The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula by Caravaggio, a masterpiece belonging to the Intesa Sanpaolo art collections, is on temporary leave from the Gallerie d'Italia - Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, the bank’s museum venue in Naples, for display in the one-man exhibition on the great Lombardy painter, entitled Caravaggio in Russia, running from 26 November 2011 to 26 February 2012 at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. The loan forms part of a series of projects planned for the Year of Italian culture and language in Russia and Russian culture and language in Italy.
In keeping with the relationship – and standing as a testament to the special ties that Intesa Sanpaolo has maintained with Russia and its cultural heritage for many years - the Moscow Museum has sent a painting from its collections to Naples, the Portrait of an Elderly Woman by Rembrandt, which will not only allow a work by one of the greatest painters in European art history and little represented in Italian public collections to be viewed in Italy, but also for it to be compared with Caravaggio’s Saint Ursula, thus offering the chance to understand the differences and similarities between two major exponents of seventeenth century art.