From February 11 to May 15, 2011 the National Archives of Rome will host an exhibition of documents and works with extraordinary revelations on the artist's life.

As part of the events organized for the Fourth Centennial of the death of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), from February 11 to May 15, 2011 the Archivio di Stato di Roma will host in its seat at Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza a unique and totally new kind of exhibition based on original documents that have been restored and are housed in the Archives. These documents reveal important facts about the human and artistic vicissitudes of the great painter and previously unknown aspects regarding the intellectual, cultural, and artistic circles frequented by the master from Lombardy during the time he lived in Rome.

Conceived and supervised by Eugenio Lo Sardo and curated by Orietta Verdi and Michele Di Sivo, the exhibition is organized as a detective story, a field investigation in which what emerges is the life lived by the artist. Through his words and encounters in an incredible kaleidoscope of relations and polyphonic voices, visitors will learn from up close about the events and vicissitudes of Michelangelo Merisi's "documented life" during his stay in Rome (1595/96-1606). Thanks to the discoveries of a task force of 7 young art historians, paleographers, archivists, and historians who explored the more than 60 kilometers of shelves that constitute the National Archives, more than 30 volumes have been saved from deterioration and restored and research has been carried out providing shattering new facts that rewrite Caravaggio's biography.

On display in the exhibition will be original, unpublished documents that prove, among other things, that Caravaggio arrived in Rome when he was 25 years old - and not 20, as previously believed - and that he worked in the studio of the Sicilian painter Lorenzo Carli, who lived with his wife and children on via della Scrofa. In the succession of anecdotes, evidence, and reconstructions obtained from records, registers of documents, original place maps, charges, trials, law suits, and rent contracts, visitors will be able to experience the Rome that Caravaggio frequented and touched, as well as the atmosphere in which he was immersed, through a direct comparison of documents and pictures that complement one another in the reconstruction of the past. Caravaggio's life in those years will be represented along the exhibition itinerary, which will give visitors an extraordinary overall view by juxtaposing the documents with several paintings by other artists - friends, foes, teachers, and followers - and historically and biographically precious works by or attributed to Merisi himself. The choice of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza as the venue of the exhibition is significant because of its central location in the few hundred square meters of urban space where many of the events described in the documents took place. An exceptional feature of the exhibition is that visitors will be accompanied in their exploration of the atmosphere in which Caravaggio lived in the Rome of that time - on guided tours for a maximum of 30 people every half hour - by the same scholars who contributed to the discovery and restoration of the documents.

Organized by MondoMostre, under the Aegis of the President of the Italian Republic and in cooperation with the Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities, the Special Agency for the Museums of Rome, the National Committee for the Fourth Centennial of Caravaggio's Death, and the Center for the Study of Rome (CROMA) of "Roma Tre" University, the exhibition will take place thanks to funding by sponsors and contributors (institutes, companies, and private individuals), who generously supported the restoration of the unpublished documents and the research program initiated by the Archives.

The itinerary and the sections. The itinerary of the exhibition has been planned according to several astonishing documents saved by restoration from corroding ink. Entirely transcribed as a contribution to a new Caravaggio corpus, the documents provide evidence of the frequent arrests and trials experienced by Caravaggio, a strong but rowdy character, while at the same time furnishing information about his relations with the people who commissioned his most famous works. The documents also reveal the more prosaic relations of everyday life that the painter maintained with both fellow artists - such as Prospero Orsi and Onorio Longhi - and the simple artisans who lived in the neighborhood of via della Scrofa, where Caravaggio lived for ten years. In addition to the restored documents, most of which are being presented to the public for the first time, the exhibition will display works executed by painters of his time, with some of whom he had a relationship based on esteem and friendship and whom he himself described as "talented men" - Annibale Carracci, Cristoforo Roncalli, Antonio Tempesta, Giuseppe Cesari, Federico Zuccari - while with others, such as Giovanni Baglione and Tommaso Salini, his relations were marked by rivalry and competition. Finally, the exhibition will include several paintings attributed to Caravaggio - such as the Portrait of Paul V Borghese, from Prince Borghese's private collection, which has been previously displayed in public only once, exactly 100 years ago, in 1911, at Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, as part of the Exhibition of Italian Portraits from the End of the 16th Century to the Year 1861 - which present several "Caravaggio problems" that critics are trying to resolve.
The exhibition begins with the Portrait of Clement VIII attributed to Cavalier D'Arpino and the Portrait of Beatrice Cenci attributed to Guido Reni, along with the documents containing the records of the trials of Giordano Bruno and Beatrice Cenci, who were sentenced to death during the pontificate of Clemente VIII.
In the second section, Caravaggio's Streets, a map by Maggi with original views and engravings describes "Caravaggio's places". The long, unpublished testimony of Merisi's barber, which was found in a register of judicial documents, provides an amazing profusion of precious information regarding the painter's arrival in Rome and the first steps of his artistic activity in the studio of a Sicilian painter, Lorenzo Carli, on via della Scrofa, while another extremely important unpublished document contains a description of the paintings present in that studio in 1597. This section also includes the Portrait of Caravaggio by an anonymous 17th-century painter and the Portrait of Ottavio Leoni, a work by Ippolito Leoni from the Accademia di San Luca.
The key item of the third section, Caravaggio and the Law, is the book containing the documents of the famous "Caravaggio Trial" regarding the libel suit initiated in 1603 by his great rival, the painter Giovanni Baglione. These extremely important documents contain the only testimony provided by Caravaggio on how he conceived art and his opinion of the artists of his time, of whom he compiled a list of "good" ones and "bad" ones. This section also presents a number of works by the artists who appear on Caravaggio's list: the Self-portrait and the Sacred and Profane Love by Giovanni Baglione, the Dead Christ and Angels by Federico Zuccari, the Saint Margaret by Annibale Carracci, and the David with the Head of Goliath by Orazio Gentileschi.
The fourth section, The Apartment-Studio on vicolo San Biagio, displays the unpublished contract regarding Caravaggio's rental of an apartment on vicolo San Biagio, with its mysterious clause allowing him to "open up" the ceiling of half the room in which he painted, an inventory of Merisi's personal belongings, and the contract commissioning him to execute the Death of the Virgin altarpiece, which was certainly painted in the room with the "open" ceiling. Among the paintings on display in this section are Jan Brueghel's magnificent Vase of Flowers and the lovely Flask of Flowers by the Maestro della Fiasca from Forlì.
On display in the fifth section, The Murder, the Flight, and the Pardon, are the books with the interrogations of the witnesses of the fight in which, in 1606, Caravaggio killed Ranuccio Tomassoni and was forced to flee Rome, to which he never managed to return. A magnificent watercolor map represents the via Aurelia and the shore of Latium from Rome to Palo and Civitavecchia, where Merisi landed in the summer of 1610 and went as far as Porto Ercole, where he died. The reigning pope was Paul V Borghese (1605-1621), of whom Merisi painted a portrait. Caravaggio's Portrait of Paul V, which brings the exhibition to end, will be displayed 100 years after the first time, which occurred during the fiftieth anniversary of Italian unification.
Published by De Luca Editori d'Arte, the catalogue contains the documents and detailed information on every work displayed.

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