Hands Down - It's Hard to Tell What's a True Caravaggio

Back from Boston and I've changed my mind about almost everythng I wrote before.

Of course, seeing the paintings in person makes a tremendous difference - who'd a thunk it?

Here's some pictures (courtesy of my sister and her excellent camera):

From Fortune Teller - look how beautiful the detail is.

More hands, also from the same painting - and in person or in enlargements of this painting, you can clearly see her pulling off his ring (beside her smallest finger).

Here's a hand detail from St Francis in Meditation. Don't you just want to get some nail clippers?! I'm still not convinced this was by Caravaggio, even though he often painted dirty fingernails.

Here's one from the Portrait of Maffaeo Barberini, the one with the vase of flowers I wrote about in a previous blog.

And this is the portrat sitter's other hand. Aren't they lovely? I hadn't thought this was Caravaggio from the photographs, but I'm more convinced now that it could be him. The light and shading on the hands in these last two pictures is just magnificent.

But then, there's this. It's from the Portrait of a Knight of Malta and it looks.....kinda ridiculous beside the other hands. Granted, the photo's not great because they had glass over this canvas, but Andrew Graham-Dixon's biography of Caravaggio was right about this one - care was not taken in painting this hand. In fact, I'm not sure if you can see it, but there's a kind of diagonal line leading away from the top of his thumb - perhaps he was originally holding a shield in this hand where the line goes? The hand is just...comically inflated for the hand of a 74 year old man. (It's almost as though someone as talentless as me painted this hand - it's like kids draw hands when they're learning - you know, just a circle, with lines for fingers.)

Here's the painting it's taken from. Because it's so dark, you might not be able to see it, but the foreshortening on the arm on the left side is wrong - his arm looks too short. The face is really, really well done though and the use of the lighting is classic Caravaggio - which is what makes me think the hand was done by someone else. (This was often done in Renaissance times - I've read that when he was being apprenticed as a painter, Caravaggio himself was thought to have done vases of flowers on other painters paintings.) Art historians who write about this painting say the sitter wanted to show he was both a distinguished war hero (as evidenced by his hand on his sword) and a devout religious man (because he's holding rosary beads). But maybe he didn't think to appear religious until much later, after the original painter of his portrait (Caravaggio) had been expelled disgracefully from the Knights of Malta - so he had to get some lesser painter to amend it. Who knows?

Boston was so fun - the exhibit was great (I bought four new Caravaggio books), went to a wicked Frank Turner concert with my sister right beside the Harvard University campus and danced the night away in the second row, drank lots of craft beer in gastropubs, and even got to see my brother during our layover in Toronto on the way home. Plus, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, one of the biggest museums in the US, retweeted out some of my Caravaggio scribblings to all of its thousands of followers. An expensive, epic weekend - but totally worth it.

True Caravaggio? Two Caravaggios - Fortune Teller

This is the last of the four paintings from MFA Boston's exhibit - Fotrune Teller, done in 1594. The lady on the left is a gypsy and the foppish man on the right is being duped by her - she's telling his fortune by reading his face and hand, but she's also stealing his ring in the process. (The ring is extremely hard to see and according to author Rosella Vodret, its presence was only discovered during restoration work done on the painting in 1985.)

X-rays show that Caravaggio painted it on a used canvas. There are also existing records that prove our 'starving artist', sold it in desperation for only 8 scudi (roughly the amount an office worker needed to live on for a week in Renaissance Rome.) But he likely sold it to an important banker (some details are fuzzy on this), and then it was seen by Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, a supporter of the arts who later became Caravaggio's patron, inviting him to live and work in his luxurious home for several years (during which time Caravaggio completed some amazing works and became justifiably famous). Del Monte liked this painting so much, he asked Caravaggio to paint a second version of it so he could have one too- so here's his second attempt, below.

Art Historians say the second version of Fortune Teller shows a much more mature style, but to my untrained eye, I don't really see it. Yes, the white collar of his shirt and feather in his hat are much fancier (although we may not give Caravaggio credit for the feather - see below) The light is more dynamic here too. There's also some differences with the drapery and the hands - hers are held differently and he's wearing one glove here. But I prefer the face of the girl in the original - there's something more enigmatic there (or possibly, I just like her clothes better since she doesn't have that ridiculous white sash under her chin that makes her look like she has a toothache.) This painting hangs in the Louvre, in Paris, and it's thought to have been done three years later, in 1597.

Technical fun fact: Louis XIV owned the Paris version at one time (I guess that's why it's in France), and had an extra strip of canvas added along the top so that it would be the same size as another painting he owned that was hanging alongside it. Whoever added this strip apparently also embellished the feather. You can see the strip in person - here's a detail I took with my iphone (at right) when I visited Paris in 2012. Look to the left of the feather...there's a bit of a visible line.

Content fun fact (at least, it's fun for geeks like me): This is a 'genre painting' which means it was a rare, non-religious work that was probably depicting comedic actors from commedia dell'arte, which was very popular entertainment in Italy in 1600. They were performing at the same time that Shakespeare was doing plays in England, although there, women weren't allowed on the stage like they were in Italy - we know that Shakespeare's plays had all female parts played by male actors. Also, female depictions by other Italian artists from the same time period (like Titian), almost always showed a lot more female flesh- whereas Caravaggio is positively chaste - the girls in both versions of Fortune Teller couldn't be wearing any more clothing than they already are. But don't think that this means Caravaggio was a supporter of women's rights - as Francine Prose points out in her book Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles: "Whenever a male and female appear together in Caravaggio's secular paintings....the implications of their connection are unfortunate, even dire: The man is being cheated or killed." Oh dear.

Ok, one more thing: Caravaggio may have used this same yellow outfit and hat, and even the same model from the Paris painting (thought to be Mario Minniti, a painter himself) in the painting that truly made him a star - Calling of St. Matthew, which still hangs in San Luigi Dei Francesi in Rome. It's one of my favourites.

Here's the final word: it was common practice in 17th century Rome for poets to write poems about paintings they liked, and to circulate them, almost like a movie or book review. Gaspare Murtola wrote one about the gypsy in Caravaggio's Fortune Teller. It translates to:

I don't know who is the greater magician,
The woman, who deceives,
Or you, who paint her

Does My Theory About Caravaggio's Paintings Hold Water? (or Wine?)

This portrait of Maffaeo Barberini is a disputed Caravaggio painting, and one of the ones being included in MFA Boston's Spring 2014 exhibit. Art historians think this portrait was done in 1596. Its subject later became Pope Urban VII; he was a supporter of the arts and a poet and there are records to show that he later commissioned a painting by Caravaggio, so the two of them are undoubtedly connected in history. I was lucky enough to see it last year at LACMA's Caravaggio exhibit, and it is lovely, but based on a very superficial observation, I have to doubt its provenance. Here's why: there are a number of other paintings known to be done by Caravaggio from the same time period - 1596-1602 - that also feature a vase that is exactly the same each time, but which is slightly different than the one in the portrait at the left (which, please notice, has grooves in it). Here they are:

This is called Boy Bitten by a Lizard (1596). Check out the shape and style of the vase of flowers he painted. No grooves.

There's also this one, entitled "Bacchus" (also 1596). There are a lot of similarites between Lizard and Bacchus, but let's focus on the vase for a second, which holds wine this time. The vase looks exactly the same as the one he used in Lizard.

There's also this one, Penitent Magdalen (1597). This time the vase may hold wine again, or perhaps perfume or oil, according to some art historians. It's the same one Caravaggio used above.

And finally, here's Supper at Emmaus(1602) again, which I posted in a previous blog. Again, with the same carafe (I know it's a little hard to see the vase on the crowded table, but it's the same shape and style).













So why use a vase with grooves in it, unless you are a lesser painter who might struggle with painting such clear relfection of light? Or unless you are someone else and it is the closest thing you can find to the shape of the vase Caravaggio repeatedly used? He was such an influential painter that were was a whole generation of artists who later imitated his style of painting in lights and darks. They were even given a name - the "Caravaggisti".

Caravaggio was a master of reflection - if you can squint and see in each of the other examples where the vase he is using is probably the same, you can see light or windows reflected very clearly in it each time. It makes you think of the flash in a photograph, but remember, it was well before flash photography. In the Maffaeo Barberini portrait, you can see light too, which might be why some art historians attribute this to Caravaggio, but I'm not sold.

Because I'm such a Caravaggio nerd, I cannot help but share one last detail about reflections and vases in Caravaggio paintings that is just so cool. The picture at left is a detail from Caravaggio's Barcchus that was only noticed after the painting was cleaned in the 1920's. It's a small person and an easel - a self portrait of the painter reflected in the glass. Apparently it's hard to see unless you're up close (I've never seen this painting in person, so I only know about it from my reading). Is there any doubt that Caravaggio was the most important Baroque painters when we uncover details like these?

Maybe there's a reflection in the Maffaeo Barberini portrait in Boston's exhibit- I'll check when I'm there....

Caravaggio's Portraits: (Without) Warts and All

Here's another painting that's part of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston's #TrueCaravaggio exhibit.

So...all the stuff I posted in my last blog, about Caravaggio's trademarks? The stuff about the red drapery and the dirty feet and things falling off ledges? Yeah, throw that stuff out the window for this, because this is a portrait. Painting portraits must be a particularly challenging thing: yes, you get paid to make them, and that's obviously good, but you must also make a portrait realistic AND flattering if you want to get paid- which, I imagine, can be challenging when the subject of your portrait is a 74 year old military man. Caravaggio (this work is known to be by him) totally succeeded here. Here's the backstory I can scrabble together for this painting, which makes it all that much more interesting:

Caravaggio killed someone from a powerful family in Rome in 1606, possibly over a tennis game, possibly by accident. (It wasn't his first run-in with the Italian police either.) He spent the rest of his life on the run, in different cities, trying to rebuild his reputation and get back to Rome, where he had been famous and sought after for the best painting commissions in the city. One of the places he ran to was Malta, where he hoped to be made a knight. Why? It's thought that he assumed this would give him the stature he needed to be pardoned for his crime. Obviously, being made a knight is no easy feat, however. Caravaggio painted this portrait, and another similar one, to ingratiate himself with the knights in his new (albeit temporary) home.

First off, let's look at our portrait of Fra Antonio Martelli (above). In Michael Fried's The Moment of Caravaggio he says that x-rays that have been taken of Caravaggio's paintings often prove that he likely painted ears first when he painted someone, and that "in general, in his paintings, ears are given fully as much prominence as eyes." He wasn't talking of his particular portrait, but he certainly could have been; we don't see two eyes, but an ear and an eye - unusual for a portrait. Andrew Graham-Dixon says of this painting in his Caravaggio biography, A Life Sacred and Profane,that "Caravaggio has painted the hands so cursorily they seem unfinished. It was the sitter's face that fascinated him." Hmm. I'll be happy to see this in Boston and judge for myself - the hands seem pretty good to me! Imagine the intracacies of painting the hand holding the sword.

This Caravaggio painting of Alof de Wigancourt (which hangs in the Louvre in Paris) was done around the same time as the one above, which I'm showing here since, for many years, people thought they were of the same person, and in fact, the one mentioned above was at one time thought to be a practice version of this one. Again, we see the importance of the ear, and only one eye visible (well, basically). What I've read suggests that perhaps Caravaggio posed his subject this way because he wanted to flatter, and Alof de Wigancourt had a prominent wart on the side of his nose that's hidden in shadow. He also looks quite a bit thinner here than I've seen him in portraits by other painters...again, probably Caravaggio really wanting that to get on his good side (literally) to secure that papal pardon and a passage back to Rome.











And it speaks to Caravaggio's new humility (for lack of a better word), for him to hide flaws in painting someone. When painting Fillide Melandroni, a prostitute that was the subject of at least four of his paintings, he always kept her gimpy finger. Check it out below,in the upper hand, holding the sword:

and here, holding the mirror:

So...is the portrait of Fra Antonio Martelli a #TrueCaravaggio? Yes. But a humbled Caravaggio, who was on the run.

True Caravaggio? St. Francis in Prayer at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts

There's a brief, small, Caravaggio exhibit being held in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts this spring. They have two known works by the painter and two that are attributed to him, and are asking the public about what does or doesn’t make these paintings authentic by tweeting their opinions with the hashtag “#truecaravaggio”. I'll be flying out to Boston in a few weeks to see it. I’m only a hack – a self-taught art history buff who’s spent some time in Rome and who has a particular interest in Caravaggio, the 17th century Italian painter, but here goes.

St. Francis in Prayer, by Caravaggio (?) This is one of the 'attributed' ones. (I refer to it several times below.)


Here’s one of the paintings from the Boston exhibition they’re asking us to analyze. I’ve seen it before, in Rome, but it’s not one of his more stunning works; as Caravaggio paintings go, I find this one rather ho-hum. It’s also missing a lot of his trademarks (you’ll see them in some of the painting examples to follow). Where’s the dramatic swath of red curtain or drapery? Where’s the lovely play of light on bare skin that Caravaggio is so good at? There’s a particularly good opportunity for him to paint dirty bare feet here too, which he seemed to love to do, and yet he didn’t bother with that. And no one has been beheaded here either (at least recently).


Judith Beheading Holofernes, by Caravaggio. See the dramatic red curtain? Oh yes, and check out the beheading. He liked to paint both of these things.

So for all the typical Caravaggio things that aren’t here, what is here to make art historians think the St. Francis is one of his paintings? Well, we do have a skull (he was rather fond of those, as seen in his paintings of St. Jerome in Meditation, St. Jerome writing, and another version of St. Francis in Meditation). St. Francis himself does look quite a bit like the same St. Francis Caravaggio painted in his much lovelier painting St. Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (see below)- same trimmed beard, facial wrinkles, and haircut fringe. The robe is a similar colour and is tied with a rope here as well (but then all Capuchin monks robes look like this). And the angled cross and rock does remind me a little of his Crucifixion of St. Peter masterpiece. There’s the dramatic lighting of a Caravaggio painting here, with light coming from one source on one side, and a dark background, and a very simple halo on the central figure like the one he gave the Madonna of Lareto. He’s put a patch on the shoulder of the monk’s robe to draw your eye away from the central action in the painting (according to Caravaggio author Fried), just like he did with St. Thomas in the Incredulity of St. Thomas painting or the disciple on the left in the first Supper at Emmaus painting he did.


Crucifixion of St. Peter, by Caravaggio. Note the rock, and the angled cross, the swath of red, and the lovely play of light on skin from the single light source. Also note the unusual composition where we see people’s backs and dirty feet.

But I find the composition of St. Francis in Prayer….boring. (Sorry, whoever wrote in ArtDaily that this was a ‘profoundly moving’ image, but I disagree.) Normally we’re seeing a different angle in a Caravaggio painting – someone’s back (Cardsharps, Musicians, Rest on the Flight into Egypt , Calling of St. Matthew, or Crucifixion of St. Peter, above) or we are in the middle of the action (Taking of Christ, Sacrifice of Isaac), or something’s at least about to fall off a ledge (Entombment, Supper at Emmaus, seen below.). I realize this is meant to be a solitary, thoughtful work, but even so – it just seems so….brown. Caravaggio was more of a show off than this, wasn’t he? The painting makes me think of a cheesy bridal portrait where the photographer asks the bride to look at her flowers. And is he licking his lips while looking at the skull? I suppose it’s a good thing I’m headed to Boston to see this in person again because I think St. Francis looks rather more hungry than pensive.


Supper at Emmaus, by Caravaggio. Again, note dramatic light and shadows and the bits of red. But also, the patch on the elbow of the left disciple and how the fruit bowl is about to fall off the table – classic Caravaggio touches.

Complicating the authenticity of this particular St. Francis in Prayer painting as a Caravaggio is the fact that I’ve read that it was copied frequently. (And just before its inclusion in this Boston exhibition, this painting appeared alongside another, almost identical version of it in a small exhibition at the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, although that painting is unfortunately not part of the Boston exhibition I’m going to see.) I’ve read that the version I’m going to see in Boston is thought to be the original because after undergoing x-rays, they can see that the figure in it was originally painted a little smaller and the hand holding the skull was originally painted in a slightly different position (and obviously, a copier wouldn’t copy that). However, what’s to say that Caravaggio didn’t copy his own painting and they’re both by his hand? He was known to do that (Fortune Teller and John the Baptist being obvious examples). And again, I must ask, why was this particular painting of Caravaggio’s frequently copied? I wonder if it could be related to something as simple as cost and ease – there aren’t many colours to mix when you’re painting something very monotone like this, and in the 17th Century, that could have been a consideration for many painters (Caravaggio himself included.)

Another complication about this painting is the approximate date it was done. John T. Spike, a Caravaggio specialist and one of the curators of the recent exhibit in Virigina dates it to 1595 in his book, but everything else I read suggests it was likely done in or around 1603. There’s no record at any point of him doing the painting (as there sometimes has been with his other works), and except for once, Carvaggio never signed any of his works- so it can be tough to tell. Several other authors of Caravaggio books (Fried, Vodret, Graham-Dixon, Robb) all consider it more likely made on the later date because of the one record that does exist, a note from the libel trial of someone who lent Caravaggio a monk’s robe and had it returned by him in 1603. But this kind of time stamp ‘evidence’ seems a bit thin, since we know the St. Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy painting he did was dated 1595 and uses the same robes.

St. Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy, by Caravaggio. See how similar the monk looks to the painting we're analyzing? But I much prefer this painting.

No matter which date it was painted, it is interesting to note that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in roughly the same time period. And Hamlet, amongst other things, features a (now famous) speech in which the protagonist typically holds a skull, exactly like this, saying, “Alas poor Yorick! I knew him…”

I could say the same thing, but about Caravaggio – “I knew him” – at least I thought I did. Is this St. Francis in Prayer painting by him? I’m really not sure. But I can’t wait to see it again in Boston.

Selfies in Seattle

My iphone is vintage and does not have a rear facing camera, so selfies are tough for me to take.

“Can you take a ‘youie’ of me?” I asked Hannah in the lobby of our hotel in Seattle.

“What?”

“A ‘youie’. It’s a selfie you take of other people,” I explain.

“Mom, that is not a thing.”

“Yes it is. I saw it on TV.”

“Mom.”

“What?”

“It’s not called that.”

“It totes is! Totes magotes! I’ve got all the lingo down, girl. I’m cool like that,” I say. I tried doing some rad hand gesture to illustrate my coolness, but it ended up with my just sticking my thumbs up and swirling them around.

Hannah covered her eyes with her hand for a second. “You. Are. Pathetic.” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

At least the picture she took was kind of nice:

Also, there were other ironic pictures:

Girls being posers in the restaurant:

Our loaner hotel goldfish, whose presence wasn’t ironic but whose name was:

The Edgar Allan Poe metal lunchbox I found:

And the girls make-your-own lego selfies:

They were each able to choose one accessory. Hannah chose a microphone and Sophie chose a sword. Why? What does this mean? I am afraid.