Syracuse's Caravaggio to travel to Trentino for Sgarbi exhibition. First, however, it will be in Rome for investigations

The exhibition that will bring Caravaggio ’s masterpiece preserved in Syracuse, the Seppellimento di santa Lucia, to Trentino, to the Mart in Rovereto, is getting closer and closer to becoming a reality: theprocess of the project, which will be curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, president of the Mart, was presented yesterday afternoon, June 24, at a press conference at the Maniace Castle in Syracuse. The painting will be exhibited in an exhibition that will compare Caravaggio with Burri and Cagnaccio di San Pietro, which will take place at the Mart in Rovereto from October 15 through December (these are currently the leaked dates). The Mart will provide the 350,000 euros needed for the operations, which also include conservation work on the painting and the burglar-proof climabox (i.e., climate-controlled case) that will allow the return of the canvas to the church of Santa Lucia al Sepolcro (or Santa Lucia extra Moenia), the place for which the work was made (instead, today the painting is kept in the church of Santa Lucia alla Badia, leaning against a 1579 work by Deodato Guinaccia, a great Sicilian painter of the 16th century).

The operation had been met with strong resistance (our magazine, on the other hand, has taken a favorable stance toward the exhibition), from a handful of opponents who did not want the work to leave and had promoted, a couple of weeks ago, a collection of signatures to prevent the relocation of the work, which is owned by the Fondo Edifici di Culto (Fec) of the Ministry of the Interior. Sgarbi, last week, had provocatively signed the appeal and deluded the promoters into believing that he had given up on the exhibition and goaded them with an invitation to find them the necessary funds.

Now, however, all resistance has been overcome. Earlier this week, theCentral Institute for Restoration (ICR) in Rome sent a multidisciplinary team of five technicians to Syracuse to perform a preliminary inspection. The technicians let it be known that the painting is transportable, that it enjoys a state of preservation that has been described as “fair,” but requires maintenance: this maintenance will have to be done in the restoration laboratory in Rome, because only there are the tools and professionalism that allow the intervention. The investigations, technicians have made known, are not feasible in situ, as the Syracusans initially hoped: the move to the laboratory will allow the study of the work with the most advanced technologies. The analysis at the ICR laboratory, the technicians went on to say, will be useful in obtaining a mechanical and structural characterization of the painting. Finally, during the inspection, scanning of the painting was also initiated, which will serve as the basis for creating a high-resolution reproduction, which will be carried out by the Madrid-based Factum company, a leader in the field, which in Sicily has already overseen the creation of the reproduction of Caravaggio’s Nativity stolen in 1969 from the Oratory of San Lorenzo, and now placed in the house of worship in place of the original.

Thus, many of the reasons that had led opponents to protest and point to an alleged “fragility” and an equally alleged inability to travel as the reasons for the opposition lapse. “Fragility,” Silvia Mazza, an art historian and technical coordinator of the procedures inherent in the loan and conservation intervention of the work, said at a press conference, “can only be established on objective and scientific criteria, and not on the basis of impressions. Preliminary investigations have served to provide us with the first data on the work”: data that therefore exclude the impossibility of transporting the work out of its location.

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

Silvia Mazza also spoke on the issue of reproduction: “what is the value of copying, in the interest of Syracuse? In the meantime, it serves to document the current state of the painting in anticipation of an intervention that technicians will determine what degree it will be (in our project we never spoke of ’restoration,’ but of the possibility of contributing to a conservation or maintenance intervention, but this, we repeat, we leave to the technicians who have come to Syracuse precisely for this) and it serves above all the technicians, because the scanning allows them to elaborate a mathematical model that serves as the basis for the elaboration of a preventive conservation program. It means that from that point on, the possibility of intervention on the painting can be pushed further and further away (the spirit of ICR is to prevent damage before it occurs). The copy then could be (it will be determined by the city) loaned out if there are other occasions in the future.” Mazza then made some statements about the project that will bring Caravaggio to Trentino: “the Mart project,” he said, “is in line not only with the ministerial guidelines on loans of 2008 (which indicate as a preferential condition to be favored in loan requests the possibility of improving the conservation conditions of a work, both those that concern the work itself and those of the context in which the work is exhibited), but also with the Fec’s guidelines, which are to provide for the conservation of the fund’s substantial holdings. The Fec does not have sufficient funds for these operations (it would need at least three times as much, according to its president Eike Schmidt): it currently draws them from the administration of its own interest-bearing patrimony, from state contributions, from sponsorships or, as in our case, from the availability offered by a party that intervenes to finance an enhancement and conservation project. In exchange for all this, the Mart asks, as required by ministerial directives and Fec laws, to be allowed to exhibit the painting in its spaces for a short period, agreed with the Fec, of three months.”

The point on the history of the conservation status of the Seppellimento di santa Lucia was made by Franco Fazzio, restorer, who has already in the past dealt with Caravaggio’s masterpiece in 2006, on the occasion of the last investigations conducted on the painting, carried out at the Regional Center for Restoration in Palermo: “On that occasion,” said Fazzio, “diagnostic investigations were produced from which emerged a state of conservation of the work that was still quite satisfactory, especially from a structural point of view. The big concern might have been that over the decades (the last restoration was done in 1972) the work had deteriorated, but in 2006 the work was still in relatively good condition. This assignment, and thus a viewing of the work, had revealed the presence of a ”stain“ in the lower part of the back of the refacing canvas, and it was necessary to understand what this presence was derived from, but all in all the only concern might have been that microorganisms could more easily develop in these spots, because the adhesive used by the ICR was an organic adhesive. The results, however, were negative; at that date the work was in good condition.”

“We were concerned, however, about the state of the painting because it was leaning against another work,” Fazzio added, “and the Regional Center for Restoration itself carried out measurements of temperature and humidity in the church of Santa Lucia alla Badia: in 2017, at a conference organized by Silvia Mazza, the data was made public, which was rather alarming because the values were high and not appropriate to the conditions for good conservation of the work. What’s more, the fact that the work has been leaning against another painting for ten years could in turn lead to an attack of microorganisms (although the problem does not exist for now).” Fazzio went on to comment on the term “fragility” used by those opposed to the loan: “for those who know the subject matter,” he said, “to speak of fragility for a canvas is not appropriate because it is good to know exactly what materials make up the work: one can refer to the color, the material, the preparation support. For a canvas we usually refer to the fragility of the paint film: in this case there is absolute certainty that the work began to have its own stability of the various materials precisely with the restorations conducted at the ICR, the first one conducted by Cesare Brandi between 1941 and 1948, when the work was reinteled and the color was consolidated (by that time the damage was already well contained), and then the one in 1972, when action was taken because there were lifts in the pictorial film inherent in the restorations carried out in 1820. From a static point of view, the work is in excellent condition. Following the final results it will be determined whether or not restoration is necessary, but possibly only from an aesthetic point of view.”

Also speaking at the press conference was the superintendent of Syracuse, Irene Beatrice Aprile, who is in favor of the loan: “in my humble opinion,” she said, “the heritage belongs to everyone, so if someone from some other city can enjoy a work from our Sicily for a short period of time, I do not find it contrary to all the precautions that the case imposes. This also means a cultural exchange that may see us as protagonists of some exhibitions by receiving some works from the Mart. On the decisions I am waiting for the certifications of the experts so that I can then decide, and in this we will also find out its destination: it could also be a return and a retention in Santa Lucia alla Badia, or what we all hope for, which is a return to the church of Santa Lucia al Sepolcro, from which the Borgata neighborhood could be revalued. And since we always talk about enhancement, this must not be at the expense of someone or something, but it must be for the benefit of all, certainly with due precautions.”

Syracuse City Council Culture Councillor Fabio Granata spoke about what will revolve around the operation in terms of return for the city: “In 2004,” he recalled, "the Burial commissioned from Caravaggio by the Syracuse senate in 1608 was taken to the Central Institute for Restoration, which made interventions before the exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. Upon its return, the painting had to be relocated to the place for which it was intended, because we believed and still believe that the presence of this painting in that place is essential for a contextualization of it, because the painting was born in that context and it had to be returned to that context, but also because a painting of this magnitude in a church like Santa Lucia extra Moenia, which, moreover, has been completely renovated recently, serves the city very well because the working-class neighborhood of the Borgata is a neighborhood that can find regeneration from the presence of Caravaggio. The time is now ripe: this huge mess that Sgarbi has created with this initiative is preparatory. To those who say that the city will be impoverished during the absence of the Burial for the Mart exhibition (because in fact it is impoverishment), we say that we are working to bring to Syracuse important twentieth-century paintings during the period when our Caravaggio will be in Rovereto, to create the unique opportunity to observe paintings by artists such as De Chirico and Savinio."

Lastly, Sgarbi, as curator of the exhibition and president of the Mart, reserved a few remarks: “it is true that in general order I am convinced that the works must stay where they were born, without avoiding curating them,” he said. “In order to the general principle, I considered signing an appeal for the work to remain in its place, which is not, however, where it is: in fact, when I read that text that I signed, I also read a series of things that must be contradicted by the truth of the facts. What is the fact? The fact is that the idea of a transportation catastrophe that would have contributed over the years to the deterioration of the painting, and that the painting would be in poor condition, was proposed to some of the signatories. These are two wrong premises: today we finally have the ICR document that tells us the truth. The painting is not in a particular bad condition, it needs care (like heart patients take pills to keep living), it needs maintenance, which means being in a place where it can be cared for. As for the compromised situation of the trips, this is a total falsehood: the trips did not in any way contribute to the deterioration of the work.”

On the exhibition itself, Sgarbi said, "I take up the project that is a structural part of this great contemporary art museum: to re-establish that connection that, without protest, brought in 2014 to a contemporary art museum the most beautiful exhibition of Antonello da Messina ever done, curated by Ferdinando Bologna, a distinguished scholar from the school of Roberto Longhi. We all want to return Caravaggio to his place of origin: for this we need some arrangements that in 15 years the region has not found." Sgarbi also had an opportunity to speak on the issue of the painting by Deodato Guinaccia, to which the Seppellimento has been pinned. The Burial, Sgarbi said, “is no longer the work of Caravaggio: it has been restored, the painting is very degraded, it is like a shroud of itself compared to what it was. But it has been taken to do an act of Lombard violence against a Sicilian identity represented by the great Deodato Guinaccia, which will deserve an exhibition, and the only thing that is the responsibility direct of the Superintendency is not to say yes or no to what the ICR legitimizes today, but it is to say that Guinaccia’s 1579 masterpiece can no longer be covered with Caravaggio’s painting. A beautiful painting in excellent condition, that of Guinaccia, which deserves to be brought back into the light: it was a horror to hide it for fifteen years in the name of the star Caravaggio, whose name stands to have the great memory of Sicilian painting erased, which is difficult to reconstruct but has been studied and deserves to be highlighted.”

Finally, Sgarbi proposed that the Rovereto exhibition be dedicated to the memory of Sebastiano Tusa, the Sicilian Regional Councilor for Culture who tragically died last year in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 in Ethiopia, and recalled what the stages of the project will be: the work will stop in Rome for verification and maintenance work and the continuation of scanning operations, after which it can go on display in Rovereto. The exhibition, Sgarbi recalled, will begin on October 15 “because it will allow us to get out of a September that we hope will be full of tourists for Sicily.”

Syracuse's Caravaggio to travel to Trentino for Sgarbi exhibition. First, however, it will be in Rome for investigations

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