On the occasion of Agrigento Italian Capital of Culture 2025, the exhibition will be inaugurated on 1 August “Caravaggio – between darkness and light”, promoted by Mediterranean art And Navigateedited by Denis Depaoli with Giulia d’Achille and Elia Pilati which marks a new cultural chapter for the city of Sciacca, transforming the Samonà Popular Theater in an unpublished and immersive exhibition space.
“Sciacca is a city of culture – he declares The mayor Fabio Term – that today is honored to welcome a giant of art, Caravaggio, within a place finally returned after so many years to his community; An event in the event “.” This event of international importance – he adds the city councilor Simone Di Paola – marks the beginning of a new cultural path that enhances our heritage and opens the city to new perspectives “.” This of the Caravaggio exhibition – continues The Councilor for Tourism, Francesco Dimino – It is one of those opportunities useful for attracting fans and travelers from all over Italy and beyond. And we do it reopening the Samonà theater, a symbolic place of our city, with an event worthy of the best international stage “.” Sciacca is preparing to welcome – concludes theCouncilor for promotion of events, Alessandro Curreri – An immersive experience, unique among timeless masterpieces, capable of generating emotion, knowledge and new prospects for cultural and tourist growth “.
An ambitious vision of cultural relaunch in which, thanks to art, a path of enhancement of the territory and regeneration of collective identity is activated. After a long closing period, The Samonà theater thus returns to open up to the public not only as a recovered building, but as a living place of experimentation and story, thanks to a cultural initiative that intertwines memory, art and contemporaneity.
“We believe that beauty, art and culture – they say Mediterranean art and navigationpromoters of the project – may be authentic regeneration tools. Bringing Caravaggio and his interpreters to Sciacca means investing in a new imagination for the territory, which starts from the past to build contemporary visions ».
The exhibition offers a trip to five sections through 22 works by various artists who testify to the visual, conceptual and emotional heritage left by Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio, and its profound influence on the Italian and European art of the seventeenth century.
The path starts from the first critical reactions to the figure of Merisievoked through judicial and biographical tensions who built the myth, with artists such as Giovanni Baglione and Bartolomeo Manfredi, and continues with the exploration of the lyrical and intimate naturalism of Orazio Gentileschi, Carlo Saraceni and Massimo Stanzione. The dramatic echo of the active tender between Spain, France and Holland follows – including Jusepe de Ribera, Georges de la Tour, Valentin de Boulogne, Trophime Bigot and the Caravaggeschi of Utrecht – who made the Caravaggesco chiaroscuro a universal codeimmersed in theatricality and spiritual tension. The dialogue is then dialectical with the Bolognese school, Where Guido Reni, Guercino and Simone Cantarini reinterpret Caravaggio’s lesson with idealizing elegance and a new composed spirituality. The narration becomes choral in the section dedicated to sacred and profane humanity, Where saints, martyrs, prostitutes and sinners coexist in the chiaroscuro of the soul, protagonists of a deeply human and theatrical painting.
Absolute fulcrue of the exhibition itinerary is the work “The disbelief of San Tommaso”, presented exclusively for Sicily in a spectacular set -up: located in a reflective black room inspired by the ‘Infinity Room’ of Yayoi Kusama. “The disbelief of St. Thomas”, the only work of the master on display and which concludes the exhibition itinerary, And A painting in which Caravaggio captures with anatomical precision and theatrical force the instant in which the doubt turns into faith: Not only a work of art, but a human, silent and universal gesture, which invites those who observe to look, touch, believe.
«Caravaggio, restless genius of the seventeenth century – Denis Depaoli, Giulia d’Achille and Elia Pilati declare the curators – He was long put to the margins by the official historiography for his unruly life and for a pictorial language considered too raw, too human. This exhibition retraces that underground echo that has crossed Europe, returning to Merisi its inheritance: that of having painted, first, the truth “.
“Caravaggio – Between darkness and light” it will be open to the Samonà popular theater in Sciacca until 14 December 2025. It is an immersive and sensory experience, in which every work is a scene, every face is a story, every shadow is a mirror of our time.
Carlo Franza
Tags: Bartolomeo Manfredi, Caravaggio, Caravaggio-Between the darkness and the light, Carlo Saraceni, Georges de la Tour, Giovanni Baglione, Guido Reni, the Guercino and Simone Cantarini, Jusepe de Ribera, the disbelief of San Tommaso, Massimo Stanzione., Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio, Orazio Gentileschi, Prof. Carlo Franza, theater, Popolare Samonà-Bass, Trophime Bigot, Valentin de Boulogne