National Gallery of Armenia

 This important event, curated by Prof. Francesco Petrucci, aims at introducing the Armenian public to the genesis of the Roman Baroque, providing an intimate encounter with an artistic style that became a multifaceted cultural phenomenon and concurrently spread from Naples to Venice, from Vienna to Prague and from Bohemia to St. Petersburg, up to the South American continent. The exhibition displays a gallery important paintings and is completed by a collection of decorative art objects, engravings and medallions designed by Bernini, also loaned by Palazzo Chigi, the Museum of Roman Baroque situated in the small town of Ariccia, nearby Rome.

The exhibition therefore constitutes a unique opportunity to admire an art historical treasury that rarely leaves its permanent residence and features some of the greatest masters of the Italian Baroque, including Giovan Lorenzo Bernini, Baciccio, Pietro da Cortona, Giovanni Battista Beinaschi, Carlo Maratta, Ferdinand Voet, Andrea Pozzo, Cavalier d'Arpino, Mattia Preti, Salvator Rosa, Borgognone, Pierfrancesco Mola, Giacinto Gimignani, Jean de Momper and many others. The show is conceived as a visual journey encompassing all the genres and subjects that were most favored by the patrons of the time, including history paintings, monumental portraits, self-portraits, landscapes, allegorical subjects of exquisitely classicistic or naturalistic flavor, intimate religious compositions, and a number of rare sketches for some of the glorious frescoes realized in Roman churches and noble palaces.

Furthermore, the Chigi collection will be exhibited next to a number of paintings of illustrious Italian Masters, today in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Armenia, with the purpose of generating a visual contamination that we hope will result into a platform for dialogue and discussion. After all, if the original ambition of the Baroque - led by the Catholic Church and the aristocracy - consisted in educating, persuading and moving the people, it ultimately led to the elaboration of a complex and kaleidoscopic artistic style which spatial grandeur, emotional drama, and sensorial exuberance continues to exert a strong influence over our contemporary culture.