Four decades have already passed since the pioneering exhibition curated by Jean-Pierre Cuzin and Arnauld Brejon of Lavergnée, and almost two from the Neapolitan painting retrospective at the Grand Palais in 1983. Therefore, the Musée Fabre and the Musée des Augustins have allied with the aim of examining the mark of Michelangelo Merisi in European painting of the first 30 years of the seventeenth and review some of the most recent discoveries.

Meanwhile, Caravaggio has become one of the shining stars in the history of art and mass culture; one of the few artists capable of attracting crowds to museums just to be named. A passion that has led to abuses by amateurs and media that generate foolish theories of poor scientific justification and a certain joy to quote him whith new attributions. Volatile criteria were which was already exposed and questioned in the literature of the artist a few decades ago, when historians exaggerated the role of his countries among the artists who formed the wake of the artist.

The exhibition in Montpellier and Toulouse analyzes the national identity of those schools and places special emphasis on the works of so-called Master of the Judgment of Solomon. In the Musée Fabre can be seen Italian, French and Spanish painters; while in the Musée des Augustins are represented the Flemish artists. Painters in the orbit of Caravaggio such as Bartolomeo Manfredi, José de Ribera, Cecco del Caravaggio, Orazio Gentileschi, Orazio Borgianni or Carlo Saraceni, whose interests are best understood in conjunction.

Corps et ombres. Caravaggio et le caravagisme en Europe is curated by Michel Hilaire, Olivier Zeder and Axel éemery and, after closing – in October 14 –, will be reedited in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with some additional work – between November 11 and February 10, 2013 - and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford from March 8 to June 16, 2013. Alejandro Martínez

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