In the first decades of 17th century Caravaggio meteorically rose to fame and achieved the status of one of the most commissioned painters in Rome.
He revolutionised the art for ever, and inspired other European artists, called Caravaggisti, to adopt his innovative style of painting.
Yet, in the middle of 17th century Caravaggio was forgotten. He remained forgotten for three centuries until 1951 when the art historian Roberto Longhi organised an exhibition of Caravaggio’s work in Milan.
The Old Master was re-discovered.
The National Gallery in London recently exhibited two masterpieces of Caravaggio.
Both of them have unfamiliar religious titles “The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula” and “Salome receives the Head of John the Baptist”.
Both were painted in the last year of the artist’s life.
The latter is part of the permanent collection of the Gallery.
The exhibition’s design parallels the dramatic and naturalistic manner of Caravaggio.
The hall is small and shady. Diminished lights reveal the artist’s favourite earthy colours – black, brown and red.
From the shadows two paintings mysteriously emerge and captivate the spectator.
It feels easy to understand Caravaggio’s world.
Standing in front of the “Salome receives the Head of John the Baptist” the viewers grasp immediately that a murder has been committed.
Only three figures and one head are in the painting. Actually half-figures surrounded by threatening blackness. The murderer has a “boxer’s broken nose”, redness on his chicks and his torso is strong and muscular. The brute holds the head by its hair and clutches his sword with the cruel pride of a job well done.
An old woman with a wrinkled, sorrowful face and praying hands peers over the head of the dead man.
A beautiful girl in front of her grips the tray on which the murderer is placing the head. She desperately tries to avoid looking at it. There is some guilt and regret in her facial expression and some awkwardness in her half-turned body.
The head on the tray conveys terror and cruelness coming from the meticulously painted white-yellowish lifeless face, wounded ear and flowing blood.
A light from a single source, external to the painting highlights the faces and hands enhancing the dramatic effect.
If art lovers like detective stories and thrillers like me – they have it all: drama, mystery, threats, barbarism and sorrow, beauty and ugliness. Like real life.
It does not matter whether the religious story and/or the religious characters are known to the audience. The human story unfolds and the observer participates in it.
Martin Scorsese, the Hollywood director of the movie “Killers of the Flower Moon” felt “Immediately taken” by the “cinematic effect” of Caravaggio’s art and regularly visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to study his work.
Many film-makers and photographers have studied and adopted the painter’s unique way of contrasting light and darkness.
Caravaggio’s art has been resurrected like a mystical Phoenix.
The painter not only moved the European art towards the new Baroque Age of the 17th and 18th centuries but in some strange way Caravaggio influenced two contemporary art genres that even did not exist two century ago.
An interesting fact in this connection is that Caravaggio’s patron in Rome,
Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, who helped catapult the artist to glory was a very educated and progressive Renaissance man.
He enthusiastically supported new trends in art and science.
In his Palazzio he kept a telescope given to him by Galileo Galilei who as we well know was distrusted by the Church and the Inquisition but enjoyed the protection of the visionary Cardinal.
When blackness threatens, be a Cavaraggisti, create your own light!
1 Comment
Харесва ми посланието. Кратко, ясно, запомнящо се, философско. Предизвикателно и много полезно за всеки. Благодаря ти, Нина!!!