Your Excellencies president Carlo Ciampi and Missis Ciampi, Your Majesties King Harald and Queen Sonja, ladies and gentlemen, dear audience.

As Norwegian minister for culture and church affairs it is a great pleasure for me to take part in the opening of the exhibition Amor Roma here in our National museum of art, architecture and design. I am very grateful that Norway has been given the opportunity to exhibit nine masterpieces from Roman museums. Some of the outstanding pieces we are going to see, are hardly ever moved from their home country.

The exhibition is the result of a long and fruitful cooperation between our two capitals. It is the direct result of the Munch-exhibition that is to be held in Rome in 2005. We are also looking forward to that event.

Some of the works of art in this exhibition continue a line from the Caravaggio-exhibition, which I had the pleasure to open here in Oslo in February last year. The painting by Baglione and his use of light surely must have been inspired by Caravaggio.

I am particularly pleased by the fact that this exhibition gives our National museum the honour of hosting the first display of the sitting-goddess sculpture that was found last July during an excavation in Palazzo Quirinale in Rome. It makes a lasting impression to read in the catalogue, that the sculpture is unpublished.

An exhibition like the one we will see here today contributes to bringing our countries closer together. The exhibition here in the National museum of art gives us a unique chance to get to know important works of art from the Italian renaissance and baroque. For that we are very grateful. And now we all look forward to enjoying these masterpieces.