The Flagellation painted by Caravaggio in 1607 for the de Franchis family and for the church of San Domenico Maggiore is one of the strongest, best known and most appealing paintings of the seventeenth century Neapolitan, and one could say Italian and European, first and dazzling arrival at South - together with the Seven Works of Mercy of the nearby Pio Monte - of the language of integral naturalism and careful study of the luminous phenomena of the great Lombard painter. For over fifty years, however, the work has left the Ancient Center of Naples and the church of San Domenico, where it had been visible for 350 years, exalted by city guides and travellers, and has been hospitalized for reasons of safety at the Capodimonte Museum, becoming one of the most iconic paintings and major attractions and being lent to numerous exhibitions around the world, the latest one in Paris and the Louvre in 2022-23.

Today's generous initiative by the Ministry of the Interior's Fund for Cult Buildings to exhibit upon its return to Naples after the Louvre exhibition not in Capodimonte, but at the Diocesan Museum of Donnaregina, marks an important reversal of trend in this matter, and constitutes a courageous attempt to bring this extraordinary work closer to the territory and the city. Over the past decades and in the many exhibitions, including in Naples, the Flagellation has been exhibited alongside the other great works of Caravaggio's last period, in comparison with the paintings of the major southern Caravaggesques or in comparison with those of a similar subject or with the copies taken from it, without even neglecting the results, sometimes surprising, of the restorations it has undergone over time and of the diagnostic investigations carried out for the occasion.

The exhibition that is intended to be presented in Donnaregina intends to follow a different path; that is, on the one hand to carefully study the lighting and make the most of the painting with light, allowing the public to see and enjoy it in the best way, and on the other to accompany it with a study and with educational and communication equipment aimed at illustrate the context of origin, the church of San Domenico Maggiore, the chapel of the de Franchis family and the history and events of this same illustrious family of jurists and magistrates, who became dukes of Torre Orsaia and marquises of Taviano. It will be an opportunity for the citizens of Naples and its visitors to rediscover the links that this extraordinary work of art has with the city and with the large churches built or rebuilt and richly decorated in the years following the Council of Trent and on horseback between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, during what was defined as "the golden century" of Neapolitan art.