Tomorrow, March 29th at 5:00 PM in Palermo, at the Nuova Ipsa Bookstore (located at 71 Via dei Leoni), there will be a cultural event dedicated to Caravaggio’s Nativity, a painting created by the artist Michelangelo Merisi, commonly known by the pseudonym Caravaggio.
The initiative, promoted and organized by Maestro Mauri Lucchese, will feature an exhibition of a copy of the famous work by the Italian artist who lived between 1571 and 1610.
The original painting, in fact, was stolen during the night between October 17th and 18th, 1969, from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo where it was housed and has never been recovered since. Caravaggio’s Nativity, valued at no less than $20 million according to the FBI, is included by the latter in the world’s top ten most important stolen masterpieces.
The cultural event will begin with greetings from event manager Daniela Martino and from the social media manager, as well as the events coordinator of the Nuova Ipsa Bookstore, Isidoro Farina.
Leading the presentation of the event will be art critic Valentina Gueci, a scholar and expert on Michelangelo Merisi, who will offer insights into the genius of seventeenth-century painting, with particular attention to its expressive contemporaneity spanning theatrical scenes, cinematography, photography, and above all hyperrealistic painting.
The meeting will also provide an opportunity to reintroduce to the public the book titled “Caravaggio e dintorni” (“Caravaggio and Surroundings”), written by Maestro Mauri Lucchese, a historian of the city of Palermo and a scholar of Michelangelo Merisi and the artists of his school.
Artist Rossella Bevilacqua will be present at the event, exhibiting an engraving dedicated to Caravaggio.
The Caravaggio’s Nativity: The Story of a Painting that Inspired Writers, Screenwriters, and Directors
The Caravaggio’s Nativity, whose full name is “Nativity with Saints Lawrence and Francis of Assisi,” is an oil painting on canvas measuring 268 x 197 cm depicting the birth of Christ with authentic realism, typical of Michelangelo Merisi’s distinctive style in which he reproduced reality as he observed it on canvas.
The saints and madonnas of Caravaggio bear the features of the marginalized, the poor whom he had come to know well during his continuous wandering and fleeing throughout Italy.
In the Caravaggio’s Nativity, each character is captured in a spontaneous attitude: Saint Joseph, relatively young compared to traditional iconography, turns his back to the viewer, wrapped in a green cloak and engages in conversation with a shepherd behind the figure of Saint Francis of Assisi. The presence of Saint Francis is surely a tribute to the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, which at the time had passed to the Venerable Company devoted to him, established as early as 1564.
The figure on the left is Saint Lawrence; the Madonna, here with the appearance of a common woman, has an extremely melancholic aspect, perhaps already foreshadowing the fate of her son, placed on a small bed of straw: she would be the same model appearing in the painting Judith and Holofernes. The head of the ox is clearly visible, while the donkey is barely discernible. Just above the Child, there is finally a hovering angel, a symbol of divine glory.
paintedWhat lends particular dramatic intensity to the event is the play of colors and lights that characterize this creative phase of the painter. The canvas, expressly commissioned to celebrate the cult of Saint Lawrence and Saint Francis, was placed on the main altar of the Oratory of San Lorenzo. Thanks to a restoration carried out in 1951, it was in relatively good condition.
In popular culture, the undeniable charm of the Caravaggio’s Nativity was a source of inspiration for various personalities in Italian art. In the book “The Color of the Sun” by Andrea Camilleri, the author describes Caravaggio’s work as follows: “In the nativity, I have found my green, my beautiful glowing green”: this imaginative phrase, better than others, describes Caravaggio’s relaxation, his brief tranquility found during his professed stopover in Sicily, and refers specifically to the green cloak of Saint Joseph depicted in the painting.
The story of the theft of the masterpiece inspired Leonardo Sciascia, another Sicilian writer, in the 1989 story titled “A Simple Story,” from which the homonymous film of 1991 was subsequently adapted, directed by Emidio Greco.