In the past two years, the collections of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples have been enriched by new artworks, through both acquisitions and donations. They are watercolours, gouaches, prints, historic photographs (with views of the rooms of the Museum and of Pompeii), and nineteenth-century copies of the most famous of our ancient bronzes. The exhibition From Pietro Fabris to Vincenzo Gemito. New acquisitions of the MANN presents to the public a selection of 100 of these pieces.

As for the purchases, a large late eighteenth-century watercolour stands out, by the Roman artist Filippo Maria Giuntotardi (1768–1831), showing one of the earliest views of Pompeii (Porta Ercolano), together with the replica of the Pompeian bronze sculpture of Narcissus by the Neapolitan sculptor Vincenzo Gemito (1852–1929).

Among the donations, the twenty-three drawings presented by the scholar and collector Carlo Knight (of which 8 are exhibited) allow for a more detailed reconstruction of the publishing history of Le antichità di Ercolano Esposte. Ernesto Bowinkel’s gift, on the other hand, enriches the photographic collection of the Museum with thousands of positives and about two hundred negative plates, all relating to the history of the journey through Italy, of which Naples and its antiquities were a major attraction.

All these pieces attest to, among other things, the immense fortune the National Museum enjoyed through time. Approaching its 250 years in 2027, the Museum of Naples has always been rather special in many respects, not only preserving a very rich collection, but also documenting, like few other institutions, the close relationship the modern world has had with classical antiquity at least from the 1500s onwards.