2008 News Archive - Holidays - Rome celebrates the work of "cursed" painters

12 01 2009

The city of Rome has always exacted a pull on artists, poets and those with a taste for the romantic and this year a leading Roman gallery is celebrating two of the most talented painters in their respective eras, each of whom lived incredibly eventful lives filled with romance.

Galleria Borghese will be staging the exhibition, which shows the work of the 17th century Italian master Caravaggio and the 20th century UK painter Francis Bacon side by side.

The Italian tourist board claims: "The temporal distance that divides the artists seems to effortlessly shrink along a single line of inspiration producing a silent dialogue."

It describes the two prodigiously talented painters as "cursed" because their colourful personal lives, all of which added up to make their works even more fascinating to art-lovers.

Caravaggio, a Roman by birth who was recognised as one of its greatest painters, was forced to flee the city after he killed another man in a brawl.

Bacon too lived an often unhappy existence with his troubled lover and muse George Dyer famously committing suicide on the eve of a major retrospective.