Caravaggio: lover, assassin, artist – The Hindu

I’ve visited Italian painter Caravaggio in lots of cities — London, Florence, Rome, Venice, Paris. Now right here he’s, returning the visits, a visitor in my hometown Bengaluru, the place Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy is on show on the Nationwide Gallery of Trendy Artwork. Caravaggio had carried the portray with him whereas escaping to Naples after murdering a person at a tennis court docket in Rome. This was within the seventeenth century, however the query, are you able to separate the artwork from the artist, continues to bother us.

Caravaggio painted individuals from the streets (upsetting individuals through the use of a prostitute as mannequin for the Virgin Mary). However he’s stated to have painted the Bengaluru work (in a way of talking) from reminiscence; the reminiscence of a love affair with a prostitute, Lena. She is imagined along with her head thrown again, hair free and shoulder uncovered, fingers clasped and lips parted in ecstasy. A teardrop has begun its journey. This, in response to a resurrected Christ revealing himself. It’s a image of abandonment and loss, too. Caravaggio’s lack of his love. In combining the private and the common, Caravaggio pointed a manner for all artwork.

Every part we find out about Caravaggio, born Michelangelo Merisi, comes from police reviews and court docket data of the numerous crimes of the artist that French author Stendhal referred to as “a depraved man”. Contemporaries writing a decade after his loss of life — self-serving narratives, in keeping with a latest biographer — give us some occasions. He died at 39, both murdered, or following malaria, of syphilis, or owing to guide poisoning from his paints. There are 70 or 89 or 106 work of his in existence — uncertainty hovered over his life, work and loss of life.

Portray the motion

Caravaggio was born in 1571, seven years after Marlowe, Shakespeare and Galileo. He was the primary trendy painter, creating the brand new world of artwork, literature, and science together with his contemporaries.

He was a pioneer of contemporary cinematography, too. Director Martin Scorsese has acknowledged his debt to the artist who selected to color a second not firstly or on the finish of an motion, however “throughout the motion… it was like trendy staging in a movie. It was as if we had simply come in the midst of a scene and it was all occurring”, as he stated.

Caravaggio was his work. I first noticed him on the Nationwide Gallery in London the place his Supper at Emmaus attracts you in, making you a participant within the tableau. Two disciples have walked into an inn with a person they befriended alongside the way in which. When the stranger blesses and breaks bread, they abruptly realise he’s Christ. Caravaggio paints that second of recognition. The foreshortening of the outstretched arms of 1 disciple and the angle of the opposite about to rise abruptly make it seem like a contemporary {photograph} (images wasn’t invented for one more two centuries). There’s a halo over Christ forged by the sunshine from behind the innkeeper. A basket of fruits on the sting of the desk is about to tip over. A cut up second has been eternalised.

Over time, I’ve spent hours sitting earlier than the portray. Every time my spouse and I went to London, we joked that it was as a lot to see our son as to go to the portray. On our bucket record is a go to to each Caravaggio on show. It’s a blessing that so many works are in church buildings, nearly free to view. Often, you dropped a coin right into a slot to mild up the work as some are in darkish niches.

At Rome’s Capitoline Museum, there may be an uncommon Caravaggio — later critics referred to as it a ‘style portray’ — The Fortune Teller, the place a younger man appears to be like happy to get his palm learn by a woman. What he doesn’t discover, and we do, is the lady eradicating his ring as she does so.

Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy on the Italian Cultural Centre in New Delhi, earlier than it travelled to Bengaluru
| Picture Credit score:
PTI

Perfection of life or work?

Caravaggio was distinctive. In response to a biographer, he had the benefit of not having been taught, which meant he had nothing to unlearn. He had no studio within the standard sense. He didn’t draw. He by no means established a workshop with assistants who painted the boring stuff, he had no circle of pupils.

But he influenced each artist who adopted. And probably each viewer, too. It’s unimaginable to face outdoors his canvas and never really feel the vitality, the facility and the eagerness inside. It hits you with the pressure of a falling constructing or a charging horse.

The Caravaggio Conundrum — how can we weigh an artist’s accomplishment in opposition to his private wickedness? — haunts us at this time as we ponder the works of Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and a number of others who provoked the cancel tradition. Because the poet Yeats wrote: The mind of man is compelled to decide on/ perfection of the life, or of the work…

It’s a alternative people need to make for themselves.

The portray is on show on the Nationwide Gallery of Trendy Artwork until July 6.

The author is a distinguished journalist and writer.

Revealed – June 24, 2025 11:01 pm IST