The Italian Embassy Cultural Centre is thrilled to announce the arrival of Caravaggio’s “Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy”, a masterpiece from 1606, which will be exhibited in New Delhi this April. The painting will be showcased at the Italian Embassy and subsequently at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in Saket.
This oil on canvas depicts Mary Magdalene in a moment of divine rapture, her head tilted back and eyes closed, embodying spiritual transcendence. Caravaggio’s use of chiaroscuro—contrasting light and dark—intensifies the emotional depth of the scene.
The painting was believed lost until its rediscovery in a private European collection in 2014. This masterpiece will be on display first at the Italian Cultural Centre from April 12 to 15, followed by an exhibition at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in Saket. The painting’s arrival in India offers a rare opportunity for art enthusiasts to experience Caravaggio’s work firsthand.
In collaboration with Embassy of Italy, KNMA & Metamorfosi – Associazione Culturale.
On the occasion of the exhibition of Caravaggio’s Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy, and as part of the IIC’s cultural approach to dialogue with Indian culture we are excited to exhibit “How Can You Sleep Tonight?” by Gulammohammed Sheikh as a tangible testimony of the collaboration between the Italian Embassy Cultural Centre and KNMA.
The Director & Chief Curator, Roobina Karode, has chosen this precious diptych linking the painting to the relevance of the human body in relation to historical and spiritual events.
This epic nightscape, which was painted over two years following Sheikh’s retirement from the Faculty of Fine Arts of M.S. University in Baroda, plaintively voices his alarm, and disillusionment perhaps, in the aftermath of the atrocities he witnessed in the city, state and country. Titled How Can You Sleep Tonight?, after a line from a Hindi poem by the early twentieth century poet Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’, this painting’s expansive vista is surmounted by a shadowy half-moon, under which several parallel narratives unfold, some solid and proximate, others more distant and ephemeral. Diminutive multi-armed deities and robed wanderers share the space with archers, gunmen, pleading figures on their knees and what appear to be a few winged angels. Pointed and domed structures dot the landscape, along with teetering stairways, dark doorways and a central clocktower, modelled after the one in Sheikh’s hometown, Surendranagar. At the base of the composition, a couple lies awake in bed, distressed perhaps by the scenes unfolding around them, asking themselves the same question posed by the artist in the title of this painting.
Sheikh brings these overlapping narratives alive with a nocturnal, dreamlike palette of blues and yellows, resembling a heat map whose highest pitch is at the bright heart of the composition. Like an intense conflagration, the heat from this central point seems to be radiating outward, soon to color and affect many more lives and landscapes. Describing this as a ‘thermal consciousness’, the artist noted, “I found I could feel colour through temperature. The levels at which colours are pitched in miniature painting are actually temperature. This thermal consciousness became central to my work” (G. Ramnarayan, ‘Coming home to one’s world’, The Hindu, 20 April 2006).
Shortly after he painted this monumental diptych, a physical format that notably also acknowledges difference and unity, Sheikh would formulate a considered response to the questions it raised based on the work of the 15th century bhakti poet Kabir, who disregarded organized religion and its rituals in favor of a personal, spiritual union with the divine.
Date: 12th to 15th April
Time: Mon & Tue 10am to 7pm / Sat & Sun 10am to 3pm
Venue: Italian Embassy Cultural Centre, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi.
Entry by registration only.
Please carry a valid photo ID for entry
Date: 18th April to 30th May (Extended)
Venue: KNMA Saket