Gian Enzo Sperone donated 33 works to the National Academy of San Luca. Now visible in exhibition

Gian Enzo Sperone, a gallery owner, dealer and collector from Turin and one of the leading figures in the international art world, has donated 33 works of art to theAccademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome. This is the most important bequest that has come to the Academy since 1934, and the public will be able to see them on display at the same venue from May 16 to June 7, 2025 on the occasion of the exhibition project Nel segno di Giano. The Gian Enzo Sperone Donation to the National Academy of St. Luke.

The Sperone donation consists of 29 works by the most important protagonists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, masterpieces of great quality, such as Loth and the Daughters by Gioacchino Assereto (1640-1645), which belonged to the London collection of Sir Joseph Robinson, and later to the Labia collection; St.Andrew the Apostle by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino (1655-1656); by Vincenzo Camuccini the work Manio Curio Dentato refuses the gifts of the Samnites, Prince of the Academy of St. Luke from 1806 to 1810 and of Aldobrandini provenance; by Ludovico Cardi, known as Cigoli, the Penitent Magdalene (1598), which was part of the collection of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Also, the Ritratto di gentiluomo (Portrait of a Gentleman ) by Giacomo Ceruti known as il Pitocchetto; the Ritratto di Sebastiano Fuginelli (Portrait of Sebastiano Fuginelli ) by Leandro Dal Ponte, known as Bassano (c. 1610); Democritus by Luca Giordano (1650-1660); and Crassus sacks the Temple of Jerusalem by Giovanni Antonio Guardi, a painting that, before entering the Sperone collection, belonged to the Milanese jurist Guido Rossi, who died in 2017. By John Jackson, the Portrait of Antonio Canova (1819), which entered the collection of sculptor Francis Chantrey and was immediately exhibited at the Royal Academy, reporting widely in the periodical press; by Jean Lemaire, Capriccio with Triumphal Arch and Colosseum and Capriccio with Colonnade and Circular Building, which belonged to Federico Zeri’s collection; by Rutilio Manetti, Portrait of a Gentleman (Chigi Zondadari) (1630); by Anton Raphael Mengs, Portrait of Cardinal Francesco Saverio de Zelada (c. 1773); by Giuseppe Nuvolone, David defeats Goliath (c. 1680), formerly in the Koelliker collection; by Bernardo Strozzi, Saint Paul (1635-1640) and Portrait of a Painter by Vittore Ghislandi, known as Fra Galgario, rank among the pinnacles of figure painting of the period.

There are two works from the early twentieth century: by Filippo de Pisis, Natura morta melodrammatica (1923), and by Francesco Paolo Michetti, Portrait of Don Salvatore Petito - a comic mask, an extraordinary and unsurpassed interpreter of Pulcinella and other roles in traditional Neapolitan theater.

Contemporary art is represented by two masterpieces: The School of Rome (The Lion Constellation) (1980) by Carlo Maria Mariani, preparatory drawing for the large oil painting exhibited in 1981 in Sperone’s galleries in Rome and New York. The work is a large “old-fashioned” collective representation of the art world figures of the late 1970s, with its author in academic robes at the center, surrounded by the artists, dealers and art historians of his contemporaries. The other work is Giulio Paolini’s Crepuscolo degli Idoli (1997), a large installation where classicism is evoked in its fall and in its decomposed fragments, a true ’vision’ of its twilight.

The works from the Sperone collection will be on permanent display from next fall in a space dedicated to them located on the ground floor of Palazzo Carpegna.

Hours: Tuesday through Friday, 3 to 7 p.m. (last entry 6:30 p.m.); Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. (last entry 6:30 p.m.). Closed Sundays and Mondays

Gian Enzo Sperone donated 33 works to the National Academy of San Luca. Now visible in exhibition

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