Art History News: 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.

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