Vanessa Beecroft pays homage to Caravaggio's Nativity in Palermo

Vanessa Beecroft pays homage to Caravaggio and his Nativity, the masterpiece stolen in 1969, in the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, the place where the painting was stolen. She is the artist chosen by theAmici Dei Musei Siciliani association for the 13th edition of “Next,” with which each year an artist celebrates Michelangelo Merisi’s canvas with a work in its memory. The event is supported by the Regional Department of Cultural Heritage and Identity and is part of the Christmas program “Echoes of Infinity” in collaboration with Palazzo Abatellis. Vanessa Beecroft thus returns to Palermo a few days after presenting her new work VB94.

The work was unveiled at midnight Dec. 24, and will remain on display on the altar of the oratory until Jan. 8, 2023. It will then be placed in the anti-oratory until October 17, 2023, the tragic anniversary of the Caravaggio theft. The dramatic absence of Caravaggio’s Nativity thus generates a new creative intervention, an unprecedented Nativity rooted in the past but entirely projected into the contingency of our present. Art as a saving moment, capable of regenerating itself even in the most inauspicious moments.

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“We have reached the thirteenth year of this somewhat special initiative,” says Bernardo Tortorici di Raffadali, president of the Friends of Sicilian Museums, “because reaffirming the presence of the Nativity within the oratory through the intervention of contemporary art and the creation of a new work takes on the value of an archaic ritual of auspiciousness, with the hope that it may be a propitiatory action to the finding of the missing masterpiece. I would like to thank Vanessa Beecroft who took on such a challenge by having to confront the immense figure of Caravaggio and his absence.”

The Next project was born in 2010 from an idea of Bernardo Tortorici of Raffadali, president of the Association of Friends of Sicilian Museums, with the creation for the Oratory of the first contemporary Nativity by Laboratorio Saccardi. The intent was to exorcise through art one of the most dramatic events in the history of cultural heritage, a still open wound that awaits with hope a possible healing. Over the years, artists such as Francesco De Grandi (2011-2012), Studio Azzurro (2012-2013), Adalberto Abbate (2013-2014), Fulvio Di Piazza (2014-2015), Igor Scalisi Palminteri (2015-2016), Daniele Franzella (2016-2017), Alessandro Bazan (2017-2018), Francesco Simeti (2018-2019) and Rori Palazzo (2019-2020), and Emilio Isgrò (2020-2022) have been able and willing to embrace the initiative.

“I thank the Friends of the Museums for choosing me for this beautiful initiative. With my Nativity, wanting to respect Caravaggio’s iconography, I wanted to enhance the light of the Divine, overshadowing the human,” said Vanessa Beecroft. "After VB94, it is an honor to return to Palermo, a city that has shown a warm welcome and a deep understanding of my work."

Vanessa Beecroft pays homage to Caravaggio's Nativity in Palermo

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