Caravaggio exhibition opens amid great anticipation

Heritage Malta's much awaited exhibition by the rebellious Italian baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was inaugurated by President Eddie Fenech Adami yesterday.

The exhibition, entitled Caravaggio: L'Immagine del Divino, is being held at the Museum of Archaeology in Republic Street, Valletta, and is open till the end of November.

The event, being curated by Sir Dennis Mahon and Caravaggio specialist Maurizio Marini, forms part of the activities being organised by the national cultural agency marking the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio's sojourn in Malta.

It includes an audio-visual presentation of Caravaggio's life, eight paintings, a section on the use of technology and modern science to evaluate the authentication of certain works, mementoes of the artist in Malta and another audiovisual presentation of his works.

It is complemented by works of Caravaggisti artists at the Museum of Fine Arts in South Street, Valletta.

Dr Fenech Adami said the Maltese were proud to celebrate Caravaggio's stay in Malta, and he praised Heritage Malta for bringing culture closer to the people.

The President also pointed out that this year also marked the 40th anniversary of the signing of the first financial protocol between Malta and Italy.

Tourism and Culture Minister Francis Zammit Dimech said the fourth centenary made the Maltese more conscious of their priceless heritage.

While he was in Malta, Caravaggio was commissioned for various works by the Order of St John. These include his masterpiece, The Beheading of St John, a permanent exhibit at St John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta.

Heritage Malta chairman Mario Tabone said the exhibition had been a complex and difficult operation which required a lot of thought and imagination.

Dr Tabone described Caravaggio as spectacular, someone who managed to combine the secular with the religious with an extraordinary sense of realism, obliterating the distance between the painting and its viewers.

The opening was also attended by renowned Italian art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, who is also a member of the exhibition's scientific committee.

The exhibited paintings are:

The Sacrifice of Isaac and St Francis in Ecstasy from the Piasecka-Johnson Collection; St John the Baptist from the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Corsini, Rome; St Francis from the Museo Civico di Cremona; St Francis in Meditation from Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome; Sacrifice of Isaac from a private collection in Modena; Decapitation of San Gennaro from Palestrina, Rome; and The Ecstasy of St Francis from the Musei Civici di Udine.