Menu

Bodies and Shadows: Caravaggio and His Legacy

Musée Fabre, Montpellier, June 23, – October 14, 2012
Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, June 23 – October 14, 2012
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, November 11, 2012 – February 10, 2013
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, March 6 – June 16, 2013

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in conjunction with the Musée Fabre, Montpellier and the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, all FRAME member museums, co-organized and presented an exhibition devoted to Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) and the impact that his revolutionary art had on art in Italy and throughout Europe. The exhibition opened simultaneously in June 2012 at the two French museums split between Italian/French and Northern followers and traveled to Los Angeles November 2012 through February 2013; with the final venue in Hartford in March 6 through June 16, 2013. Both the Wadsworth Atheneum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art contributed important masterpieces to the project and over 60% of the loans that constitute the exhibition are from FRAME member museums. The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art was the first American Museum to purchase an authentic painting by Caravaggio (the great Ecstasy of St. Francis acquired in 1944) and it has added a great many works by his followers and imitators in Italy, Holland, Flanders, and France, such as Gentileschi, Saraceni, Riminaldi, Ribera, Zurbarán and Sweerts. In recent years, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has acquired an important group of Caravaggesque paintings by Saraceni, Baglione, and Valentin to name but a few.

Michelangelo Merisi da Carvaggio; Saint Francis in Ecstasy, c. 1594; Oil on canvas, 36 3/8″ x 50 1/4″; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Caitlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1943.222
Gerrit van Honthorst, Smiling Girl, a Courtesan, Holding an Obscene Image, 1625, oil on canvas, Saint Louis Art Museum