From Vienna to Rome. Masterpieces of the Hasburgs from the Kunsthistorisches Museum

 Museo del Corso – Polo museale, Palazzo Cipolla

March 6 – July 5, 2026

For the first time in Italy, over fifty masterpieces from the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna recount the birth, splendour and complexity of one of Europe's greatest cultural enterprises. From Vienna to Rome. Masterpieces of the Habsburgs from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, scheduled at the Museo del Corso – Polo museale, Palazzo Cipolla, from 6 March to 5 July 2026, offers the public an unprecedented opportunity: to enter the heart of a collection that is both a museum and a dynastic self-portrait, an emblem of the splendour of an empire and the cultural ambition of the Habsburgs.

The exhibition project – curated by Cäcilia Bischoff, art historian at the KHM – brings together works collected or commissioned between the 16th and 19th centuries by key figures of the House of Habsburg – from Emperor Rudolf II to Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and Empress Maria Theresa – presenting the image of a multiethnic, multicultural and multireligious empire that used art as a tool for cultural representation, the dissemination of knowledge and dialogue between civilisations.

The exhibition opens with an introductory section dedicated to the architecture of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the monumental building designed by Gottfried Semper and Carl Hasenauer and inaugurated in 1891 as part of the grand urban plan commissioned by Emperor Franz Joseph I. An emblem of art and knowledge, the Viennese museum is placed in dialogue with Palazzo Cipolla, the Roman venue for the exhibition, through the figure of its architect Antonio Cipolla. Active in the same decades and a sensitive interpreter of European historicist culture, Cipolla shares with Semper and Hasenauer a conception of architecture as a public space capable of transmitting cultural and civic values. The section also includes some documents relating to the Palace from the Foundation's Historical Archive, preserved at Palazzo Sciarra Colonna under a loan agreement with Unicredit, the property’s owner.

The heart of the exhibition is European painting between the 16th and 17th centuries, presented in its main genres and variations. The great Flemish season of the 17th century is represented in the works of Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck and Jan Brueghel the Elder, witnesses to a figurative language in which the legacy of the Renaissance, Italian influence and observation of nature merge in compositions of strong dynamism and chromatic intensity. Antwerp emerges as the central hub of an international artistic network, fuelled by workshops, court commissions and transnational cultural exchanges.

Alongside large-scale works, the exhibition devotes ample space to cabinet painting and to objects from the Kunstkammer, the celebrated Renaissance “chambers of wonders”. Small-format paintings, still lifes,

landscapes and precious objects reveal an aesthetic of precision and intimacy intended for refined and contemplative viewing. Here, works by Gerard ter Borch, Gerard Dou and Jacob van Ruisdael enter into dialogue with artifacts from one of Europe’s most extraordinary Kunstkammern, conceived as a microcosm of knowledge in which natural marvels and human ingenuity coexist according to analogical and epistemological criteria.

The section dedicated to 17th-century Dutch painting reflects the rise of a bourgeois and Protestant society, in which art is oriented towards everyday life, the private sphere and the observation of reality. Frans Hals renews portraiture with a free and immediate brushstroke; Jan Steen transforms genre scenes into a lively and theatrical mirror of social behaviour. Johannes Lingelbach, active in Rome and close to the group of so-called Bamboccianti — northern artists who brought painting focused on popular scenes and everyday life to the capital — transferred these themes to the context of Baroque Rome, immersed in a delicate and narrative light.

Special attention is given to German painting of the modern age, whose roots lie in the great Renaissance period of Lucas Cranach, a central figure in the definition of an autonomous language, characterised by strong stylisation and exceptional mastery of line and drawing. Building on this legacy, later artists such as Joachim von Sandrart and Jan Liss demonstrate the assimilation of Italian Baroque and classical tradition in a continuous dialogue between Northern and Southern Europe.

The narrative then converges on the Habsburgs as buyers, patrons and custodians of European art. Extraordinary portraits, together with works by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, David Teniers the Younger, Guillaume Scrots and Diego Velázquez illustrate a politics of image in which collecting became a tool of self-representation and cultural mediation. Among the masterpieces on display stands out the famous portrait of the Infanta Margarita in a Blue Dress by Velázquez, an icon of court portraiture and of the subtle psychology of the Spanish artist.

Italian painting constitutes the symbolic and aesthetic core of the Viennese collection, particularly thanks to the acquisitions of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, whose taste was firmly oriented toward sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art. On display are masterpieces by Titian, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Orazio Gentileschi, Guido Cagnacci and Giovanni Battista Moroni, attesting to Italy’s central role in the development of European painting, between investigation of the visible world, experimentation with light and the gradual abandonment of idealization.

The emblem of this turning point is Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's Crowning of Thorns, one of the masterpieces of the exhibition. Created in Rome around 1603–1605, the work concentrates the scene of the Passion in a dramatic moment of essentiality, where adherence to reality and emotional tension transform the religious theme into a universal human experience.

From Vienna to Rome. Masterpieces of the Habsburgs from the Kunsthistorisches Museum goes beyond the exhibition of great masterpieces: it tells the story of a museum as a cultural project, a dynasty that built knowledge and a Europe that, through art, sought to understand and represent the world.

«With this exhibition – says Franco Parasassi, President of Fondazione Roma – we are renewing our mission to promote cultural projects that interpret art as a meeting place for European histories and traditions. Rome is a capital of cultures and civilisations; it is a city of dialogue and synthesis between the different identities that animate the values of Europe. This project takes shape at a complex and transformative moment in the history of European integration: our ambition is to contribute to reviving, through the language of beauty, the very idea of Europe, made up of different identities but profound common values».

«The collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna – continues President Parasassi – is proof that a museum can also be a place of dialogue and hospitality, as well as an institution of knowledge rooted in the city. And with the exhibition opening today, the Museo del Corso – Polo museale opens itself up to dialogue with the city and with the great cultural realities of Europe».

«This exhibition represents much more than a loan of extraordinary works of art: it embodies a cultural dialogue between Vienna and Rome. The masterpieces of the Habsburg collections narrate a European vision founded on diversity, curiosity and intellectual openness. Bringing these works to Italy for the first time is a powerful testament to art’s enduring ability to create connections across centuries and borders» adds Jonathan Fine, Director General of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

IMAGES

The Visit at the Leasehold Farm

Jan Brueghel the Elder
c. 1597
Oil on copper
© KHM-Museumsverband

Infanta Margarita in a Blue Dress

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez
1659
Oil on canvas
© KHM-Museumsverband

Crowning of Thorns

Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio
c. 1601
Oil on canvas
© KHM-Museumsverband

Winter

Giuseppe Arcimboldo
1563
Oil on wooden panel
© KHM-Museumsverband

Flowers in a Wooden Vessel

Jan Brueghel the Elder
c. 1608
Oil on wooden panel
© KHM-Museumsverband

Eve

Lucas Cranach the Elder
c. 1520
Oil on wooden panel
© KHM-Museumsverband

Young Lady

Anthonis van Dyck
c. 1630-1632
Oil on canvas
© KHM-Muse

Mars, Venus and Amor

Titian
c. 1550
Oil on canvas
© KHM-Museumsverband

Jupiter and Mercury with Philemon and Baucis

Peter Paul Rubens
c. 1620 - 1625
Oil on canvas
© KHM-Museumsverband

Cleopatra’s Suicide

Guido Cagnacci
1661–1662
Oil on canvas
© KHM-Museumsverband

Judith with the Head of Holofernes

Paolo Caliari known as Veronese
c. 1580
Oil on canvas
© KHM-Museumsverband

Rest on the Flight to Egypt

Orazio Lomi Gentileschi
c. 1622 - 1628
Oil on canvas
© KHM-Museumsverband

Reading Pictures - A History of Illustration

 

Hardcover

Price:

$60.00/£50.00

ISBN:

Published:

Apr 21, 2026

Pages:

400

Size:

8.5 x 10 in.

Illus:

400 color + 24 b/w illus.

A history of illustration from the beginning of popular print to the rise of mass literacy and into today’s age of digital media

Of all the visual arts, illustration shares a unique relationship with the written word, often serving to visualize, enhance, or respond to a text. 
"Reading Pictures" presents a global history of this versatile art form, linking its emergence to modern developments such as the illustrated news, recreational reading, and ad-driven consumer culture.
From the advent of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century to the modernist artistic and cultural movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, D. B. Dowd traces the development of illustration as an integral part of the reading experience. He examines the move from ancient scrolls to pamphlets and book forms, and a return to the scroll in electronic form on smartphones and tablets. His story begins with relief prints and woodcuts in ancient China and Japan before moving to printing and platemaking in early modern Europe. Dowd discusses how book and periodical publishing rose sharply with the innovations of wood engraving and lithography, leading to a boom in cultural literacy; and how the illustrated press reached its zenith between the 1860s and 1960s, as printed entertainment and the news of the world became commonplace in every household, bringing with them advertising, propaganda, and consumer culture.

Richly illustrated with more than four hundred images spanning the iconic to the unexpected, "Reading Pictures" reframes the story of illustration within the broader histories of race, gender, literacy, and the transmission of cultural memory. It reveals how reading and looking have become increasingly integrated, and that, as images have become ever more prevalent today with the digital revolution, what is meant by literacy has evolved.

D. B. Dowd is professor of design and American culture studies and faculty director of the Dowd Illustration Research Archive at Washington University in St. Louis.

Praise

"Lavishly illustrated. . . . [Reading Pictures] is impressively capacious. [A] lively, authoritative intellectual history."—Kirkus Reviews starred review

"Illuminating. . . . Dowd’s selection of illustrations is generous, eclectic, and thought-provoking. . . . [Reading Pictures] sheds fresh light on a vital tool of media and culture consumption."—Publishers Weekly

"[An] expansive chronicle of illustration’s rich history. . . . [Reading Pictures features] beautiful reproductions of hundreds of illustrations—accompanied by expert commentary concerning context, concept and execution."—Holly E.J. Black, Literary Review

Marcel Duchamp

Philadelphia Museum of Art

October 10, 2026–January 31, 2027

 The  (PMA) is pleased to present the first major U.S. retrospective in more than 50 years dedicated to the work of Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). On view in the Dorrance Galleries from October 10, 2026–January 31, 2027, the exhibition will feature a chronological display of approximately 300 works from a career spanning painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, film, printed matter, and the unclassifiable works known as readymades.

The last major U.S. Duchamp survey took place in 1973–74, co-organized by the PMA—home to the world’s largest Duchamp collection—and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Co-organized by the same two institutions, this exhibition will reappraise an oeuvre that transformed the very idea of what art could be.

“We are delighted to join forces once again with The Museum of Modern Art to present an ambitious retrospective of Marcel Duchamp’s work,” said Daniel Weiss, the George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer, PMA. “Remarkably, Duchamp himself played a key role in guiding the distinguished art collection of Louise and Walter Arensberg, his principal patrons, to the PMA as a gift in 1950. That act made Philadelphia the artist’s permanent home, and today, the PMA holds the world’s most significant assembly of works by Duchamp—comprising some two hundred paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, as well as the most extensive archives relating to the artist’s life and work.”

“When, in 1913, Duchamp produced the first readymade, making use of ordinary, mass produced, commercially-available items, he defied fixed beliefs about the nature and definition of art itself. He also brought forth new ways of being an artist,” said Matthew Affron, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art, PMA. “This retrospective will reintroduce contemporary audiences to Duchamp’s complex ideas, his elusive personae, and his revolutionary approach to making art.”

Duchamp was associated with three of the 20th century’s radical art movements—Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism—yet his practice was one of continuous reinvention, impossible to consolidate under any singular label. Marcel Duchamp will present a chronological survey of the entirety of the artist’s career, from 1900 to 1968. The exhibition’s opening sections will explore Duchamp’s early development: his fledgling efforts as a cartoonist working for the satirical press, his apprenticeship in the various styles of French modern art, and his first flashes of public recognition as a member of the Cubist group in Paris in 1911 and 1912. The rejection of Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) (1912) by his own Cubist associates, and the scandal provoked by its display at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, cemented both the painting’s iconic status and its maker’s enduring reputation as an artistic provocateur.

In 1912, Duchamp began to question his occupation and, remarkably for a young artist who was having his first brush with fame, decided to abandon the craft of oil painting to imagine more independent ways of being an artist. This led to the creation of his magnum opus, the monumental painting on glass titled The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915–23). One section of the exhibition will offer a rare opportunity to study the full range of materials and approaches that Duchamp employed in his precise planning and execution of The Large Glass. The exhibition will also look at the  invention of the readymades through many of the early examples that remain extant, including With Hidden Noise (1916), Apolinère Enameled (1916–17), and one of the best-known images of the 20th century: L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), Duchamp’s irreverent defacement of a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa with added moustache, beard, and a vulgar phonetic pun.

Around 1920, Duchamp began talking about shifting his vocation from art to chess, which he thought had a higher form of abstract beauty. He also took on the female alter ego known as Rrose Sélavy. The exhibition will go on to explore Rrose Sélavy’s work in different specialities. One was language games: aphorisms, puns, tongue twisters, and spoonerisms, or sentences with sounds or letters transposed to humorous effect. The other was machines for producing optical illusions, or visual images with no material reality. 

By the mid-1930s, Duchamp became interested in revisiting his own life’s work in the form of reproductions. The centerpiece of the exhibition will be the work known as Box in a Valise (1935–41), Duchamp’s “portable museum” of his own drawings, paintings, works on glass, and readymades. Not only did the Box in a Valise embody Duchamp’s work in miniature; it also epitomized the positive paradox of his art by advancing his lifelong exploration of originals, copies, and the nature of art in the era of mechanical reproduction. This will be the most extensive presentation of the Box in a Valise to date. The exhibition will feature three deluxe examples, a complete set of standard copies assembled between 1941 and 1971, and a large, never-before-seen selection of preparatory materials detailing the work’s genesis and assembly.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Duchamp gained unprecedented visibility through lectures, interviews, television appearances, publications, gallery exhibitions, and his first museum retrospectives. These exhibitions were made possible, in part, because Duchamp changed his mode of working yet again: he allowed the proliferation of his work via the creation, often by others, of full-scale replicas. The exhibition will feature a comprehensive group of readymade replicas, including iterations of Bicycle Wheel (1913), Bottle Rack (1914), In Advance of the Broken Arm (1915), and the notorious Fountain (1917), the porcelain urinal laid on its back and signed with a pseudonym.

In the final twenty years of Duchamp’s life, when it was generally assumed that his work was complete, Duchamp labored in secret to create Étant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage . . . (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas . . . ) (1946–66), a room-sized diorama with a sculpted female figure in a landscape. The exhibition will conclude with artworks and studies that supported the creation of this final major work (the alter ego of The Large Glass), which was installed at the PMA in 1969, according to Duchamp’s wishes. Visitors will be invited beyond the Dorrance Galleries to visit Galleries 281-283 where The Large Glass and Étant donnés are on permanent display.

Marcel Duchamp is organized by Matthew Affron, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art, PMA; Ann Temkin, the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; and Michelle Kuo, Chief Curator at Large and Publisher, MoMA, with Alexandra “Lo” Drexelius, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; Helena Klevorn, Curatorial Assistant, Department of the Chief Curator at Large, MoMA;  Danielle Cooke, Exhibition Assistant, PMA; and Julia Vázquez, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, PMA.

The exhibition in Philadelphia will follow its presentation at MoMA (April 12–August 22, 2026). A related exhibition will travel to the Grand Palais in Paris in Spring 2027, where it will be organized by Jeanne Brun, Deputy Director, Musée National d’Art Moderne, with Pauline Créteur, Research Assistant to the Deputy Director.

Marcel Duchamp will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue published by MoMA and authored by the PMA and MoMA co-curators, offering a panoramic view of the artist’s work in all mediums. The catalogue essay addresses Duchamp’s museum-like approach to working with private collections, his role as co-founder of the exhibition society known as the Société Anonyme, Inc., his close association with MoMA during its early decades, and his decision to make the PMA the permanent repository of his work.

Organizing Information
Marcel Duchamp is organized by the Philadelphia Art Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, with the generous collaboration of the Centre Pompidou.


Curatorial Credits
The exhibition is organized by Matthew Affron, The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; and Michelle Kuo, Chief Curator at Large and Publisher, MoMA; with Danielle Cooke, Exhibition Assistant, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Julia Vázquez, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Alexandra “Lo” Drexelius, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; and Helena Klevorn, Curatorial Assistant, Department of the Chief Curator at Large, MoMA.

IMAGES

Marcel Duchamp. Landscape. Neuilly, January-February 1911. Oil on canvas; 18 1/8 x 24" (46.3 x 61.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Katherine S. Dreier Bequest © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp

Man Ray (1890 –1976), Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy, c. 1920-1921, Gelatin silver print, 1/2 x 6 13/16 in, The Samuel S. White 3rd and Vera White Collection, 1957, 1957-49-1. © Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), Portrait of Dr. Dumouchel, 1910, Oil on canvas, 39 1/2 x 25 7/8 in, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-508. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Association Marcel Duchamp.

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), 1912, Oil on canvas, 57 7/8 x 35 1/8 in, Framed: 59 3/4 × 36 3/4 × 2 inches (151.8 × 93.3 × 5.1 cm), Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-59. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Association Marcel Duchamp.

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), The Chess Game, 1910, Oil on canvas, 44 7/8 x 57 11/16 in, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-82. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Association Marcel Duchamp.