Between Light and Darkness

“Between Light and Darkness”, a book and illustrative display timed to the 445th anniversary of the prominent Italian painter Caravaggio, runs in the fine arts reading room (306), from September 14 to October 8.

Michelangelo Merisi, the artist who was called and known in the world’s art history as Caravaggio (1571–1610), is a reformer of European painting and the major figure of the Baroque, founder of realism, master of chiaroscuro and initiator of Caravaggism art.

Despite the outstanding talent, the artist had misfortune in life and underwent adversity and deprivation, dueling, fights and arrests, wandering in different cities of Italy, fighting poverty and social prejudices. Biographers and art historians are still figuring out the circumstances of his life, discovering new archival documents related to Caravaggio. The very fate of the artist is as if woven from the opposition of darkness and light, where in the end the greatness of Creativity wins.

The painter’s style is unique and extraordinarily expressive: soft twilight light, which pulls out silhouettes and outlines from the twilight; the emphasized diagonals of compositions; the image of real types, his contemporaries and commoners; volume and plastic tactility; theatricality and visibility of images, "the embodiment of the triumph of the spiritual principle".

The exhibition presents reproductions of the most known works Lute Player, Young Bacchus, Boy with a Basket of Fruit, Supper at Emmaus, Fortune Teller, Boy Bitten by Lizard. Caravaggio’s Biblical painting is also represented: Rest on the Flight to Egypt, The Calling of Saint Matthew, Conversion of Saul, Repentant Magdalene, The Entombment of Christ.

The exposition also includes critical essays, biographies and fiction about Caravaggio, written by various authors.

Publications about Caravaggio’s followers, admirers of his art and successors of Caravaggism are also on display.

More than 50 publication are presented.

The opening hours of the exhibition corresponds to the library’s opening hours.
Entrance to the exhibition is available by the library ticket or ticket of the library's social and cultural center.

All books presented at the exhibition are available in the e-Catalog.