WHY DOES ART CAPTIVATE US? A CASE STUDY: CARAVAGGIO’S PAINTING “BOY BITTEN BY A LIZARD”

Why does a painting captivate the beholder? When we are in front of a painting, the aesthetic experience is the result of a complex processing which depends on everyone's senses, imagination, memories and experience. In addition to activating some brain areas in a similar way, the painting gives rise to a perceptive, cognitive and emotional response, given by personal experiences and culture which depend on its content (iconography, symbols, movement, brushstroke), on aesthetic and social canons and from beholder’s beauty education. A painting captivates because dialectical relationships come into play between the empathetic feelings experienced by the beholder and its iconographic content, as well as between the artist who conceived and created it – by leaving a mark - and the subject who experiences it. In this article, I examined the painting Boy bitten by a lizard by Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, in order to try to understand whether and why, even after many centuries, it manages to captivate the beholder