MUNICH.- A unique highlight awaits Munich in spring next year: Caravaggio’s ‘Entombment of Christ’ – one of the most famous paintings in the Pinacoteca Vaticana and a milestone in the history of art – is to be presented at the internationally important, temporary exhibition ‘Utrecht, Caravaggio and Europe’ to be held at the Alte Pinakothek from 17 April onwards. Until 20 May 2019, visitors will be able to experience Caravaggio’s magnum opus side by side with works by his successors.

Even during the lifetime of the artist Michelangelo Merisi (1571–1610), called Caravaggio after the town in Lombardy of the same name, this monumental painting was already considered one of his best works by his contemporaries. Caravaggio created the altarpiece around 1602/03; it was commissioned by Gerolamo Vittrice for his family chapel in the Chiesa Nuova in Rome. Caravaggio, the master of chiaroscuro, sets the dramatic event of the Entombment of Christ against a virtually black background. A multitude of emotions is reflected in the gestures and facial expressions of the larger-than-life-size figures depicted: deeply felt sorrow, silent mourning and loudly voiced lamentation contrast with Christ’s lifeless body.

The ‘Entombment of Christ’ remained in the Chiesa Nuova for nearly 200 years. Together with other art treasures of the Papal States, it was seized by the French during Napoleon’s Italian campaign in 1797 and taken to Paris. Since its return to the picture gallery of Pope Pius VII in 1817, the painting has been in the Vatican – the only work by Caravaggio in its possession. It is not only one of the highlights in the Vatican collections but is also an outstanding work in its own right within Italy’s national cultural heritage.

In the early 17th century, Caravaggio’s revolutionary style of painting attracted a number of young painters from across Europe to Rome where they could study his works at first hand and let themselves be inspired by his art. Among these were the Utrecht painters Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588-1629), Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656) and Dirck van Baburen (1595-1624). These three artists, who achieved an individuality and quality of their own by combining Caravaggesque stylistic elements with their own Netherlandish pictorial tradition, are at the centre of the exhibition. Caravaggio’s ‘Entombment of Christ’ will be shown together with impressive variations on the theme by Dirck van Baburen (Utrecht, Centraal Museum) and the French painter Nicolas Tournier (Toulouse, Musée des Augustins). Through a direct juxtaposition of a total of 75 large-format works by Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch and Flemish artists from around fifty lenders around the world, the national and individual characteristics of the most talented and successful successors to Caravaggio become particularly evident.

‘Utrecht, Caravaggio and Europe’ is a cooperation with the Centraal Museum in Utrecht where the exhibition was opened on 15 December 2018 by King Willem Alexander. In Munich, the show will be accompanied by an extensive programme of events in the spring and summer that has been devised together with the Bavarian State Opera, the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich and the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.

München Tourismus, the central tourist organisation of the City of Munich, Department of Labour and Economic Development, has chosen ‘Utrecht, Caravaggio and Europe’ as its flagship project for its spring campaign ‘Light’.

A comprehensive catalogue in German, English and Dutch editions will be published by Hirmer Verlag to accompany the exhibition. The catalogue is being sponsored by the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung.