Lecture: An Evening With the Bad Boy of Italian Painting

Date:  Saturday October 23rd, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Location:  ARA Toronto

HOSTS:
Eva Chwojko, art historian (University of Toronto) and journalist
Steeve Chwojko, composer, music historian (Sorbonne University, Paris)

Meet Caravaggio, who created an outrage in 16th century Rome, not only because of his volatile character and temper but also because of his controversial painting methods. He chose beggars and drunkards as models for saints and painted them in realistic fashion, causing scandal after scandal. Some of his large-scale paintings were refused by the patrons who had commissioned them, but he also had supporters who protected him from the police whenever he got into trouble. 

Let’s look at his life and his powerful paintings – rejected by his contemporaries, but today deemed to belong among the greatest masterpieces of art. Music was just finding its classical voice at the same time, with the first opera in the world produced in Italy just before Caravaggio’s death. What did these paintings look like? What did this music sound like? Come and see it,
come and hear it!