Nicola Spinosa

Nicola Spinosa joined the Soprintendenza per il Patrimonio Artistico e Storico di Napoli as an art historian in 1969, later going on to join the Polo Museale Napoletano and serving as its Director General from 1984 to 2009. He lectured in Museology and the History of Collecting at Naples’ Suor Orsola Benincasa University Institute from 1992 to 2010. He masterminded the new layout of the collections in the Museo di Capodimonte (including establishing a new section on contemporary art), in the Certosa and in the Museo Nazionale di San Martino, as well as curating the new layout of the Oriental collections in the Museo Duca di Martina. He opened Castel Sant’Elmo to the public as a venue for temporary exhibitions and as the new home of the art history library and the Museo del Novecento in Naples in 1989. Between 1979 and 2009, he promoted major restoration projects and promoted, coordinated and personally curated a number of exhibitions organised by the Soprintendenza both in Naples and abroad. These included exhibitions on the civilisation of the 17th and 19th centuries in Naples, Caravaggio’s later years, Jusepe de Ribera, Bernardo Cavallino, Luca Giordano, Neapolitan vedutismo from the 15th to the 19th centuries and the age of the Baroque in Naples. He has published essays and monographs on various aspects of, and key figures in, art in Naples and Italy with a special focus on the 17th and 18th centuries, including on decoration in the age of the Baroque, on genre painting and still-life painting and on Ribera and Cavallino. The President of the Italian Republic awarded him the Order of Merit for cultural achievements in 1998, and he was awarded the title of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur of the French Republic on the same grounds in 2000.