Caravaggio @ Malta and Sicily

Zoom Course

Caravaggio @ Malta and Sicily

Art around the world—live with Luca!

Date: Minimum 5 Friends - Choose the date, then CONTACT US to schedule

Time: TBD

Expert: Luca Pietrosanti, Art Historian & Expert Guide

Fees: $25/session

Doing Good: 10% of net proceeds to Muri Sicuri or nonprofit of your choice

Itinerary

Join Luca to travel the world virtually, to explore art, history, and what’s happening today. Practice your language of Western art. Identify historical influences. Interpret icons. Notice the darkness. See the light.

“I bury my head in the pillow, and dream of my true love…I’m rowing to you on the great, dark ocean.” 

We continue to explore Art Around the World with Luca, following Caravaggio, who having fled from Rome, found immediate success in Naples with the commission of the Seven Acts of Mercy, only to leave after a few months for Malta, arriving in 1607.

There curiously, Caravaggio receives a knighthood and paints the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, his largest ever work, and the only painting to which he put his signature, Saint Jerome Writing, both housed in Saint John's Co-Cathedral, in Valletta, Malta, According to Andrea Pomella, The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist is widely considered "one of the most important works in Western painting."

Together, these works represent a key period in the development of this unorthodox artist. His style, with its powerful use of shadow and light (chiaroscuro), created a choreographed drama with the subject, a technique which broke with the tradition of religious painting.

Later, in Sicily in 1609, he painted the Burial of St. Lucy, now housed in the Santa Lucia Church in Siracusa, the Raising of Lazarus, and the Adoration of the Shepherds.

Resources:

• Caravaggio Foundation
• Visit Malta: Caravaggio 
• Visit Sicily: On The Wall With Caravaggio
• NYT Article: The Criminal Genius of Caravaggio

Photo Wikimedia.org

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