Van Gogh at Palazzo Bonaparte

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa; or how to go to an exhibition with a biased, negative attitude and come back happy and satisfied.
It’s true: the Van Gogh exhibition at Palazzo Bonaparte in Rome started with so many factors that usually keep me away from an exhibition: a big name, huge crowds, the announcement that it’s a big event-exhibition and so on.
There were indeed a great many visitors, but I would say that the difficulty in viewing the paintings was the only negative aspect of an otherwise wonderful exhibition.
It is not every day you get to see so many beautiful paintings (some sublime) by Van Gogh all together, thanks to loans from the Kröller-Müller Museum.
But, in my opinion, the true achievement of this exhibition is something else.
When you leave, your eyes are filled with beauty but your heart also swells with melancholy, that melancholy that was always with Vincent (as he often signed his works).
This exhibition succeeds in conveying the deep personality of a tormented artist, which managed to spread on the canvas a feeling, not just color, an emotion, not just form.
This is an exhibition not to be missed.