Signature collection also starts for not lending Syracuse's Caravaggio to Sgarbi

Opponents of the loan of the Seppellimento di santa Lucia, a Caravaggio masterpiece that Vittorio Sgarbi has asked to be loaned to the Mart in Rovereto, where an exhibition comparing the Lombard genius to another great artist, Alberto Burri, will be held in the fall: in return, the Mart is providing 350,000 euros for the necessary conservation work on the painting and for the climate-controlled shrine that will be used to prevent the massive painting from deteriorating (you can also read Finestre sull’Arte editor Federico Giannini’s editorial on the matter).

Now a collection of signatures has also started to prevent the canvas from going to Trentino: the appeal (which does not mention the details of the exhibition, nor does it talk about the intervention to which the painting will be subjected) is addressed to Minister of Cultural Heritage Dario Franceschini and Minister of the Interior Luciana Lamorgese because the work is the property of the FEC - Fondo Edifici di Culto del Ministero dell’Interno. “We are a group of intellectuals, artists, academics, university professors, darte experts and admirers of the painter Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, united by a single intent, that of saving one of the absolute masterpieces of seventeenth-century art,” the text reads. "The work in question, whose integrity is severely threatened, is entitled The Burial of Saint Lucy. It falls under Ministerial responsibility and protection as it belongs to the heritage of the Fec (Fondo Edifici di Culto), pertaining to the Ministry of the Interior. For this reason, we sign and forward to the SS.VV. this note, at the same time pointing out the social tensions and lacerated cultural debate that have arisen in Sicily following the news of a new loan of the very fragile painting executed for the City of Syracuse in the period October-December 1608. The work, although in precarious condition, and despite the dissent of technicians, has been the subject of peregrinations over the past fifty years, continuous travel for various exhibitions, scientific restoration and maintenance care. Milan, Rome, Palermo (and other locations) have been the stages of a continuous wandering to which now, with bitter and widespread dissent, we would like to add as we will explain later Rovereto" (the work, although having much toured in the past, has not left Syracuse since 2006, when, after being displayed at a number of exhibitions, it returned to the city at the end of a diagnostic campaign carried out in Palermo).

Caravaggio, Seppellimento di santa Lucia (1608; oil on canvas, 408 x 300 cm; Syracuse, Santa Lucia alla Badia)

“Recall that we are referring to an immense canvas (over 12 square meters, the size of a living space),” the text reads, “forced to travel as if it were a basket of lemons, in crates and counter-crates 5.00x4.00 meters large, placed sideways inside a truck likely lacking adequate air conditioning. All to face thousands and thousands of kilometers, on roadways of all kinds, amid jolts, vibrations and abrupt changes in temperature.”

“Already in 2005 when the work was at the Central Institute for Restoration and the organizers of the exhibition at the Royal Palace in Milan, Caravaggio and Europe, asked to borrow it,” the appeal continues, “the then Director of theICR (Central Institute for Restoration) Caterina Bon Valsassina clearly expressed her dissent, as on the other hand opposed to the movement of the painting have been over time the other Directors of theICR and those of the Regional Center for Restoration of Sicily. Unfortunately, of the repeated transports it is possible to discern the permanent damage to which the work has been condemned because of trips authorized so far with too much superficiality and irresponsibility. It must also be said that the work has a very high devotional value for Sicily. In fact, the canvas, like a relic, replaces the remains of St. Lucy stolen almost a millennium ago and now kept in Venice, without there ever having been an intention to return them to the city of her birth.”

“The request made to the SS.VV.,” the text reads, “is motivated by a recent loan request submitted by the Mart, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rovereto. Regardless of the fact that the work would be flaunted in an exhibition context that has nothing to do with the art of the seventeenth century, it is not understandable why with so many paintings by Merisi of smaller dimensions, placed in venues closer, we should choose a monumental canvas, very fragile, located one thousand five hundred kilometers away.” Not only that, the appeal’s drafters also call for the painting’s musealization “in its deputed place, in the city of Syracuse, prohibiting all forms of movement and borrowing.”

“The risk is high,” the appeal concludes, “and Sicily cannot afford to lose a masterpiece by Caravaggio.”

Signature collection also starts for not lending Syracuse's Caravaggio to Sgarbi

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