The vicissitudes of fate:
how in the UK the attitude towards the work of Caravaggio changed

LONDON. Next month, the National Gallery in London opens the exhibition "After Caravaggio" (Beyond Caravaggio), which will present the work of followers of the Italian maestro of the Baroque era. The exhibition includes 49 paintings provided mainly by educational institutions in the UK, such artists as Orazio Gentileschi, Jusepe de Ribera and Valantin de Boulogne.

Dinner at Emmaus (1601-02)

The National Gallery was very lucky - it owns three paintings by Caravaggio, one from each of the main stages in the artist’s career, but the circumstances of the acquisition show that their path to Trafalgar Square was more accidental than planned. "Supper at Emmaus" (The Supper at Emmaus, 1601), an undoubted masterpiece, was transferred to the gallery in 1839, eight years after the owner could not sell it at auction. For a very long time there was a discussion of the painting "Salome with the Head of John the Baptist" (Salome receives the Head of John the Baptist, 1609-10), and probably it would not have been bought if it were not for the stubbornness of Denis Mahon), the gallery trustee, who persuaded the council to vote against the director’s opinion and for the picture. And finally, “The Boy Bitten by a Lizard” (Boy bitten by a Lizard, 1594-95), one of Caravaggio’s best youthful works, which was sold to an American private collector and only the export ban preserved the picture for the country.

Caravaggio Paintings

Despite the fact that today Caravaggio is one of the most important and recognizable artists in the history of art, his personality and work were not fully understood until the twentieth century. The rehabilitation of Caravaggio contributed to two exhibitions. The first one was held in Florence in 1922 and was dedicated to Italian artists of the 17th-18th centuries, among whom Caravaggio played a prominent role. The second is the Roberto Longhi exhibition in Milan in 1951, where the works of Caravaggio and his followers were first presented in the spotlight.

Similar landmark exhibitions were subsequently held in Cleveland (1971) and New York (1985), but not in the UK. And the reason for this was not the absence of outstanding scientists on the work of the Italian, quite the opposite. Ellis K. Waterhouse (1905-1985), a university professor and Italian baroque specialist, and Roger Hinks (1903-1963), who published the first monograph on Caravaggio in English, also worked in Great Britain. Denis Maon (1910-2011), an ardent supporter and collector of Italian Baroque paintings, who studied Caravaggio throughout his long career as an art historian. But perhaps more than any other contribution, Benedict Nicolson (1914-1978), editor of the scientific journal Burlington Magazine, who published a complete catalog of paintings by Caravaggio and his followers in the 1970s, made a contribution. This was the first serious attempt in history to classify the work of Karavagist artists. Nicholson’s writings are still relevant to all who study Caravaggio.

Reevaluating Caravaggio’s contribution to art history in the UK took considerable time. This was partly facilitated by the derogatory opinions expressed by John Ruskin (1819-1900) and Roger Fry (1866-1934), two popular critics, each of whom had a profound influence on the formation of public tastes in the second half of XIX and early twentieth century. For Ruskin, Caravaggio was synonymous with “vulgarity, stupidity, and godlessness.” In his “Artist Scale”, Caravaggio, Raphael, Guido Reni and Carracci were assigned a place in the category “School of Error and Vice.” The work of Caravaggio Ruskin called vulgar and depraved, he believed that in search of truth Caravaggio showed his inability to see the beauty of the world, but only "horror and ugliness, and the impurity of sin."

Fry, who on most issues did not agree with Ruskin, in this case accepted his point of view. According to him, it was the Italian artists who "invented vulgarity, and more specifically - vulgar originality in art." Fry reproached Caravaggio for loving everything "cruel and excessive." These statements are consistent with the words of Giovan Pietro Bellori, whose mostly negative, but extremely convincing account of Caravaggio’s life gained immense popularity. Bellory criticized Caravaggio for slavishly copying nature, without any selection, and it is no coincidence that his definition of Caravaggio’s followers as “naturalists” took root so well among 19th-century critics in Britain.

Ruskin condemned Caravaggio not only for content, but also for technology. He accused the artist of abuse of shadows, that he painted "for the sake of the shadow." And, despite the very small biographical information about Caravaggio available at that time (except for Bellory’s stories), such lighting in the paintings was attributed to the muddy character of the artist. In the mid-19th century, the name Caravaggio was often associated with candlelit scenes, although he did not paint a single painting with a candle. Candles are more characteristic of another artist, Gerrit van Honthorst, and these two artists are often confused. What is the story of how “Taking of Christ” by Caravaggio was attributed by Van Honthorst for almost two centuries.

Moreover, any paintings with strong chiaroscuro began to be called "Caravaggio" regardless of their styles or individual characteristics. Today it may seem surprising, but by the middle of the XVII century the art of Caravaggio and his followers fell into the final silence, and a complete reappraisal of their work occurred only 300 years later. In many ways, the fact that Caravaggio traveled around Italy and never left the country, never traveled to Europe, like, say, Peter Paul Rubens or, to a lesser extent, Gentileschi and Honthorst, both of whom worked at the court of Karl, contributed to this attitude. I. To appreciate most of the work of Caravaggio, it was necessary to come to Italy, but very few decided on this trip.

While museums in the UK showed complete disregard for Caravaggio’s work, American museums, on the contrary, did not miss the opportunity to buy his work. So “Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness” (Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, 1603-04) was sold in 1952 to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. In the same year, The Musicians (1595) were bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Martha and Mary (1598) by the Detroit Institute of Arts. in 1973, just two years after the painting could not be sold at auction in London. Interest has grown even more after the Longy exhibition in 1951 in Milan.

Interestingly, the owner of the Musicians, WG Thwaytes, wrote to the Director of the National Gallery in February 1952, reporting that the Metropolitan Museum offered £ 25,000 for the painting, but before agreeing to a deal, he would like to know if the gallery is interested in this picture. Thwaites’ offer was rejected, the "Musicians" duly obtained an export license and went to New York. The archives have preserved information that in those years the gallery management had no interest in the work of Karavoggio, and director Philip Hendy did not know about such an artist at all. Mahon became a trustee of the National Gallery in 1957, five years after the sale of "St. John the Baptist in the Desert" and "Musicians."

Similarly, the paintings of the followers of Caravaggio left Britain. One vivid example was the Fortune Teller (1620) Valantena, which the ninth Duke of Rutland sold under the guise of Caravaggio. Today the painting is in the Toledo Museum of Art.

Despite this outcome, both public and private collections in the British Isles remain surprisingly rich in paintings by Caravaggio and his followers. The reappraisal of creativity that took place in the last century confirmed its skill and true originality as an artist. Even Roger Fry, by no means a fan of his talent, shrewdly remarked more than a hundred years ago that Caravaggio was in many ways “the first contemporary artist, the first artist to make a revolution.”

Original article: The vicissitudes of Caravaggio: how the National Gallery capitalized on — and missed — opportunities to acquire works by the master by Letizia Treves © THE ART NEWSPAPER

Translation: Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru