The story
In 1622 a wealthy cloth merchant in Naples, Domenico Lercaro, left his furniture and his paintings to the priests of the Oratory, the community founded in Rome by Saint Philip Neri. Neapolitans call these fathers the Girolamini, after San Girolamo della Carità, the Roman church where their order began. In 1631 the Milano family added a second collection, and the pictures gathered around the fathers' great church became one of the earliest collections in the city that the public could visit.
Today the gallery fills rooms on the first floor of the old convent and runs from the 1500s to the mid-1700s. Its strongest names are Neapolitan. Jusepe de Ribera, the Spanish painter who made his career in Naples, is here with a Saint Andrew, a series of apostles and a Flagellation of Christ. Battistello Caracciolo, one of the first local followers of Caravaggio, painted the Baptism of Christ, and Guido Reni, the Bolognese master, is represented by a Flight into Egypt.
After the 1980 earthquake in Irpinia the gallery stayed shut for 15 years and reopened in 1995. Access to the whole complex has been limited in recent years, so it is worth checking before you go.
