Seven Works for Mercy: seven international artists dialogue with Caravaggio in Naples

From Jan. 25 to April 24, 2026, the Pio Monte della Misericordia church in Naples will host the eighth edition of the Sette Opere per la Misericordia (Seven Works for Mercy) project, an initiative that brings together contemporary works inspired by the theme of mercy and destined to permanently enter the institution’s collection under the heading Gift of the Artist. The exhibition features seven international artists-Antony Gormley, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, Yu Hong, Max Renkel, David Salle, Marco Tirelli and Lee Ufan-who have accepted Pio Monte’s invitation to share the institution’s mission through the donation of their works. The works dialogue with Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s masterpiece, theSeven Works of Mercy, preserved on the high altar, consolidating the link between art, charity and civic engagement that in 1606 had guided the commissioning of the work by the Governors of Pio Monte.

The inauguration of the 2026 edition took place on Saturday, January 24, in the presence of Fabrizia Paternò di San Nicola, Superintendent of Pio Monte della Misericordia, curator Mario Codognato, Alberto Sifola, Governor to the Artistic and Archival Movable Heritage, and Maria Grazia Leonetti Rodinò, creator and manager of the project. The initiative confirms its focus on the younger generation through the competition dedicated to students of the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples, which awarded seven scholarships worth 1,000 euros each. The winners announced during the opening are Linda Giordano with Carezza invisibile, Maria Rosaria Arnese with Mother Nature of 7 Works of Mercy, Claudio Pisapia with The Unnamed, Marika Grimaldi with Reborn, Thomas del Greco with Ubi humus non est, Alessandro Rodello with Curare and Carmela Bianco with Conjunction visible. The participants’ works were exhibited at MUSAP until Jan. 22, thanks to the collaboration of Circolo Artistico Politecnico ETS, and now find space in the Pio Monte Picture Gallery.

The project, conceived in 2011 by Maria Grazia Leonetti Rodinò and curated by Mario Codognato since the first edition, is supported by the Campania Region through the General Directorate for Cultural Policies and Tourism, in accordance with the provisions of Regional Law 7/2003 for cultural promotion. The initiative aims to renew the cultural and social vocation of Pio Monte through the language of contemporary art, reaffirming the function of culture as a tool capable of supporting solidarity actions and supporting the educational, training and welfare activities of the institution.

The works in the exhibition represent a wide range of languages and techniques, ranging from sculpture to painting, from drawing on paper and board to the use of mixed media, from watercolor to photography, and even experiments with artificial intelligence and generative processes. Antony Gormley reflects on the human body as the site of experience and vulnerability, exposing it to invisible forces that condition its existential balance. Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst propose a contemporary interpretation of care and community through images generated with the DALL-E artificial intelligence model, in which the creative process becomes a shared gesture. Yu Hong focuses his research on the body and the fragility of existence, isolating hands and feet on a golden background, in a dialogue between traditional iconography and contemporary experience, in continuity with Caravaggio’s attention to bodily truth.

Max Renkel explores the boundary between figuration and abstraction, constructing suspended images that make mercy an open and fluid perceptual space. David Salle interweaves references to mass culture and art history, investigating the fragmentation of contemporary consciousness. Marco Tirelli works on the threshold between the visible and the invisible, proposing rigorous and mental works in which geometry and intuition, abstraction and reminiscence combine to lead the viewer beyond the surface to a territory where the visible becomes the threshold of the possible. Lee Ufan, influenced by Eastern philosophies such as Zen Buddhism and Taoism, focuses attention on emptiness and the relationships between objects, prompting the viewer to contemplate space and silence rather than the object itself.

With the 2026 edition, the project reaches a total of 56 works donated by Italian and international artists, expanding Pio Monte della Misericordia’s permanent section of contemporary art, unique in Italy for quality and ethical purpose. The collection includes works by Anish Kapoor, Mimmo Jodice, Mimmo Paladino, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Gilberto Zorio, Francesco Clemente, Antonio Biasiucci, Marisa Albanese, Douglas Gordon, Jimmie Durham, Michal Rovner and Paul Thorel, consolidating a dialogue between past and present, between Caravaggio’s legacy and contemporary urgencies. The works and artists of the 8th edition are recounted in the catalog published by artem, which includes texts by Fabrizia Paternò di San Nicola, Alberto Sifola di San Martino, Maria Grazia Leonetti Rodinò, Mario Codognato and Giuseppe Gaeta.

Seven Works for Mercy: seven international artists dialogue with Caravaggio in Naples

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