Museum Cinema / Sleeper – The Lost Caravaggio, 2025
The finest films on art and culture will be screened, after a short lecture by the Museum’s curators.
Admission to the Museum’s exhibitions is included in the film ticket, during the Museum’s opening hours.
—
Sleeper – The Lost Caravaggio, 2025 | Dir. Álvaro Longoria | Spain, Italy, 2025 | Italian and Spanish, Hebrew subtitles | 75 minutes
Introduction: Nathalie Andrijasevic, Assistant Curator of Modern Art
A sleeper is a term used for a rare painting that has simply been “waiting” to be discovered. It is also every art dealer’s dream—those priceless opportunities hidden in plain sight.
On April 8, 2021, an 80-year-old woman from Madrid brought a painting, which had hung in her family’s living room for decades, to be appraised at an auction house. The initial valuation was around €1,500. No one could have predicted that within 24 hours, it's worth would soar into the nine figures.
At that moment, the hunt was on. Art dealers, Baroque experts, and deep-pocketed collectors from around the world made their way to catch a glimpse of what might be a lost masterpiece by the Italian painter Caravaggio.
This intricate documentary carefully traces the passionate battle between competing claims and theories, unraveling the mystery behind one of the most enigmatic “sleepers” in art history.