Before the image itself, Carlo Maria Mariani’s art presents itself as a riddle, an enigma, a visual sphinx that questions the viewer without offering a definitive solution. His works appear clear, built on a canon of classical harmony, yet they are sprinkled with details that allude to other meanings through symbolic layers requiring deciphering. Mariani stages an archaic time, suspended between myth and history, where each figure becomes a sign of something else, an allusion, a fragment of a larger, extracted, and reassembled language.
This dimension is explored in I Segni dei Tempi (The Signs of the Times), a 2019 painting donated to the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte by the Carlo Maria Mariani Foundation of New York. This work is central to a tribute exhibition dedicated to the artist, running from April 16 to July 14, 2026, curated by Antonio Martino and Andrea Viliani. The exhibition, though compact, is rich in content, revolving around a single artwork that exemplifies Mariani’s entire artistic journey. Mariani was an artist who maintained a reclusive presence yet held a pivotal position in the international contemporary art scene.
The painting embodies two fundamental poles of Mariani’s thought: Raphael Sanzio and Marcel Duchamp. On one hand, it features the illusionistic construction of Raphael’s Loggia of Love and Psyche at the Farnesina. On the other, it incorporates Duchamp’s renowned Bottle Rack, introduced into the pictorial space as a disturbing element. This juxtaposition creates a cross-reference, merging Renaissance classicism with contemporary deconstruction into a representative and conceptual synthesis.
“By placing Duchamp’s Bottle Rack within a pictorial and figurative space derived from the illusionistic pergola of Raphael’s Loggia of Love and Psyche, in Agostino Chigi’s Villa Farnesina, then still situated in a suburban context, Mariani particularly highlights the profound affinity that links these two supreme beacons of his imagination,” commented Eike Schmidt, director of the Capodimonte Museum.
At the heart of the composition, a suspended, almost fetal female figure seems to defy gravity. As Martino observes, it’s difficult not to recognize a mythological echo, a reference to Parthenope, the foundational figure of Naples, also suspended between falling and rebirth. The body thus becomes a threshold, a passage between dimensions, while the blue sky that embraces it takes on a metaphysical quality, as if it were the very substance of the soul.
The exhibition expands on this core theme with seven additional works from private collections, creating a path that traverses different eras and styles. Antiquity resurfaces in works like Orfeo (1979) and Ercole che riposa (Hercules Resting, 1976), where classical statuary is reactivated not as a formal model but as a living presence. Elsewhere, in works such as Composizione 5 and Dopo il bagno (After the Bath, 1989), the dialogue shifts to the realm of the modern, engaging with figures like Joseph Beuys and, again, Duchamp.
Particularly significant is the documentation of the performance Gentil e Gaia (1974), realized in the Loggie di Raffaello (Raphael’s Loggias). In this performance, Mariani physically inserted himself into the space of Renaissance painting, holding a real apple before the painted one. This gesture clarifies one of the central tenets of his research: the continuity between art and life, image and reality, past and present.
Alongside Mariani’s works, the exhibition includes a selection of objects from the museum’s collections—such as a small bronze of the Farnese Hercules and plates from the Giovine manufactory—and rare editions dedicated to Duchamp and Beuys, underscoring the deeply dialogical nature of the project.
Born in Rome in 1931 and passing away in New York in 2021, Mariani carved out a unique, hard-to-classify position for himself. Described as “The last of the ancients and the first of the moderns,” he engaged with the legacy of art without nostalgia, navigating it with a distinctly twentieth-century awareness. His interest in theosophy and esoteric doctrines, from Helena Blavatsky onwards, informs a pictorial practice that is also an exploration of the invisible. Mariani’s quest is not for solutions but for suspension, for the intermediate space between clarity and mystery, between evidence and interpretation.
It is not surprising, then, that Naples, a city where time is not linear but layered, is identified as one of the most fitting contexts for his work. “In the halls of Capodimonte, Mariani seems to have always belonged: ‘I am not a painter, I am not an artist: I am the opus,’ he declared, indicating that the author identifies with his own work, in which all of past, present, and future art history is condensed,” explains Viliani. “In this sense, Mariani was never an ‘anachronistic’ artist, nor a ‘postmodern’ artist, but rather a conceptual painter and, as such, a neo-classicist of contemporaneity. Naples is the habitat for which Mariani’s works seem to have been painted from the beginning, breathing the dense air felt along the decumani, between the Cappella Sansevero and Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy.”
Five years after the artist’s passing, the exhibition also marks a symbolic return: Mariani had previously exhibited in Naples in 1978, at Studio Trisorio. This was a crucial moment for Capodimonte—and for the history of museography—when the institution was opening itself to contemporary influences, featuring a dialogue between Burri’s Grande Cretto and Caravaggio’s black paintings. Today, with I Segni dei Tempi, that dialogue is renewed, confirming the possibility of reading history not as a closed sequence but as an open field of relationships. On the occasion of the exhibition at Capodimonte, the Director of the Pinacoteca di Brera, Angelo Crespi, also announced a tribute exhibition to Mariani that will take place in Milan, at Palazzo Citterio, from October 8, 2026, to January 10, 2027.
English Translation:
Before the image itself, Carlo Maria Mariani’s painting presents itself as a riddle, an enigma, a sort of visual sphinx that interrogates the beholder without offering a definitive solution. His works appear clear, constructed on a canon of classical harmony, yet they are dotted with details that refer elsewhere, towards further meanings, through symbolic stratifications that demand to be deciphered. It is an archaic time, uncertain between myth and history, that Mariani stages: a moment when each figure becomes a sign of something else, an allusion, a fragment of a larger language, extracted and recomposed. This dimension is told in The Signs of the Times, a 2019 painting donated to the Museum and Royal Park of Capodimonte by the Carlo Maria Mariani Foundation of New York, at the center of the tribute exhibition dedicated to the artist, viewable from April 16 to July 14, 2026, curated by Antonio Martino and Andrea Viliani. A compact yet dense exhibition, built around a work that exemplifies Mariani’s entire journey, a reclusive yet central figure in the international contemporary art landscape.
Two fundamental poles of Mariani’s reflection coexist in the painting: Raphael Sanzio and Marcel Duchamp. On one hand, the illusionistic construction of the Loggia of Love and Psyche at the Farnesina; on the other, Duchamp’s famous Bottle Rack, inserted into the pictorial space as a disturbing element. The citation provokes a short circuit of references: Renaissance classicism and contemporary deconstruction meet in a representative and conceptual synthesis.
“By placing Duchamp’s Bottle Rack within a pictorial and figurative space derived from the illusionistic pergola of Raphael’s Loggia of Love and Psyche, in Agostino Chigi’s Villa Farnesina, then still located in a suburban context, Mariani particularly highlights the profound affinity that links these two supreme beacons of his imaginary,” commented Eike Schmidt, director of the Capodimonte Museum.
At the center of the composition, a suspended, almost fetal female figure seems to defy gravity. As Martino observes, it is difficult not to recognize a mythological echo, a reference to Parthenope, the foundational figure of Naples, also suspended between fall and rebirth. The body thus becomes a threshold, a passage between dimensions, while the blue sky that welcomes it is charged with metaphysical significance, as if it were the very substance of the soul.
The exhibition expands on this core nucleus through seven other works from private collections, constructing a path that traverses eras and languages. The ancient re-emerges in works like Orfeo (Orpheus, 1979) or Ercole che riposa (Hercules Resting, 1976), where classical statuary is reactivated not as a formal model but as a living presence. Elsewhere, as in Composizione 5 or Dopo il bagno (After the Bath, 1989), the dialogue shifts to the terrain of the modern, invoking figures such as Joseph Beuys and again Duchamp.
Particularly significant is also the documentation of the performance Gentil e Gaia (1974), created in the Loggie di Raffaello, where Mariani physically inserts himself into the space of Renaissance painting, holding a real apple in front of the painted one. A gesture that clarifies one of the central nodes of his research: the continuity between art and life, between image and reality, between past and present.
Alongside Mariani’s works, the route includes a selection of objects from the museum’s collections—including a small bronze of the Farnese Hercules and plates from the Giovine manufactory—and rare editions dedicated to Duchamp and Beuys, emphasizing the deeply dialogical nature of the project.
Born in Rome in 1931 and passed away in New York in 2021, Mariani built a singular, difficult-to-classify position. Defined as “The last of the ancients and the first of the moderns,” he inhabited the legacy of art without nostalgia, traversing it with a fully twentieth-century awareness. His interest in theosophy and esoteric doctrines, from Helena Blavatsky onwards, contributes to defining a pictorial practice that is also an investigation of the invisible. Mariani’s research is not about a solution but about suspension, the intermediate space between clarity and mystery, between evidence and interpretation.
It is not surprising, then, that Naples, a city where time is not linear but stratified, is indicated as one of the most suitable contexts for his work. “Mariani, in the halls of Capodimonte, seems to have been there forever: ‘I am not a painter, I am not an artist: I am the opus,’ he declared, to indicate that the author identifies with his own work in which all of past, present, and future art history is condensed,” explains Viliani. “Mariani has never been, in this sense, an ‘anachronistic’ artist, nor a ‘postmodern’ artist, but rather a conceptual painter and, as such, a neo-classicist of contemporaneity. Naples is the habitat for which Mariani’s works seem to have been painted from the start, breathing the dense air felt along the decumani, between the Cappella Sansevero and Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy.”
Five years after the artist’s passing, the exhibition also marks a symbolic return: Mariani had already exhibited in Naples in 1978, at Studio Trisorio, at a crucial moment for Capodimonte—and for the history of museography—when the institution was opening itself to contemporary influences, with the confrontation between Burri’s Grande Cretto and Caravaggio’s black paintings. Today, with The Signs of the Times, that dialogue is renewed, confirming the possibility of reading history not as a closed sequence but as an open field of relationships. On the occasion of the exhibition at Capodimonte, the Director of the Pinacoteca di Brera, Angelo Crespi, also announced a tribute exhibition to Mariani that will take place in Milan, at Palazzo Citterio, from October 8, 2026, to January 10, 2027.
