Noto, last days to visit “Caravaggio’s Sicily”: the exhibition dedicated to Caravaggio.

Last days available to visit the exhibition Caravaggio's Sicily currently underway at the Convitto delle Arti Museum in Noto. The festival, which has sold over thirty-three thousand tickets to date, will close on Sunday 3 November, offering yet another opportunity, to those who choose Sicily and the city of Noto to spend their holidays on the occasion of the long weekend of the dead (1-3 November), to admire the works on display.

The exhibition, produced by the Mediatica company, cunder the patronage of the Ministry of Culture and the Regional Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity, intends to highlight one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of art: the relationship between Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, and Sicily. The exhibition, promoted by the Municipality of Noto, is curated by art historian Pierluigi Carofano, in collaboration with Nicosetta Roio.

The focal point of the exhibition, and its main attraction, is certainly the work of the San Giovannino at the fountain, loaned by the National Museum of Art Valletta, a work attributed to Caravaggio. But the exhibition Caravaggio's Sicily aims to provide a summary of the relationship between the Milanese painter and the artists active in Sicily in the 1600th century, through a journey divided into three sections, with around 30 works from museums, galleries and foundations in Italian and foreign cities, such as Mdina and Valletta.

This very narrative turns out to be one of the strong points of the exhibition, so much so that it attracted, in just over 6 months, 33 thousand visitors, with an average of 148 daily tickets, which represent a major milestone for the City of Noto, increasingly a point of reference, thanks to the cultural vein of the municipal administrative strategies, of art in Sicily.

Among the exhibited works of the artists defined as Caravaggio-esque, those of the masters active in Sicily, include those of: Giovanni Bernardo Azzolino, Mario Minniti, Alonzo Rodriguez, Fabrizio Santafede, Carlo Sellitto, Battistello Caracciolo, Hendrick de Somer and Jusepe de Ribera. These authors are exhibited in the first section of the exhibition, while the second section features masterpieces by: Pietro Novelli, Andrea Vaccaro, Daniel Seghers and Matthias Stomer.

The last section, the third, is dedicated to Caravaggio and addresses the question of his presence in Sicily through the precious copy of the Nativity of Palermo, painted by Paolo Geraci, and the San Giovannino at the Fountain from the National Museum of Art Valletta, a work attributed to Caravaggio.