Mention Bologna, says Scott Schaefer, and “most people think of spaghetti sauce or lunch meat.” The J. Paul Getty Museum curator hopes to change that with “Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna 1575–1725,” 41 works by a small group of brilliant upstarts led by Ludovico Carracci and his two cousins, Agostino and Annibale. Condemned by the 19th-century English critic John Ruskin as “insincere” and “eclectic,” the highly emotive images, with their naturalistic lighting and depictions of human flesh, shaped European painting for two centuries. From December 16 through May 3, 2009, museumgoers can behold such treasures as the 1630 Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife by Guido Reni—once more famous than Rembrandt, says Schaefer—and Giuseppe Maria Crespi’s circa 1712 “Seven Sacra­ments” series, among several works never before shown outside the Staatliche Kunst­samm­lungen Dresden, whose collection of Bolo­gnese paintings is the cornerstone of this survey.

"Italian Hours" originally appeared in the December 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's December 2008 Table of Contents.