Italian Master Caravaggio and Francis Bacon connect at Galleria Borghese in Rome

Written by Ella Ide Friday, 13 November 2009 01:47

ROME (REUTERS).- Portraits by Italian master Caravaggio and Irish-born 20th-century painter Francis Bacon stand side-by-side in new exhibition connecting their tormented views of humanity despite contrasting approaches to realism. The show at Rome's Galleria Borghese Museum marks 400 years since Caravaggio's death and 100 years since Bacon's birth and at its heart lies their shared fascination with the human form and their predilection for the expressive portrait. The show runs until January 24, 2010 and has already attracted well over 67,000 visitors, with the record numbers forcing the Borghese to extend its open hours and increase the number of tickets available for the daily tours by 30 percent.

Both were radical for their times: against the distorted idealism of high mannerism, Caravaggio was driven by obsessive attention to the real, while Bacon was derided for his refusal to relinquish the human figure in favor of abstraction.

"Bacon can be compared to Caravaggio above all in terms of intensity," said art historian Michael Peppiatt, co-curator of the exhibition and Bacon's close friend and biographer.

Both painters have been seen as icons of gay, tormented genius and their tragic natures and lives marked by violence -- Bacon's lover committed suicide and Caravaggio was condemned to death after killing a man -- are echoed in their works.

"They were both conscious of the shortness of life and of the fragility of humanity, and each powerfully conveys this consciousness through his art," said Peppiatt in a statement.

Seventeen works by Bacon are featured alongside 14 paintings by Caravaggio, six of which, including the "Madonna with the Serpent" and the "Sick Bacchus," belong to the Borghese's permanent collection.

Many of the works by Bacon, including "Head VI," the result of his studies of Velazquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X, are on loan from London's Tate Gallery.

The lavish entrance to the Galleria Borghese is devoted to Bacon's triptychs, painted after the suicide of his lover George Dyer, with chilling scenes of distorted, semi-naked male figures whose life oozes from them to form flesh-colored puddles. 

The original sculptures and paintings in the Borghese Gallery date back to Cardinal Scipione's collection, the son of Ortensia Borghese - Paolo V's sister - and of Francesco Caffarelli, though subsequent events over the next three centuries entailing both losses and acquisition have left their mark.

Cardinal Scipion was drawn to any works of ancient, Renaissance and contemporary art which might re-evoke a new golden age. He was not particularly interested in medieval art, but passionately sought to acquire antique sculpture. But Cardinal Scipione was so ambitious that he promoted the creation of new sculptures and especially marble groups to rival antique works.

The statue of Pauline Bonaparte, executed by Canova between 1805 and 1808, has been in the villa since 1838. In 1807, Camillo Borghese sold Napoleon 154 statues, 160 busts, 170 bas-reliefs, 30 columns and various vases, which constitue the Borghese Collection in the Louvre. But already by the 1830s these gaps seem to have been filled by new finds from recent excavations and works recuperated from the cellars and various other Borghese residences.

Cardinal Scipione's collection of paintings was remarkable and was poetically described as early as 1613 by Scipione Francucci. In 1607, the Pope gave the Cardinal 107 paintings which had been confiscated from the painter Giuseppe Cesari, called the Cavalier d'Arpino. In the following year, Raphael's Deposition was secretely removed from the Baglioni Chapel in the church of S.Francesco in Perugia and transported to Rome. It was given to the Cardinal Scipione through a papal motu proprio.

In 1682, part of Olimpia Aldobrandini's inheritance entered the Borghese collection; it included works from the collections of Cardinal Salviati and Lucrezia d'Este. In 1827 Prince Camillo bought Correggios' celebrated Danäe in Paris.

(Reporting; Edited by Stephen Brown and Paul Casciato)

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