The exhibition The Painters of Light. From Caravaggio to Paolini in Lucca, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi , is an impossible exhibition, able to tell through the masterpieces of the seventeenth century the role of light in painting from Caravaggio to Pietro Paolini: Caravaggio, first director of the history of art and Pietro Paolini , Lucca protagonist of the most important aesthetic themes of the new naturalistic school. Caravaggio is so great because everything in his paintings, from the light to the cutting of the composition, suggests an art that we recognize, a cast of sensitivity and experiences that are not those of the seventeenth century but those of every century in which he was present and central man. Paolini captures the light in warm tones that illuminates the scenes predominantly invaded by subjects of the people in the same settings as Caravaggio.

The Painters of Light exhibition brought to Lucca more than 100 works from the main Italian museums as well as from prestigious ecclesiastical, private and international collections.

Among the artists on display : Caravaggio, Pieter Paul Rubens , Pietro Paolini , Jusepe de Ribera, Mattia Preti , Matthias Stomer, Pietro Ricchi, Trophime Bigot, Giovanni Serodine, Giovanni Domenico Lombardi, Orazio Gentileschi, Orazio Riminaldi, Orazio Borgianni, Giovanni Baglione, Bernardino Mei, Paolo Biancucci, Rutilio Manetti, Niccolò Tornioli, Bartolomeo Manfredi, Giovanni Francesco Guerrieri, Simone del Tintore, Francesco Rustici, Bernardino Santini, Antiveduto Gramatica, Valentin De Boulogne, Antonio Gherardi, Cecco del Caravaggio, Tomaso Salini, Baccio Carpi, Angelo Caroselli , Pseudo Caroselli, Pietro della Vecchia, Girolamo Scaglia, Giovanni Coli and Filippo Gherardi, Paolo Guidotti, Paolo Biancucci, Giovanni Battistello known as Caracciolo, Pietro Sigismondi, Alessandro Turchi known as l'Orbetto.

"The exhibition starts from Caravaggio's revolution, indicative, with the presence of a very remarkable work such as Cavadenti, on which, for cut and genre, certainly Paolini had to reflect, testifying to the most integral coherence among the painters of light"

Vittorio Sgarbi

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