Regarding the Image of the Pain of Others

Caravaggio, Sontag, Leogrande

Bibliographic Data

ID20248587
AuthorsFrancesco Zucconi (0000-0001-9580-1000, Università Iuav di Venezia, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume11
Issue2
Pages44
Publication date2022-03-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHumanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/h11020044
OpenAlexW4221137143
LanguageEN
References cited16

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

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Critical reflection · Literature · Painting · Political science · Sociology · The arts · Visual arts · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law

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