Cecco del Caravaggio. The Model Pupil

Accademia Carrara houses, in an itinerary of around 40 works, the first exhibition ever dedicated to Cecco del Caravaggio (1580 -1630), born Francesco Boneri, the most mysterious of Caravaggio's direct pupils.

Cecco was not only a follower but also a model, posing for at least six paintings by Merisi (including David and Goliath and Amor Vincit Omnia).

After the project dedicated to Simone Peterzano in 2020, Carrara Academy confirms its commitment and focus on authors with important territorial and cultural connections to the Bergamo collection, documented by works of great quality but, to date, not yet valorised.

Boneri, through his whirlwind apprenticeship with Merisi, became a skilful artist and came to be one of the most interesting exponents of European Caravaggism. The exhibition brings together, for the first time, around 20 autograph works, of the no more than 25 that make up his catalogue, from important public and private collections in Italy and around the world.

The route, through important loans, including works of Caravaggiohighlights not only authors from whom, apart from Merisi, Cecco drew inspiration (Savoldo, for example) but also a number of artists who were influenced by him. A project that not only restores attention to a too little-known painter, but also investigates and looks at those 'painters of reality'. (according to Roberto Longhi's definition) that first influenced the formation of the young Caravaggio and then continued, over the decades, with happy results and to which this exhibition seeks to restore a proper role in the European artistic panorama of those years.