Caravaggio's Shadow

Caravaggio's Shadow (L'ombra di Caravaggio) is a 2022 Italian-French historical drama film directed by Michele Placido.

Plot
In 1610 in Italy, Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio, is considered a brilliant artist. He opposes church dogma, which dictates how religious subjects should be depicted in art. When Pope Paul V learns that Caravaggio uses prostitutes, thieves and vagabonds as models for his paintings, he orders an investigation into the artist by the Vatican secret service. The results of the investigation will determine whether Caravaggio's request to be pardoned from his death sentence for the murder of a rival will succeed. The lead investigator, known as "Shadow", reveals the contradictory vices and virtues of Caravaggio.

Cast

 * Riccardo Scamarcio as Caravaggio
 * Louis Garrel as Schatten
 * Isabelle Huppert as Costanza Sforza Colonna
 * Micaela Ramazzotti as Lena Antonietti
 * Lolita Chammah as Anna Bianchini
 * Vinicio Marchioni as Giovanni Baglione
 * Gianfranco Gallo as Giordano Bruno
 * Moni Ovadia as Filippo Neri
 * Michele Placido as Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte
 * Tedua as Cecco
 * Maurizio Donadoni as Pope Paul V

Critical response
Davide Stanzione in Best Movie assigns the film 3.3 stars out of 5 and speaks of it as: "A surprising, bruised and sensual film, which manages to reproduce the works of Caravaggio within the visual fabric of the images and restores, with more accursed vigor than you stumble, the torrid demons of a boundless artist, torn between the torment of the body and the ecstasy of the sacred".

According to Zinaida Pronchenko, "Placido does not try to diversify the usual narrative — he drank, copulated, transferred to the canvas —  with conceptual solutions, as, for example, Derek Jarman in his 1986 Caravaggio. Which is rather good".

As Vittoria Scarpa (Сineuropa) notes, "One of the film’s strengths is its demonstration of how aspects of reality entered into the painter’s works, how thieves, vagabonds and harlots appeared on the artist’s canvasses, as if on stage, transformed into eternal works of art".

Accolades
The film received five nominations for the 2023 David di Donatello - Best Cinematography, Best Costumes, Best Makeup, Best Hair Design, and David Youth Award. It won Best Hair Design and the David Youth Award.