On 29 September, the artist's birthday, the long-awaited exhibition Inside Caravaggio will open at Palazzo Reale in Milan. The painter returns “home” with 18 magnificent works.
He was born in Milan on 29 September 1571, and it is here and on this very date that the exhibition dedicated to him will open: Inside Caravaggio at Palazzo Reale is shaping up to be one of the unmissable art events of the coming autumn. A uniquely conceived event, it will feature the display of 18 works alongside their respective X-ray images, allowing visitors to follow and discover, through the use of multimedia tools, the artist's process — from his initial idea to the final realisation of each work.
Inside Caravaggio will be a tribute from the city to the great artist, and at the same time an opportunity to discover hitherto unknown aspects of his works and his life — aspects brought to light through diagnostic investigations and new documentary research that have led to a reassessment of the chronology of his early canvases. A special, unprecedented exhibition, then, one that strengthens the already existing bond between Caravaggio and his birthplace: it is also at Palazzo Reale that an epochal and fundamental exhibition is remembered — perhaps the most celebrated of all — curated by Roberto Longhi. That was 1951, and Caravaggio's work had been in near oblivion for almost two centuries, a period brought to an end precisely by Longhi's studies, which finally consecrated the artist as a master of international renown.
This exhibition could therefore also help to set Caravaggio's art on a partly new course: the curator of Inside Caravaggio, Rossella Vodret, indeed states: "Some constants have emerged in Caravaggio's working methods, but unexpected and hitherto completely unknown executive elements have also come to light: a series of hidden images has surfaced from beneath the layers of paint. Moreover, the myth that Caravaggio never drew has been dispelled, since traces of drawing have appeared on the light ground used in his early works."
These are conclusions reached through new means such as reflectography and X-ray imaging, which, penetrating to varying depths beneath the painted surface, have made it possible to follow Caravaggio's creative process — his pentimenti, reworkings and adjustments in the elaboration of a composition. This explains the title of the exhibition: that "inside" which thus becomes anything but metaphorical.
At Palazzo Reale, 18 Caravaggio canvases will be brought together for the first time in a single exhibition, among them Saint John the Baptist (1603), Saint Jerome in Penitence (1605–1606), Boy Bitten by a Lizard (1596–97) and The Sacrifice of Isaac (1602–03), on loan from Italian and foreign museums and galleries. In addition, a selection of documents from the State Archives of Rome and Siena relating to the human and artistic story of Caravaggio will be on display — documents that have profoundly altered the chronology of his first years in Rome and created mysterious gaps in his activity.
The scientific committee that has long studied and worked on the exhibited works gives us a preview: it is in the San Giovannino at Palazzo Corsini that the artist's creative process has emerged most clearly. Initially, a lamb appeared — the iconographic symbol par excellence — before being eliminated in the final version of the work. And all of this creative becoming will be visible thanks to the multimedia support provided for each work.
The exhibition Inside Caravaggio will be open to the public at Palazzo Reale in Milan from 29 September 2017 to 28 January 2018, with the following opening hours: Tuesday to Friday and Sunday 09:30–19:30; Thursday and Saturday 09:30–22:30. Tickets (audioguide included) cost €13.