Milan and Naples, the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and the Museum and Royal Park of Capodimonte: two cities and two museum institutions with deeply distinct histories and identities come together in a single joint project, Classical Collapse, by the artist Nicola Samorì. The project goes beyond the logic of a "double exhibition" to propose itself as a unified cultural operation, conceived from the outset to be developed in two locations that are interconnected and in dialogue.

Curated by Demetrio Paparoni, Alberto Rocca (Director of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana), and Eike Schmidt (Director of the Museum and Royal Park of Capodimonte), this exhibition - at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana from November 28, 2025, to January 13, 2026, and at the Museum and Royal Park of Capodimonte from November 29, 2025, to March 1, 2026 - serves as a bridge between North and South, between ancient and contemporary, between the past of the great painting and sculpture tradition and its reinvention in the present.

At the National Museum of Capodimonte, the exhibition will be presented as a dynamic and layered scenography, with almost forty works by Samorì alternating with paintings by Bruegel, Pontormo, Parmigianino, Ribera, El Greco from the Museum's collection, in a journey between the memory of matter and the memory of the image. Inside the Causa Hall, the works will be integrated into a system of architectural backdrops that will guide the visitor through a progressive modulation of light and tones: starting from very light grays that welcome Sebastiano del Piombo's Madonna of the Veil, gradually sinking into total darkness with Bruegel's Parable of the Blind and the reinterpretation in oil on canvas (200 x 500 cm) elaborated by Samorì through a complex interplay of overlays and subtractions achieved in the design phase also using artificial intelligence.

But it is the Neapolitan Baroque that is the beating heart of the project. The skin - understood as a pictorial surface and as a metaphor for the body - is the protagonist in works ranging from the Flaying of Marsyas (in the versions of José de Ribera and Luca Giordano) to Parmigianino's Antea, up to the disruptive reinterpretation of the same, in reinterpretations that physically flay the skin of painting, exposing its entrails.