“produced to accompany Mat Collishaw's exhibition Black Mirror at Villa Borghese, Rome”

The installation saw three paintings by Caravaggio (Madonna and Child with St. Anne – Dei Palafrenieri, David with the Head of Goliath, Saint Jerome Writing) appear and disappear behind the surfaces of large mirrors framed in black Murano glass. The figures appeared animated as though posing for the painting; breathing, blinking and shifting their weight in front of us.

The Massacre of the Innocents by Ippolito Scarsella was referenced by a fourth work on the ground floor of the museum. Here the depiction of frenzied violence became exaggerated and restaged in the compelling form of a three dimensional zoetrope—a contemporary version of a victorian optical toy.

The catalogue is published by Nero and includes an artist interview by Andrew Graham-Dixon.