The National Gallery in London had no idea when they titled their summer show ‘The Last Caravaggio’ that another painting by the Renaissance renegade had mysteriously appeared.
Crowds lined up across Trafalgar Square to file into a darkened room to see ‘The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula,’ painted 1610 and thought to be the last Caravaggio after a letter was discovered in the 1980s describing the commission. At the same time, Madrid’s Prado Museum was preparing to show ‘Ecce Homo,’ a sombre canvas depicting a bloodied Jesus wearing the crown of thorns just before his crucifixion – a work that had been wrongly attributed to 17th century Spanish painter José de Ribera.
The painting was to be sold at auction valued at 1,500 euros. Just hours before going under the hammer, the sale was blocked by the Ministry of Culture. Experts agreed that ‘Ecce Homo’ was the last Caravaggio, one of only 60 known works by the artist. It was moved swiftly from the auction house to the walls of the majestic Prado where it will remain until 13 October 2024.
The Last Caravaggio … Again
Caravaggio. Drawing by Ottavio Leoni
Is ‘Ecce Homo’ the last Caravaggio? It’s hard to say. Like a heavyweight boxer, no matter how many times you knock him down, the artist rises again bloodied and bruised from the canvas.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio had a problem. He was a genius. He was before his time. He saw life as it is, as it was. When he painted a saint with grime under his nails and a wrinkled brow, the rich men and cardinals who commissioned the work couldn’t appreciate or understand what they were seeing. In the early 17th century, religious paintings depicted pearly skinned disciples rising to heaven amidst choruses of plump cherubs. Virgins had haloes, not dirty feet, rips in their skirts, bosoms copied from street walkers earning a a silver florin modelling on the side.
The cardinals accused Caravaggio of ‘imitating’ life and much of his work, instead of going on display as altar pieces in churches was bought in secret by connoisseurs and kept hidden. They knew he was a genius but weren’t going to tell him that.
Born 29 September 1571 and dead at aged 38 on 18 July 1610, Caravaggio left Lombardy alone after his family lost their lands and fortune. He arrived in Rome with a chip on his shoulder, a passion to paint and a desire to gulp down everything life has to offer. He took his sex with women or boys, his wine with like-minded young ruffian artists and carried a sword he unsheathed at every real or imagined slight.
Caravaggio fled Rome in 1606, after fatally wounding Ranuccio Tomassoni in a sword fight provoked by a dispute over a game of tennis. To avoid the death penalty, he made his way to Naples where he earned a living painting portraits and altar pieces before travelling on to Malta in 1607. There, he achieved his great ambition to become a Knight of the Order of Saint John, not knowing that the title obliged him to remain with his brother knights in Malta to protect the island from an Ottoman invasion.
David with the Head of Goliath
When it was discovered that he had a criminal background and would have been stripped of his knighthood, Caravaggio left at night for Sicily, then back to Naples. He wanted to return to his old life and friends in Rome and hoped that, with his elevated status, he would receive a pardon for what was clearly an act of self-defence, not murder. Ecce Homo – Behold the Man – was painted during those troubled years, the work completed quickly with intense emotion and an eye for every small detail. In painting the suffering Christ in his worst moment, he may well have seen a reflection of himself.
Caravaggio was the master of chiaroscuro, his figures gripped in shafts of brilliant light and thick shadow, a technique called tenebrism that reveals the hidden mixture of human strength and weakness in us all. He worked with live models, painting directly on the canvas without initial drawings and expressed dramatic scenes at crucial moments, often featuring violent struggle, torture and death.
Painters inspired by Caravaggio were called ‘Caravaggisti’ or ‘Caravaggesques’. They included Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Rembrandt. He influenced great filmmakers, Martin Scorsese and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and his use of light as well as cropping scenes in the way of photographers was employed long before anyone even dreamed of the machine we call a camera. Known as the most modern of the old masters, Caravaggio’s portraits retain the same drama, freshness and originality on gallery walls today as when they were unveiled for an incredulous clergy 400 years ago. Through the Renaissance, Caravaggio had only one rival, his namesake, Michelangelo.
You may enjoy WHOM THE GODS WISH TO DESTROY THEY FIRST MAKE BEAUTIFUL
Still a Master..
Light and shadow, foreground and background, it’s that which is unseen, which compels us to focus upon what we do see.
Are they sure that it’s Caravaggio? How do they know?
Is it really a Caravaggio? How do they know?
The word of the ‘experts’ by all accounts. They would know by the brush strokes, the age of the canvas and these days with radio carbon dating, Xrays and stuff.
Mad, bad and dangerous to know – and I’m not talking Byron.
No, the original hell raiser was Caravaggio and nor did he come from money or have the privilege of a title.
Au contraire, when he was six years old the bubonic plague swept through killing all his family leaving him orphaned. He took to the streets and fell in with a group of “painters and swordsmen who lived by the motto nec spe, nec metu, ‘without hope, without fear.'”
By the age of eleven he’d begun an apprenticeship in Milan and by his late teens started out in Rome penniless. He could never get away from those traumatic early years – they haunted him and it proved to be his fatal flaw.
As his success grew, so did the painter’s own personal turmoil. He could be a violent man with drastic mood swings and a love of drinking, fighting and gambling. This came to a head when killed a well known pimp and had to go on the run.
Another altercation in Malta with one of the most senior knights in the Order of St. John led to him being chased down to Naples assaulted outside a tavern, and his face disfigured. The attack had a profound impact on Caravaggio’s mental and physical state and his vision and brushwork suffered as a result.
His only hope was a pardoning from the Pope but on his way to Rome he died with what is now suspected was high levels of lead poisoning – the same thing that accounted for Goya.
Caravaggio was only 39.
I paint this picture as I try to imagine what it must have been like to sit in the same tavern with him – to catch his eye, even strike up a conversation and buy him a drink. To listen to the stories he would recount – no doubt of his sexual conquests and victories over rivals while slandering his clients and reminding you that he could capture the scene of a narrative in a way no one else could.
Indeed he was like a freeze frame story teller – the originator of the noir image that have inspired many a filmmaker. He was pure drama.
A mad genius, and a bad ass because for some, that was the only way of surviving in those days – and woe betide if you argued a point or accused him of wrong doing. You’d be out on the street in a flash, fighting for your life!
If there is no god what in the name of nature and the universe are we meant to make of this . Given the current debate is it not part of the pro god lobby to draw attention to Caravaggio,s skill as an artist as a means of once again using art and artists to push the greatest lie ever perpetrated on humanity. If you are going to show his genius should it not come with a disclaimer that artists and their work should not be seen as them supporting the lie . Working under duress should allways be part of the narrative when showing or discussing an artists work
The Taking of Christ always moves me. Something about the position Christ’s hands. Not religious but it still moves me.
Me, too.