Chiuder La Vita

No one knows exactly the real circumstances of his death. After some years the most famous biographers of the time handed down a curiously similar version of his end. Having reached Palo, Caravaggio was arrested and, two days later, released and set off in pursuit of the small boat on which his works had continued on their journey in a desperate attempt to recover the only effective guarantee of a pardon from the powerful Cardinal.

Physically exhausted and suffering from a fever, one of the great geniuses of painting of all time died at the age of just thirty-nine in Porto Ercole.

And today, four hundred years from his death, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is remembered in the place where destiny decreed that he would "chiuder la vita".

The artist is celebrated through his painting, a powerful and expressive sign of his greatness, reconstructing the hypothetical cargo of the elusive boat in the symbolic "belly" of the oldest church in Porto Ercole.

The protagonist of the exhibition is the extraordinary Saint John the Baptist from the Galleria Borghese, a work that is unanimously recognised by art historians to have been a part of the precious cargo. The painting will be placed in a special climate-controlled glass cabinet-frame made by the Laboratorio Museo Tecnico Goppion and illuminated in such a way as to ensure that visitors can admire its beauty close up. The layout of the exhibition in the church has been designed by the Studio Greci to create an atmosphere of great impact that evokes the inside of the boat.

A short film that is part of the exhibition brings together clips from the many films that over the last eighty years have portrayed the last days of the great Lombard artists, featuring some of the world's greatest directors and actors.

The exhibition fits perfectly into a now consolidated tradition whereby Eni brings great works of art to a large audience, free of charge.. This initiative follows, among others, the exhibition in Milan of Caravaggio's The Conversion of Saul at Palazzo Marino in 2008 and, the year after, again at Palazzo Marino, of Leonardo's Saint John the Baptist, on loan from the Louvre. Both of these exhibitions met with enormous public success, recording 162,754 and 180,588 visitors respectively.

Following the success of The Conversion of Saul, the work from the Odescalchi collection, shown for the first time in Milan after its restoration in 2008 and attracting more than 160,000 visitors in a month, and Leonardo's Saint John the Baptist, which attracted 18,000 visitors, Eni returns to culture with one of the greatest artists of all time, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. There are a host of reasons that link us to an initiative of such importance. At all the events we are involved in, both in Italy and abroad, we have often declared that art, music, theatre and culture in general offer to Eni an important way of engaging in dialogue with communities and territories. But communicating culture requires the fertile soil of a range of initiatives through which it is possible to combine the essential nature of one of the world's biggest  energy companies with the social and cultural context of the countries in which we operate.
The culture of energy, the energy of culture: a motto, chosen by Eni in 2006 to promote its artistic and cultural commitment and to effectively describe two seemingly distant worlds, the technological and the artistic, which in fact turn out to be linked by an extraordinary creative impulse. A value that has accompanied Eni since its birth, when the importance of acquiring a space in the international energy sector was evident. On this occasion we have selected as the background to the event the last documented place in the life of Caravaggio, Porto Ercole. It was here that the Lombard artist spent his final days in a vain attempt to recover three works to which he was especially attached. One of these, Saint John the Baptist from the Galleria Borghese – part of the cargo of the legendary boat on which he arrived – makes an exceptional return to Porto Ercole in the suggestive surroundings of the church of Saint Erasmus, where it will be on show for a month.
The event, which has been organised by Eni, uses a formula that has been successfully applied in recent years, along with some new features. As always, we have wanted to ensure that both entry to see the work and the information provided about it are free, as are the personal tours made by expert guides.
We hope that these features will make it easier for anyone to be able go a little beyond a superficial knowledge of the work and to get an idea of its genesis, the psychology of the artist and some of the least known and curious aspects associated with it.
Today Eni has chosen to recover the commitment of its founder, Enrico Mattei, to the relationship between industry and culture, contributing to facilitate a constant dialogue with the main protagonists of cultural policy, in Italy and abroad.

Roberto Poli
Chairman, Eni

The exhibition of Caravaggio's Saint John the Baptist in Porto Ercole is the most recent example of Eni's commitment to the promotion of culture.
It is part of this great company's tradition to have a passion for challenge. We were among the first to imagine that our capacities to play a leading role in the energy sector could also bring positive results in areas that appeared to be quite distinct from ours, such as the arts, entertainment and science.
In recent years we have focused on an original exhibition formula, one that, as in the case of Saint John the Baptist, features a single work along with the organisation of a series of supporting facilities to highlight the characteristics, the history and the stories behind the work. We have shown that we can be innovative and have the skills to design cultural events, from inception to communication and implementation across the territory. All this has been made possible thanks to a strategy based on turning the old concept of sponsorship on its head, in favour of a more engaged, dynamic and aware vision of the relationship between business and culture.
The Porto Ercole event is therefore an indication of a desire that goes well beyond the promotion of a brand: it is the sign of an awareness of the benefits of culture to society, something that we believe is worth investing in today, as a way of encouraging the flow of the lifeblood that will drive development tomorrow.

Paolo Scaroni
Chief executive, Eni

Final images from the cinema and biopics

Caravaggio Ending is a short film made up of numerous clips taken from other films.
Essentially it is a collection of images concerning the last days in the life of Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio, drawn from cinematic biographies dedicated to the painter.
Caravaggio Ending has been conceived to be shown as part of the exhibition marking the four hundredth anniversary of Caravaggio's death in the very place where it occurred...
in Porto Ercole.
The title plays on the idea of the "Hollywood ending", which has become practically obligatory for a certain type of cinema that demands a happy ending in which everything is resolved, everything adds up and the hero is redeemed. The mysterious death of Caravaggio, meanwhile, has been given all sorts of explanations, the official, the off the record, the hypotheses, the suspicions.
So we look at how the cinema has told the story, from the 40s to the present, of Caravaggio's escape, his voyage in a flat-bottomed boat, his dash across the sands of the beach at Feniglia, his agony.
The filmed images make everything explicit. Everything that happens on the screen is brought into the present, unfolds and takes place in front of our eyes. But shadows and doubts remain, something that cannot be completely explained, something that a film, with its "narrative evidence", can only allow us to intuit …
Edited in a way that re-elaborates the power of the images, Caravaggio Ending presents an impressive gallery of the moments in which the cinema has represented Caravaggio's desperation. The sequence is open, with black and white film flowing into images in colour and integrated with documentary images of the area around Argentario, the Tyrrhenian Sea, the beach.
Any explanation of the "wherefore" for such an operation would need to consider something that is never said, though frequently alluded to, without ever getting to the heart of the issue: the relationship between the painting of Caravaggio and the cinema, the modern par excellence.
The paradox is that Caravaggio's paintings have a cinematographic feel. This was first noted by the art historian Roberto Longhi, and sustained by Pasolini. Even Picasso, passing through Rome, made the comment that was intended to be mocking but in fact contained an element of truth, that "Caravaggio makes cinema". In the end, the sublime art of Caravaggio uses a way of placing and lighting its subjects that anticipated the infinite potential of the art of cinematography.
Not coincidentally, Giovanni Previtali - in his introduction to the latest edition of Roberto Longhi's Caravaggio - claims that the definition that the Hungarian poet and scriptwriter Béla Balázs gave of cinematographic identification can easily be applied to the technique of Caravaggio.
But how has the cinema treated Caravaggio? His tormented life, his anxieties, his art, his mysterious end...
The first time the life of Caravaggio was brought to the screen was in 1941 when the director Goffredo Alessandrini in Caravaggio, il pittore maledetto - played by an audacious Amedeo Nazzari - presented a decidedly Italian soul.
In line with the ethos of television in the 1960s, the version of Caravaggio for the small screen made in 1967, with the bad-tempered Gian Maria Volonté in the leading role and directed by Silverio Blasi. was more didactic than adventurous.
In 1986 the English director Derek Jarman's Caravaggio was an authentic masterpiece marked by the power of its imagery. In fact the film, a highly personal work which takes a modern perspective on the on the painter's creative fury, won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
Finally, there is the two-part television drama Caravaggio. L'ombra del genio (2009) directed by Angelo Longoni which gives us the latest version of the artist's life with an impassioned performance by Alessio Boni.
But in this medley it is impossible not to mention Pasolini whose whole work can be seen as a sort of indirect biography of Caravaggio. The radical solutions the director adopted in his choice of faces, gesture, expressions, composition and framing, all point to a inspiration drawn from the painter. And it is precisely this that Caravaggio Ending wants to highlight with its mosaic of images borrowed from the cinema: that while on the one hand there are the facts, rendered evanescent by the passing of time, on the other, there is the mystery of a life. And a death.

The layout project

Inside the church the idea is to evoke the inside of the boat using canvas or tulle to highlight the display of the painting in a context that is both protected and at the same time offers a glimpse of the sacred place in which we find ourselves.
Thanks to projections, the ceiling of the casket becomes the stormy sea that brought the artist to  Porto Ercole.
Respect for the sacred nature of the venue thus also becomes a celebration of the masterpiece by the great Caravaggio.

The concept

The exhibition  in Porto Ercole of Caravaggio’s Saint John the Baptist from the Galleria Borghese, which marks the four hundredth anniversary of the death of the artist, has been conceived as a  traveller’s tale that recounts the last tormented days of the great master whose life tragically ended here. The venue is powerfully indicated externally in a way that is highly visible both from the town and the marina. This is done by the exceptional illumination of the facade of the church of Saint Erasmus and projections of a detail of the work that highlights one of the most characteristic of Caravaggio’s colours: red.
Inside the church the idea is to evoke the inside of the boat using canvas or tulle to highlight the display of the painting in a protected environment and at the same time, thanks to the lighting designed by Paolo Pollo Rodighiero, to offer visitors a faint but distinct perception of the architecture of the venue itself.
Respect for the sacred nature of the venue thus also becomes a celebration of the masterpiece and evokes in the mind of the visitor the last dramatic voyage in search of salvation of the great Caravaggio.

The display

The museum showcase is a technical construction, with one or more sides in glass, closed on one or more sides, and designed to show works of art to the public in conditions of maximum security, both against theft and in terms of appropriate conservation. This is why the showcase must be designed with the needs of each specific work in mind, using the most suitable and effective technologies for such needs.
Also in the case of Caravaggio’s Saint John the Baptist the Laboratorio museotecnico Goppion needed to identify the conservation needs and, on that basis, identify the most suitable materials, solutions and form. The showcase, which is the main element in the display structure, has been built in steel, a material that protects the work from theft and which, by blocking the penetration of air and humidity, protects the painting from damaging climatic variations. The double-glazed glass, composed by two plates separated by a sheet of PVB, a material that as well as filtering UV rays which can damage the canvas, in case of breakage, also prevents shards of glass from damaging the surface of the work, and prevents access to the display space even if the glass is broken.
A panel opening was also designed for conservation purposes with a quadrilateral hinge with a special geometric shape that allows not only for a simple rotating movement, but also a complex series of alternate transfer and rotation movements that when the side is closed provides sufficient compression for the seals.
This means that that there is a high level of isolation and exchange between the air inside the glass and outside is reduced to a minimum, creating a micro-climate that maintains the work in the most stable condition possible.
Correct conservation is also guaranteed by a system that stabilises the level of relative humidity, the element that can have the most direct impact on the physical qualities of a work of art. An active system that exploits the Peltier effect, a thermoelectric process that by passing an electrical current between to metallic elements produces a heating effect associated with hygroscopic materials, such as silicon salts, similar to that researched and developed by the Laboratorio museotecnico Goppion for the conservation of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.
All of these technologies have been integrated in a sort of “complex machine‘ that has enabled the display of Caravaggio’s Saint John the Baptist, like the Conversion of Saul  from the Odescalchi collection and Leonardo’s Saint John and many other masterpieces around the world, in a showcase especially designed and built by the Laboratorio museotecnico Goppion. The church of Saint Erasmus in Porto Ercole consequently joins the Louvre, the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Nelson Atkins Museum  of Art in Kansas City, the Smithsonian Institution of New York, the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, the Shaanxi History Museum in Xi’An, the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo and many others. In all of these cases, the Laboratorio museotecnico Goppion has put technology at the service of culture in the conservation and exhibition of works that are unique of their kind.

The small, Romanic-Tuscan style church that stands above the ancient  village of Porto Ercole is dedicated to the bishop and martyr Saint Erasmus. One of the oldest religious buildings in the village, it was almost certainly built during the development of the small town, around the middle of the fourteenth century, initially to a design by the Orsini, subsequently replaced by architects from Siena. The naming of the church after Saint Erasmus, however, dates from the middle of the  fifteenth century when, on the orders of Alfonso V of Aragon, the then almost uninhabited centre of Porto Ercole was repopulated by a large number of colonists, mostly from Gaeta, a town devoted to the cult of Saint Erasmus, patron saint of sailors and sufferers of stomach- ache, the latter deriving from ancient iconography that identifies the torment of the saint with his evisceration by means of a winch (a tradition that is magisterially evoked in the painting by Nicolas Poussin The Martyrdom of Saint
Erasmus in the Vatican Museum). The church of Saint Erasmus was also the venue for an important episode in the history of Christianity. During a voyage by sea in 1742, Saint Paul of the Cross, whose original name was Paolo Danei, had a vision of the Madonna when he landed in the vicinity of Argentario. She called to him, saying,  "Paolo come to Monte Argentario where I am alone." The saint obeyed the call, and began to preach precisely in the small church of Saint Erasmus. Shortly after he was ordained as a priest and went on to found the  order of the Passionists, whose first convent can still be seen today on Monte Argentario. Over the following years, the church, along with the entire community of Porto Ercole went into decline and, by the end of the nineteenth century, had little more than 800 inhabitants. More recently, with the expansion of housing to the foot of the rock, the church has been relegated to a secondary role. In fact, in 1964, a larger modern church, dedicated to Saint Paul, was built in the town. However, the church of Saint Erasmus, with its links to the cult of the saint, continues to be a point of reference for the people of Porto Ercole, who prefer it for solemn ceremonies. On the outside, the building has an extremely simple Tuscan-style facade, with a portal over which there is a triangular pediment and a small rose window that looks over the centre The bell tower, which is on the right, dates from 1915 and was built to replace the previous Spanish tower, demolished after having been severely damaged when the church was struck by lightning. The interior of the church is a clear example of the simplified Romanesque-style: austere and, the church has two naves, a central, principal nave and a minor lateral nave, that looks on to the sea. The simple and spacious central nave, covered by a ceiling still supported by the original seventeenth century trusses, is illuminated by the rose window above the main door of the counter-facade and by two high window son the right. The lateral nave is made up of five chapels built on a gallery, called the arch, which constitutes the Via Parrocchiale below. The first chapel on the left is dedicated to Saint Erasmus: the wall recently decorated with a fresco the remembers the saint's martyrdom, while the ceiling is frescoed with the figures of angels holding the instruments of the saint's torture. Inside there is also a seventeenth century wooden bust of the patron saint of Porto Ercole and every year, on 2 June, this effigy of the saint is carried in procession through the streets of the town to the sea in order to bring blessings of all sailors.

Don Adorno Della Monaca
Parish Priest of Porto Ercole