Sir Gabriele Maria Finaldi (born 28 November 1965) is a British art historian and curator,with Italian citizenship. [1] Since August 2015,he has been director of the National Gallery in London,England. [2]
Finaldi was born in Barnet and raised in Catford in south London,the son of a Neapolitan father and a half-Polish-half-English mother. [3] He was educated at Dulwich College before studying art history at The Courtauld Institute of Art,where he completed his BA degree in 1987,an MA in 1989 and a PhD in 1995. [4] His doctoral research focused on the 17th-century Spanish Baroque painter Jusepe de Ribera. [5]
Finaldi has curated exhibitions in the UK,Spain,Italy and Belgium and has written catalogues and scholarly articles on Velázquez and Zurbarán,on Italian Baroque painting,on religious iconography,and on Picasso. [6]
Finaldi was a curator at the National Gallery between 1992 and 2002. He was responsible for the later Italian paintings in the collection (Caravaggio to Canaletto) and the Spanish collection (Bermejo to Goya). [6] In 2002 he was appointed Deputy Director for Collections and Research at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid,Spain. [7] At the Prado he oversaw the project to build a new extension in 2007,the creation of the Research Centre,and curated major exhibitions on Ribera (in 2011) and BartoloméEsteban Murillo (in 2012). [8]
In August 2015,Finaldi returned to the National Gallery having been appointed its director. [9]
Finaldi was knighted in the 2025 New Year Honours for services to art and culture. [10]
BartoloméEsteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works,Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children. These lively realistic portraits of flower girls,street urchins,and beggars constitute an extensive record of the everyday life of his times. He also painted two self-portraits,one in the Frick Collection portraying him in his 30s,and one in London's National Gallery portraying him about 20 years later. In 2017–18,the two museums held an exhibition of them.
The Courtauld Institute of Art,commonly referred to as The Courtauld,is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art and conservation. It is among the most prestigious specialist colleges for the study of the history of art in the world and is known for the disproportionate number of directors of major museums drawn from its small body of alumni.
Jusepe de Ribera was a Spanish painter and printmaker. Ribera,Francisco de Zurbarán,BartoloméEsteban Murillo,and the singular Diego Velázquez,are regarded as the major artists of Spanish Baroque painting. Referring to a series of Ribera exhibitions held in the late 20th century,Philippe de Montebello wrote "If Ribera's status as the undisputed protagonist of Neapolitan painting had ever been in doubt,it was no longer. Indeed,to many it seemed that Ribera emerged from these exhibitions as not simply the greatest Neapolitan artist of his age but one of the outstanding European masters of the seventeenth century." Jusepe de Ribera has also been referred to as Joséde Ribera,Josep de Ribera,and was called Lo Spagnoletto by his contemporaries and early historians.
The Courtauld Gallery is an art museum in Somerset House,on the Strand in central London. It houses the collection of the Samuel Courtauld Trust and operates as an integral part of the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Spanish art has been an important contributor to Western art and Spain has produced many famous and influential artists including Velázquez,Goya and Picasso. Spanish art was particularly influenced by France and Italy during the Baroque and Neoclassical periods,but Spanish art has often had very distinctive characteristics,partly explained by the Moorish heritage in Spain,and through the political and cultural climate in Spain during the Counter-Reformation and the subsequent eclipse of Spanish power under the Bourbon dynasty.
Sir Nicholas Beaver Penny is a British art historian. From 2008 to 2015 he was director of the National Gallery in London.
Sir John Denis Mahon,was a British collector and historian of Italian art. Considered to be one of the few art collectors who was also a respected scholar,he is generally credited,alongside Sacheverell Sitwell and Tancred Borenius,with bringing Italian pre-Baroque and Baroque painters to the attention of English-speaking audiences,reversing the critical aversion to their work that had prevailed from the time of John Ruskin.
Michael William Lely Kitson was a British art historian who became an international authority on the work of the painter Claude Lorrain.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is an Italian-American writer,art historian,and exhibition maker who served as the Director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea in Turin in 2009 and from 2016 to 2023. She was also the founding Director of Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti from 2017 to 2023. She was Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor in Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University (2013–2019). She is the recipient of the 2019 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. She is currently Honorary Guest Professor at FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern,Switzerland. She has lectured widely at art and educational institutions and Universities for the Arts,including the Goethe University,Frankfurt;Harvard University,Cambridge;MIT,Boston;Jawaharlal Nehru University,New Dehli;Cooper Union,New York;The Courtauld Institute of Art,London;Monash University,Melbourne;Di Tella University,Buenos Aires;Northwestern University,Chicago,and UNITO,Universitàdi Torino,Turin.
Ian Lorne Campbell is a Scottish art historian and curator. Campbell was Beaumont Senior Research Curator at the National Gallery,London from 1996 to 2012,and from 1974 to 1996 lectured on the Northern Renaissance at the Courtauld Institute of Art,University of London. He has curated major exhibitions at the National Gallery and other museums,including ones on Rogier van der Weyden at Leuven in 2009 and the Prado in 2015.
Jonathan Mayer Brown was an American art historian,known for his work on Spanish art,particularly Diego Velázquez. He was Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts at New York University.
Tarnya Cooper is an art historian and author who is currently the National Trust's Curatorial &Collections Director.
Robert Nicholas Cullinan is an art historian and curator. On 6 January 2015,he was appointed the 12th director of the National Portrait Gallery in London,a post he began several months later. It was announced on 28 March 2024 that he had been appointed Director of the British Museum.
The Finding of Moses is an early 1630s painting by Orazio Gentileschi. There are two versions,the prime version is in The National Gallery in London and the second is in Museo del Prado in Madrid.
Luke Syson is an English museum curator and art historian. Since 2019,he has been the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge,prior to which he held positions at the British Museum (1991–2002),the Victoria and Albert Museum (2002–2003),the National Gallery (2003–2012) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2015–2019). In 2011 he curated the acclaimed Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery:Leonardo da Vinci:Painter at the Court of Milan,which included his pivotal role in the controversial authentication by the National Gallery of da Vinci's Salvator Mundi.
William Bryan Jordan Jr. was an American art historian who facilitated acquisitions,curated exhibitions,and authored publications on Spanish artists and still life paintings,particularly from the Golden Age.
Caroline Campbell is an international art museum curator. Since November 2022,she is director of the National Gallery of Ireland,being the first woman taking this position in the Gallery’s 158 year history.
Bruce Ambler Boucher FSA is an American art historian and curator. He is Deborah Loeb Brice Director of Sir John Soane's Museum,London and emeritus professor of the History of Art at University College London (UCL).
Justus Lange is a German art historian and curator,known for his work with Old Masters,and a curator at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel,Germany.
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