This is the second volume devoted to Italian painting in the The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Seventeenth and eighteenth century paintings, especially those of the Venetian School, form a major part of the collection, thanks to the many acquisitions of the past few years. This scholarly book offers a panoramic view of painting in Italy during these two centuries, including the works of 'minor' artists such as Ferrau Fenzoni and Francesco Foschi. The collection begins and ends with two of the greatest paintings of all time - Caravaggio's ""St Catherine,"" and ""The Death of Hyacinthus"" by Giambattista Tiepolo.

Beginning in the 1920s, Kress and his foundation assembled, first in New York, and later in Washington, the nation's most inclusive collection of Italian art. In 1938 he decided to donate the collection to the National Gallery of Art, and when it opened in 1941, 375 paintings and 18 works of sculpture from the Kress gift were installed in the West Building. The Gallery's holdings of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian paintings have been enriched by gifts from P.A.B. Widener and Paul Mellon, and more recently from purchases. This catalogue is the first of four volumes to document the National Gallery's great collection of Italian paintings.

"The preeminent collector Norton Simon amassed more than 100 Italian paintings during his 35-year career, and today they stand among the treasures of the Norton Simon Museum. In this catalogue noted art historian Sir Nicholas Penny pairs 47 paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries with in-depth commentary, skillfully interweaving tales from the artists' lives, observations on the artists' influences and patronage, and technical notes"--