The San Domenico di Forlì announces, from 10 February to 17 June 2018, an exhibition that is not out of place to define "sumptuous". Characterized by a new exhibition itinerary which, for the first time, uses the convent church of San Giacomo Apostolo as an exhibition venue, at the end of its complete recovery.
The Eternal and the time between Michelangelo and Caravaggio documents what was one of the highest and most fascinating moments in Western history. The years that ideally elapse between the Sack of Rome (1527) and the death of Caravaggio (1610); between the start of the Protestant Reformation (1517-1520) and the Council of Trent (1545-1563); between Michelangelo's Last Judgment (1541) and Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius (1610) represent the beginning of our modernity.
The request to the Church of Rome for greater spiritual rigor, if on the one hand it produced a renewed defense of sacred images (above all by the Ignatian Society of Jesus), on the other it required a different attention to the composition and representation of the images, as well as a redefinition of the sacred space and its ornaments.
Thus new schools and orientations develop. From the attempt to give life to a "timeless art" of Valeriano and Pulzone, in the Roman environment, to the results of the chromatic modeling of Titian, to the naturalism of the Carracci, with their "affectionate Lombard timbre", as Longhi calls it.
But it is also daily life that frees itself from the flashes of the extreme Renaissance. There is a "sentimental temperature" that seems to interpret the new meaning of the Council of Trent which must speak to all hearts, creating a new form of piety and devotion, with the exaltation of the Marian figure, the first martyrs and the new saints. Francis of Assisi above all.
In Italy the most demanding battle for painting and for modern living is fought in sacred commission painting. The protagonist of this struggle is above all Caravaggio. He attempts a radical innovation of its religious meaning as a fact of profoundly popular religion.
From the last Michelangelo to Caravaggio, passing through Raphael, Rosso Fiorentino, Lorenzo Lotto, Pontormo, Sebastiano del Piombo, Correggio, Bronzino, Vasari, Daniele da Volterra, El Greco, the Carracci, Federico Barocci, Veronese, Titian, Federico Zuccari, Guido Reni, Domenico Beccafumi, Giuseppe Valeriano and Scipione Pulzone, add an aesthetic thread of references and innovations that will give life to a new age. Including alternative forms by Rubens and Guido Reni.
Image: Daniele da Volterra: The Prophet Elijah in the Desert c. 1550, oil on canvas. Private collection, courtesy Galleria Benappi
