Theatre group brings to life biblical paintings in magical performance

It’s insane to witness the amount of creativity and skills this theatre troupe has. The group called the Ludovica Rambelli Theatre Troupe recreated biblical paintings of the renowned 16th-century artist Caravaggio in a performance accompanied by Mozart’s Requiem. Notably, Caravaggio was a renowned and controversial Italian artist in the late 1500s and 1600s. In the video, uploaded on Twitter by an actor, Michael Warburton, the artists are dressed as different subjects and are seen transitioning into different paintings one after the other, it almost feels like the paintings are being made live. The video went viral with more than 1.7 million views and is captioned, “CARAVAGGIO’s biblical paintings re-created as living paintings by the incredibly talented Ludovica Rambelli Theatre Troupe, accompanied by Mozart's Requiem.”

The performance is said to be from 2018. The idea behind this amazing theatre performance came from Malatheatre company’s founder Ludovica Rambelli while doing a lecture at the University of Naples on Caravaggio’s way of working. He realized that this was the best way to portray the paintings. He, unfortunately, died in 2017, according to Indepest.

Many on Twitter found the performance impeccable. @JFTL81 wrote, “Wow, they are fantastic. #Art.” @TheGreatRose said, "Great Caravaggio! Wonderful! Beautifully re-created! Absolutely Awesome! Biblical expressions are real. We need more of this to remind/refresh our minds of Biblical Truth. Thank you, Michael W.!” @AwAagWithATale wrote, “What is fascinating to me, aside from the incredible re-creations, is how *perfectly* they've reproduced how distinctively Caravaggio lit his subjects.” @vickijohnson151 said, “The use of fabric draping and lighting is superb.”

In another story about art, a woman named Nicole Tersigni decided to combine 17th-century art with everyday instances of misogyny. "So I go online just to kind of scroll through Twitter and zone out for a little bit," Tersigni told The New York Times, "and I see a dude explaining to a woman her own joke back to her — something that has happened to me many times."

This instance really made her want to do something about it. She googled “women surrounded by men” "because that is what that moment feels like when you're online," she said. That’s when she saw a 17th-century oil painting by Jobst Harrich of a woman baring one breast in the middle of a scrum of bald men. She tweeted the painting with the caption:  "Maybe if I take my tit out they will stop explaining my own joke back to me," and it was an instant hit. She then created more mansplaining-in-art posts which got her thousands of likes and re-tweets.

"It just snowballed from there because it was just so easy to consume and relate to and laugh about," said Tersigni, however, some men wanted to tell her that not all men do these things. Tersigni received a call from literary agent Rachel Sussman, who advised her to make her tweets into a book. Two weeks later, they were meeting with editors and made a deal with Chronicle Books. 

"I remember I got it, looked at it, and just cracked up," said Rebecca Hunt, editorial director at Chronicle Books. "When it was time for me to share it with our editorial team, I printed out a lot of the pages and spread them on the table. We all didn’t even need to say anything, we were all just reading and laughing. That’s how you know right away that something will resonate."