Caravaggio - Dialogue IX - Supper at Emmaus - David with the head of Goliath

Curator: Letizia Lodi

Year: 2022

Binding: Paperback, pp. 128, ill., cm 12x24.

Language: Italian and English text

(The dialogues of Brera. 9).

Description: Attribution is a fundamental issue in art history, and the best way to verify it is to put the paintings next to each other. Archival documents are then fundamental to establish an attribution: who commissioned the painting and how much did they pay for it? When did it first appear in a particular collection? When and where was it sold? The Pinacoteca di Brera continues its cycle of "dialogues", giving new graphics to the series "I dialoghi di Brera" and this time asks the public to take part in the debate on the exact dating of Caravaggio's masterpiece, David with the head of Goliath, owned by the Galleria Borghese in Rome, comparing it with Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus kept in the Pinacoteca. This volume accompanies the reader in the deepening of the visual experience lived in the Pinacoteca, revealing in detail the events of the two paintings compared and the various hypotheses, sometimes compelling, around the dating of the painting of the Borghese Gallery. The essays that compose it, written by Francesca Cappelletti, Letizia Lodi and Cristina Terzaghi, offer us this in-depth analysis with great precision, supported by an iconographic apparatus rich in comparisons and archival materials and by a gallery of details of the two works protagonists of this intense artistic dialogue.