The canvas display system comprises of two key elements; the display of the canvas as an object, and the ghostly allusion of the image depicted in the original painting. The glass sheet on which the canvas is suspended allows it to be viewed from all angles and fully appreciated as an allusion to Caravaggio’s original painting surface. The silk and resin screen in front is near transparent, yet relays an impression of the forms and colours of the original painting.
Caravaggio’s painting ‘Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence’ was stolen in 1969 and has not been recovered since. My aim was to allude to this lost artefact without creating a crude digital reproduction of it. Looking at Aristotle’s ‘four causes’ for defining an object, I approached the project with the intent to address the ‘formal cause, the ‘material cause, the ‘final cause’ and the ‘efficient cause’ as a means to allude to the lost object, retaining it as a complete entity, both physically and symbolically.