The importance of digitizing Museo di Capodimonte’s vast collection

Director  Sylvain Bellenger and curatorial fellow James Anno on how they’ve used Art Camera at the museum

Museo di Capodimonte is one of Naples’ – and Italy’s – most prestigious institutions. Its origins date to 1738. Nestled within a Royal Park of over 300 acres, Capodimonte houses one of the most important collections of Italian and European art in the world, spanning primarily from the 13th century to the present. Highlights are the Farnese Collection, the Neapolitan Baroque Collection, as well as a vast arrary of decorative arts. Notably, Capodimonte is the only museum in Italy to collect both historic and contemporary art.

In a bid to preserve its collection digitally, Capodimonte has worked with Google Arts & Culture to use its Art Camera to capture over 200 paintings. First launched in 2016, Art Camera photographs artworks as “gigapixel” images and this ultra-high resolution allows you to explore and study paintings inch by inch in incredible detail.

Here the Director of Museum of Capodimonte, Sylvain Bellenger, talks about the value of digitization for the Museum and its collection:

"The history of art perhaps would not have existed without photographs – and the shots captured by the high-tech Art Camera by Google allow us to embark on an extraordinary journey into the paintings, to discover even the smallest details of the immense artistic heritage of Capodimonte.

"[The Art Camera] appears to even be able to recognize the fingerprint of Luca Giordano! For a museum that has 47,000 works of art, digitization is fundamental in facilitating access to knowledge on the part of scholars, but especially the general public, because I am always convinced that contact with art changes our lives, for the better naturally."

Here, curatorial fellow James Anno speaks more about the process of selecting the paintings for Art Camera and why its important for Capodimonte to digitize its collection.

Art Camera set up at Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte (From the collection of Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte)

The Madonna of the Rosary by Dirk Herndricksz (From the collection of Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte)

What brought you to the Capodimonte museum?

I came to the Capodimonte Museum as a curatorial fellow in 2017. While working at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, I became aware of an American non-profit organization called the American Friends of Capodimonte (AFC). The AFC was created to provide support to the Capodimonte Museum, generously funded by American philanthropists. The president of the AFC, Vincent Buonanno, created the organization with director Sylvain Bellenger of the Capodimonte Museum. Buonanno and Bellenger were searching for an American PhD art historian to contribute to Capodimonte’s mission. I was fortunate to win this opportunity and moved with my family to Naples last summer. Having lived and worked in Naples for a year now, I am very proud of what we have accomplished together in partnership with the AFC.

Wild Game Vendor by Amout de Muyser (From the collection of Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte)

What has it been like to curate the digital presence of such an important museum in Italy?

Collaborating in the curation of Capodimonte’s digital presence is truly a world class opportunity and marks a vital step towards bringing the institution further into the 21st century. The question of how technology should be integrated into museums across the world is one of the most pressing questions within the museum profession. Our collaboration with Google Arts & Culture has provided the ideal scenario to further realize Capodimonte’s presence within the international world of museums. The partnership has also given us unprecedented access and allows us to engage our global audience in new and innovative ways. The fact we have achieved this at Capodimonte, which is counted among the most important museums in the world, makes our collective accomplishment all the more astonishing.

Market in the Square by Joachim Beuckelaer (From the collection of Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte)

How did you choose the selection of paintings captured by Art Camera?

Given the ambitious scope of our collaboration, our team at Capodimonte selected over 300 of our greatest masterpieces on exhibition in the museum to be captured by the Art Camera. We prioritized works within the Farnese Collection as well as the Neapolitan Baroque galleries. Given that the Art Camera operators captured each painting on the wall as it is exhibited, we then made case by case choices in light of the logistical and technical process of capturing the artworks.

We are thrilled about the number of Art Camera photographs we have achieved – over 200 in total – and we are very excited about having our greatest masterpieces available to view and study online in such high resolution.

Dinner in the House of the Pharisee by Giovanni Balducci (From the collection of Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte)

Why is it important that the paintings have been photographed with the Art Camera?

Firstly, it is quite remarkable to view the artworks under the perfect lighting conditions that the Art Camera system provides while capturing photographs. The brilliance of the colors, the layers of paint, and the individual brushstrokes in some instances are highlighted in a way that is impossible to see otherwise.

The ultra high resolution photographs produced by the Art Camera also provides the opportunity for the public as well as scholars to study Capodimonte’s paintings online to a degree of precisionimpossible to discern with the naked eye. In fact, an American art historian recently contacted me regarding an iconographic detail in Sebastiano del Piombo’s Madonna del velo (1540). The question was whether there is any visual evidence that the Christ Child is holding a goldfinch in his hand. Ordinarily this question would be difficult to answer by just looking at the artwork with the naked eye.

However, with the zoom capabilities of our Art Camera photograph, I was able to share that there are actually some faint brushstrokes indicating that Piombo might have considered painting the goldfinch, but perhaps chose to not realize this aspect of the composition. Ultimately, the Art Camera has provided us with the tools to answer this question and hopefully many more, simply by zooming in to the photograph and understanding paintings in a new light.