“Inside Caravaggio” exhibition: the Bracco Group supports diagnostic tests on the artworks

The “Inside Caravaggio” exhibition is a unique exhibit that brings together 20 works by the master painter for the first time (from 28th September to 28th January 2018 at Palazzo Reale, Milan). For its 90th anniversary, the Bracco Group has contributed to the organisation of this cultural event by conducting diagnostic analyses on the works, which reveal the artist’s creative process.

The exhibition, curated by Rossella Vodret, is promoted and produced by the Comune di Milano - Culture, Palazzo Reale Milan and MondoMostre Skira, in collaboration with MiBACT. As well as paying tribute to one of the greatest painters of all time with a selection of works from major Italian and foreign museums (including, among others, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London, and the Museum of Montserrat in Barcelona), the exhibition offers the general public a never-before-seen journey inside Caravaggio’s creative process, accompanying each painting with its respective X-ray images, which allow the visitor, through multimedia educational equipment, to understand the stages of development and the secrets that took the piece from its inception through to its final version.

Using reflectology and X-rays, which penetrate the surface of the paint to different extents, it has been made possible to follow Caravaggio’s process, his corrections, his reworks, and his adjustments during the creation of the composition. Following the campaign of studies carried out between 2009 and 2012 on Caravaggio’s Rome works by the Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro [Higher Institute for Conservation and Restoration] and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, thanks to the Bracco Group, whose core business is diagnostic imaging, focusing its activities on art and technology, important new diagnostics on the other works in the exhibition have been carried out, including those from overseas, for which an innovative graphic evaluation has been proposed with a joint project between the University of Milan - Bicocca and CNR, to make the works more comprehensible to the general public.