Caravaggio and the 20th Century. Roberto Longhi, Anna Banti

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Boy Bitten by a Lizard (detail), 1593–1594, Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Florence.

The art historian Roberto Longhi and writer and translator Anna Banti played a seminal role in the “rediscovery” of Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi in the twentieth century after hundred of years of virtual oblivion. This exhibition focuses on their work, their life and some of the objects they owned including one of two versions of Caravaggio’s Boy Bitten by a Lizard and five paintings by Jusepe de Ribera of Apostles. It also includes more recent works, such as asequence of ten small Morandis created by the Bologna-born artist and gifted to Roberto Longhi and Anna Banti on various different occasions in the course of their friendship.

The photographs on display in the exhibition, many of which have never been shown in public before now, recount the life of Roberto Longhi and Anna Banti. This rare and fascinating testimony also helps to reconstruct their network of relations and friendships with leading artists and figures of 20th century culture.

The exhibition is divided into twelve sections, ranging from Longhi as collector, “the man who discovered Caravaggio”, to sections on Longhi’s relations with the cinema and teaching. One room is devoted to Anna Banti as art historian, writer and translator who deserves the credit for rediscovering the story of Artemisia, accompanied by a selection of the large number of drawings that Roberto Longhi made of her and by a series of photographs portraying them in the rooms of Villa Il Tasso.

The Longhis’ 20th century works of art showcased in the exhibition reflect their ties with such artists as Carlo Carrà, Renato Guttuso, Filippo de Pisis and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Naturally, a section also explores their friendship with Giorgio Morandi, whom Longhi called “one of Italy’s best living painters”. The exhibition also includes a Silent Room where visitors can rest their eyes and their minds after exposure to the charged atmospheres and stimuli offered by the exhibition.