Open to the public this week, visually impaired visitors will be able to trace the immortal lines of the pre-Baroque chiaroscuro master with their fingertips thanks to an innovative 3-D reproduction produced by a Blender program from a photo by the Architalab studio.
The studio has already completed similar projects for masterpieces held in the Capitoline Museums, the Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia, the Galleria Nazionale, the Museo Bilotti, the Museo Pigorini and the Museo Lavinium.
Judith Beheading Holofernes is Caravaggio’s painterly interpretation of the well-known biblical episode, in which widow Judith stays with Assyrian general Holofernes in his tent after a banquet, decapitating him after he passes out drunk in order to save the city of Betulia.
The work is estimated to have been composed between 1598 and 1602 and was rediscovered in 1950. It is now a part of the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in Rome.
Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known simply as Caravaggio (29 September 1571 - 18 July 1610), was active in Rome for most of his artistic life, and during the final four years of his life he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily. This new exhibition of his work is entitled “Tactile Emotions: Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio, The Fingertips Tell Their Tale”.
Caravaggio’s paintings have been characterised by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a theatrical use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting. Now, through this unique reproduction, the impassioned scenes of the master’s work will not only be seen but felt.
