Regarding the Image of the Pain of Others: Caravaggio, Sontag, Leogrande

Abstract

How did Caravaggio’s Sleeping Cupid (1608) end up on the island of Lampedusa? And why was The Seven Works of Mercy (1607) requested for display at a number of humanitarian public events? This article surveys the main circumstances linking Caravaggio’s pictorial corpus to the topicality of current events and to the so-called European migrant crisis. After critical reflection on these transfers, the focus shifts on a book that is both a journalistic investigation of migratory phenomena and a literary work: La frontiera (2015) by Alessandro Leogrande which concludes with an intense reflection on the representation of suffering in Caravaggio’s painting. What emerges, is the possibility of a critical and self-critical gaze, an exercise capable of questioning contemporary visual culture.