Around 1597 -1610 · Naturalism, darkness and revelation

Caravaggio brings Christ into a human and immediate space, where light cuts through the decisive gesture and transforms the sacred scene into a present event.

Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, radically renewed the image of Christ at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. He abandons distant idealization for models with tangible bodies, heavy fabrics and deliberately sober decorations. The light does not illuminate uniformly: it emerges, chooses a face or a hand, then leaves the rest of the scene in active darkness. In The Vocation of Saint Matthew, Christ's gesture crosses a contemporary room like a silent word. In The Vocation of Saint Matthew, Christ's gesture crosses a contemporary room like a silent word. Neapolitan, Maltese and Sicilian works become more stripped down; the figures gather in vast darkness which almost makes suffering and waiting physical. From the Adoration of the Shepherds to the Flagellation, the Gospel story is thus based on the proximity of bodies, the truth of reactions and a straightforward dramatic economy. The selection "Jesus Christ by Caravaggio" notably compares The Vocation of Saint Matthew and The Adoration of the Shepherds. Its reading favors color.

In Caravaggio, light does not decorate the miracle: it becomes the very moment of it.