The Glass Pavilion of the Louvre-Lens was created to showcase the vitality of Hauts-de-France’s museums, hosting themed exhibitions based exclusively on the region’s art collections. Thanks to a new installation bringing together Italian works housed in Picardy and Nord-Pas de Calais, the museum offers the perfect conclusion to the «Italian Times» exhibition cycle which has been running throughout 2017 in the Hauts-de-France region.

The dialogues in this exhibition are created by a series of around twenty paintings by Italian masters from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, grouped into four themes. The first puts the spotlight on Caravaggio’s followers, such as José de Ribera and Luca Giordano, whose art is characterised by a penchant for realism, a simplification of shapes, and the use of light for dramatic effect. The second section presents different variations on the image of a female figure surrounded by children, all dating from the 16th century and depicting either Charity or the Holy Family. The third room is dedicated to historical painting, both mythological - such as the great Baroque works of Gaulli - and religious, including a rare painting by Alessandro Magnasco, The Adoration of the Magi.  The exhibition ends with the tragedy of landscape. A series of seascapes brings together depictions of tempests and shipwrecks that are both spectacular and terrifying, while stormy landscapes and nocturnal fancies in the ruins bear witness to a pre-Romantic sensibility.

The exhibition therefore offers a fascinating contrast with the Italian masterpieces on display in the Galerie du temps (Botticelli, Perugino, Raphael, Tintoretto, etc.) of which the Glass Pavilion is an extension.