Caravaggio, a feature-length documentary about the Baroque Italian painter, was released in theaters last fall. The film, directed by Phil Grabsky and David Bickerstaff, is part of the “Exhibition on Screen” series, which is produced by UK-based company Seventh Art Productions. It will now be more widely available, premiering on Marquee TV, a streaming platform that mostly focuses on performing arts, starting on April 6.
Grabsky told the Art Newspaper that the film does not overly emphasize Caravaggio’s notorious temper and reputation as a troublemaker, instead focusing on his innovative, emotionally complex painting style. Grabsky and Dickerstaff worked on the documentary for five years, and it covers Caravaggio’s short life spent in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily before his death in 1610 at 38.
Grabsky and Bickerstaff have previously worked on several “Exhibition on a Screen” films, dating back to 2013. Recent releases include Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers, John Singer Sargent: Fashion & Swagger, and Hopper: An American Love Story.
Caravaggio includes commentary from experts, among them the art historian Helen Langdon, who published a book on Caravaggio in 2012, and Letizia Treves, the global head of research and expertise in the Old Masters department at Christie’s. The British actor Jack Bannell plays Caravaggio in the film’s historical reenactments. It was shot at the National Gallery in London (which owns three paintings by Caravaggio: Boy Bitten by a Lizard, The Supper at Emmaus, and Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist), at various locations in Rome, and aboard a replica of at 15th-century ship called the Matthew in Bristol.
About Caravaggio, Grabsky said in a statement, “This is not a film about a man in the shadows. This is a film about an artist who used light to reveal the soul.”
