The Last Caravaggio

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.

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 17^th 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.

he 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 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.

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