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The show

Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, from 14 October 2023 to 14 January 2024, hosts on display, for the first time to the public, at the conclusion of its restoration and diagnostic investigations, a true unknown masterpiece: the first version of the famous composition by Caravaggio depicting the Taking of Christ .

In fact, the work had only been exhibited in 1951 at the historic Exhibition of Caravaggio and the Caravaggio artists held at the Palazzo Reale in Milan curated by Roberto Longhi, when it appeared dirty and with various repaints, removed after the recent restoration.

The investigations have highlighted radical changes and extensive regrets, which confirm its absolute authenticity, confirmed for its very high quality by authoritative scholars since its reappearance in 2003.


Due to its exceptional nature, the painting was notified by the Italian State with the Decree of 2 December 2004 of the Minister of Cultural Heritage as works of particular interest for the Nation.

Its prestigious provenances are documented for the first time in the exhibition: the Mattei collection, the Colonna di Stigliano collection and the Ruffo di Calabria collection, through which it reached the current owner.

The Taking of Christ from the Mattei collection, known through numerous copies and presumed originals, is one of the most spiritually intense and pathos -rich compositions of the Roman activity of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Milan 1571 - Porto Ercole 1610).

It constitutes a true counterpart for private use of the astonishing canvases of the Contarelli chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi (1599-1600) and of the Cerasi chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo (1600), which mark a radical turning point in expressive terms in the artist's production Lombard, after the prevalence of genre and mythological-themed subjects in previous years.


Here we retrace the controversial history of Caravaggio's powerful invention and its pictorial testimonies, which have a culmination in the two editions of the Ruffo di Calabria collection, rediscovered by Roberto Longhi in 1943, and of the Jesuit Company of Dublin, in storage at the National Gallery of Ireland since 1993.

The two versions are both autograph, but endowed with formal and expressive autonomy, with a precedence of the Ruffo version, of which the Irish one is a replica with variants revisited in the pictorial and layout characteristics, improving the classic decoration in an iconographic and aesthetic sense compared to to the "expressionist" and highly dramatic character of the prototype.

No work by Caravaggio has seen such troubled collecting events in its main editorial offices, with the publication of a thriller novel, a daring theft and a paradoxical legal case, which alone would deserve specific treatment.

Works on display

Timetable and tickets

Address

Piazza di Corte, 15
00072 Ariccia

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