Caravaggio - The Taking of Christ (from the Ruffo Collection)

On the occasion of GO! 2025, Fondazione Carigo is hosting a major cultural event in its Smart Space: the exhibition of The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio. The artwork will be on display until June 30, with visiting hours from Monday to Friday, 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM, and Saturday and Sunday, 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM and 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM. Admission is free, but online booking is required at this link. 

The Taking of Christ painted for the collector Ciriaco Mattei, known through numerous copies and presumed originals, is one of the most spiritually intense and pathos-rich compositions from Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s Roman period. It constitutes a private counterpart to the astonishing canvases of the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi and the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, which mark a radical turning point in terms of expression in the production of the Lombard artist, after the prevalence of genre and mythological subjects of the previous years. The controversial history of the powerful Caravaggio invention and its pictorial testimonies reaches a peak in two versions. One from the Ruffo di Calabria collection, presented here, and the other from the Irish Society of Jesuits, which resides in the National Gallery of Ireland. The two versions are both autographed, but they exhibit formal and expressive autonomy. The Ruffo version was done first. The Irish version is a replica with variants revisited in an iconographic and aesthetic sense as compared to the “expressionist” and highly dramatic character of the prototype.