Regarding the Image of the Pain of Others: Caravaggio, Sontag, Leogrande

Humanities

Francesco Zucconi¹ 

[1] Department of Architecture and Arts, IUAV University of Venice, Dorsoduro 2206, 30123 Venice, Italy;

关键词: Caravaggio;    quoting;    displacing;    witnessing;    representation of suffering;    humanitarian visual culture;   

DOI  :  10.3390/h11020044

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Why were Caravaggio’s Sleeping Cupid (1608) and The Seven Works of Mercy (1607) requested for display at a number of humanitarian public events? And why did Caravaggio’s work inspire a series of photographic and journalistic reportages on contemporary migratory phenomena? This article surveys the main circumstances linking Caravaggio’s pictorial corpus to the so-called European migrant crisis. After critical reflection on the social construction of the “humanitarian Caravaggio,” the focus shifts onto a book that is at the same time a journalistic investigation of migratory phenomena, a literary work, and a theoretical reflection on the ways of looking: La frontiera (2015) by Alessandro Leogrande, which concludes with a reflection on the representation of suffering in Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St. Matthew (1600). By following a path that connects Caravaggio’s painting, Susan Sontag’s thought, and Leogrande’s writing, what emerges is the critical and self-critical potentiality of a comparative approach to the arts and images.

【 授权许可】

Unknown