Fr. Anthony R. Lusvardi, S.J.: Caravaggio 2025: Radiant in the Darkness

While most of the world’s attention was focused on the election of the new pope in Rome, another major spectacle was taking place in the city as well. “If there is a single painter with whom the new millennium has identified, it is without a doubt Caravaggio,” begins the catalogue for Caravaggio 2025, an extraordinary exhibition of twenty-four of the artist’s works, gathered at Rome’s Palazzo Barberini from museums and private collections across the world.  Judging from the crowds and the hype, the event’s organizers have it right.  Caravaggio is in.

This hasn’t always been the case.  After falling into obscurity for several centuries, Caravaggio’s (1571-1610) star began to rise again in 1951 thanks to a similar exhibition organized in Milan by the great art historian Roberto Longhi. Another art historian I know told me years ago that her colleagues had run out of things to write about Michelangelo and so fixed on Caravaggio.  But there’s more to it than that. …

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