaceted spirit of Salvator Rosa.

The Denial of Peter, now unanimously assigned to the Roman period of the young Ribera, was for a long time attributed by Roberto Longhi to the so-called Master of the Judgment of Solomon, based on the painting of the same name in the Borghese Gallery. The painter, born in Jàtiva, Spain, arrived in the papal city around 1606, where he came into contact with the extraordinary pictorial renewal initiated by Caravaggio. Merisi's "Denial of Peter", now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York but at the time in Rome, constitutes the starting point of the Corsini painting. The literal quotation of the gesture of Peter who, when questioned in front of the palace of Caiaphas, denies knowing Christ (Mt 26, 69-95) is exceptionally relegated to the extreme right: Ribera decides, in fact, to expand the scene horizontally with repetition of the accusation against the saint by the woman and the old man with the plumed hat, including the tavern table on which the guards are intent on playing dice. This is an iconographic innovation that will become a reference for other Caravaggesque artists and will help spread the representation of the evangelical episodes in horizontal format, often set and "updated" in contemporary tavern scenes. The work, created around 1615-1616 shortly before Ribera left for Naples, is probably identifiable with the one mentioned in the inventory of Giovan Francesco Cussida of 1624 and then in that of Carlo De Rossi of 1683. During the eighteenth century, it entered in the collection of Cardinal Lorenzo Corsini, future Pope Clement XII, and from 1750, it was placed in the gallery of the Palazzo in via della Lungara.

«I am in love with the Virgin by Murillo of the Corsini Gallery. His head haunts me and his eyes continue to pass me like two dancing lanterns ». Thus, the famous writer Gustave Flaubert described his reaction to the painting during his stay in Rome in 1851. The "Gypsy Madonna", as it was called in the city guides, was, in fact, one of the most admired paintings in the nineteenth century. of the Corsini collection precisely for the expressive power of the Virgin and Child made by the Spanish painter. The work was performed around 1675 in Seville and is one of the best examples of Murillo's ability to render religious subjects in terms of "family narration" and compositional simplicity. The Corsini painting is, in fact, built around the two figures of the Virgin and Child, rendered with those almost "common" features that gave the work its nineteenth-century nickname, concentrating the greatest expressiveness in the faces and looks. The focal point of the work therefore becomes the eyes that stare intensely at the viewer, almost as if he had interrupted the moment of breastfeeding, to which the clothes just moved away from Mary's breast allude, according to a rhetorical strategy that, after the Council of Trento, tended to make this iconographic typology less explicit.

The work, donated to Cardinal Lorenzo Corsini, caused scholars to discuss for a long time: it was not clear whether the three tablets were conceived by Beato Angelico as a unitary work or if they had been readapted and put together later. Doubts arose due to the unusual combination of the three depicted episodes - Ascension, Last Judgment, Pentecost - and due to an erroneous reading of a Corsini inventory, according to which the tablets were donated separately and then assembled. Recent studies have instead denied both the latter hypothesis and the alleged incongruity of the three episodes: this association is also found in other works and is motivated by thematic and doctrinal connections. The recent restoration has made it possible to recover the bright colors and the great wealth of details, typical of the Florentine artist's production. Next to these, the calm expressiveness of the faces and the geometric setting of the scenes should be noted: in the Judgment, for example, the two groups of redeemed and damned crowd respectively to the left and to the right of a row of tombs open in the ground which, together with the Christ the Judge divide the painted panel exactly in half.

The series of the four elements is made in pastel on paper, a technique that was widely used in the eighteenth century. Rosalba Carriera, a Venetian painter, became one of the most requested portraitists by nobles and sovereigns of Europe, very skilled in achieving results of softness, brightness, immediacy and psychological introspection with pastel. The allegorical series formed by four personifications - the continents, the seasons, the elements - are a particularly widespread typology in this period. La Carriera completed this work between 1741 and 1743 for Giovan Francesco Stoppani, apostolic nuncio to the Senate of Venice. The allegories have a portrait cut, are caught in the foreground and their attributes end up in the margin (lower right, except in the Air), integrated with different colors or accessories that clarify their role. Air, in addition to wearing an intense blue cloak, of which a flap is hinted at, holds a little bird with a thread; the Water observes in an absorbed attitude the fish hanging from a sort of fishing line; the Earth shows a bunch of grapes (from this point of view it is very similar to an Autumn Allegory) and wears a garland of flowers; Fire, with its tawny hair, peach-pink dress and small brazier in the hand, is the pastel with the warmest colors. The pastel technique is very practical in some ways, complex in others. Compared to oil on canvas, it is cheaper, and uses more easily transportable materials. It is perfect for the execution of portraits and meets the needs of a prestigious client who takes care of self-representation. On the other hand, it requires mastery of execution, does not admit regrets, and is extremely fragile, in fact a slight contact with the surface is enough to alter the pigments, which require specific fixatives.

The watercolor depicts in an extremely analytical way a hare surrounded by various species of plants and insects, accurately described: from the Alchemilla vulgaris (or star grass) on the right, to the dock with large fleshy leaves at the bottom, from the carnation on the left, to the small grasshopper bottom right. It is an example of virtuosity - accentuated by the presence of the fly at the top - linked to the fortune of Dürer's prototypes and, in particular, of the famous "Hare" of the Albertina of Vienna (1502). Moreover, the masterpiece was donated to the Corsinis by Cardinal Guadagni precisely as a work of the great German artist and is perhaps the same "Hare" protagonist of an anecdote told by Baldinucci (1681), about the sculptor Pietro Tacca, who refused to sell it. , despite a very high offer, "because I know how to earn the sequins, but if the hare goes away, I will never take it back". Today, the work is attributed to Hans Hoffmann, a Nuremberg painter very well known at the time for copies of Dürer's works, and was probably made during his stay in Prague, where in 1585 he became court painter of Emperor Rudolf II.

Giovanni da Milano, active in Florence and Lombardy between 1346 and 1369, was a leading exponent of the Giotto school. The small polyptych, datable to the earliest years of his career, is divided into seven panels. The central one is divided into two scenes: above, the Virgin with the Child enthroned, surrounded by angels, below, the Lamentation over the dead Christ. In the upper register two other Christological scenes appear, the Annunciation and the Nativity, while below, next to the Lamentation, the Crucifixion is depicted. In the side panels of the central register we recognize, on the left, San Nicola, who supports three golden spheres, and Santo Stefano (or San Lorenzo, given the absence of precise references); on the right, Sant’Eustachio, characterized by the presence of the deer, and San Giacomo, with the pilgrim's stick. Finally, at the bottom right, Santa Margherita with the dragon at her feet and Santa Caterina d’Alessandria, identified by the toothed wheel of martyrdom. The work, despite the presence of the gold background - which continues to be widely used until the following century - is characterized by the search for a plausible spatiality and the intense expressiveness of the figures, which demonstrate how much Giotto's experience was central to the next generation of artists.

The painting represents the final moment of an episode taken from the Gospel of Matthew (17, 24-27): Christ orders Peter to fish in the lake of Tiberias and to pay the tax collectors of the temple with the silver coin found inside the fish. In setting up the composition Mattia Preti keeps in mind some Caravaggesque innovations: the light that falls on the figure of Christ illuminates the scene diagonally, flows on the faces and rests on the details of the fish and the coin, allowing to identify the characters and the episode depicted. The tangle of busy hands around the coin becomes the central node of the composition and immediately catches the observer's gaze. With the exception of Christ and Peter, dressed according to tradition, the characters wear seventeenth-century clothes, so that the scene seems set in the daily reality in which the painter and the recipients of the painting lived. In this painting Preti elaborates the experiences of his stay in Rome, from the innovations of Caravaggio to the suggestions of Guercino.

The episode of the adoration of the shepherds, which came to Bethlehem after the announcement of the angels, is narrated in the Gospel of Luke. Bassano tackles the issue on the one hand by respecting tradition, on the other by introducing innovations. They form the backdrop for the archaeological ruins, a frequent element in the Italian iconography of the Nativity. Here we see a row of broken columns on a high pedestal, modeled on the Greek temples, against which a hut is leaning. The unusual architectural structure symbolizes the overcoming of paganism and the construction of the Christian church, of which the birth of Jesus is the first act of foundation. The canvas dates back to the sixties of the sixteenth century, a period in which Bassano began to darken the colors. The robes of the Madonna, Joseph and the shepherds have enameled shades, but the landscape has a nocturnal atmosphere. What is most striking is the almost disrespectful humility of the pastors, in line, moreover, with the spirit of the Gospel story, which wants the last in the social hierarchy as the first worshipers of the Messiah. The shepherds occupy the center of the scene, and if there were no left side of the picture, it might seem like a rural genre scene. The shepherd from behind is kneeling, showing his bare feet, as a reminder of his extreme humility, and holding a lamb, a sacrificial animal par excellence, a reference to the future Passion of Christ. On the far right, a curious insert: a crouched boy blowing on a burning ember, in the useless effort to revive a flame, now weak in the face of the powerful light of divine revelation. The figure will later have a wide diffusion as an autonomous genre scene.