At the peak of his fame in Rome, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is thought to have owned at the least 12 books. We don’t image Caravaggio as a reader. A streetfighter, a killer, sure – however not an mental. But his portray The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, which has come to the Nationwide Gallery from Naples, proves he may mine a guide for its hidden diamonds.
The story of Ursula, an early Christian princess from Britain who sailed off to marry and hopefully convert a pagan prince accompanied by at least 11,000 virgins, is likely one of the non secular fairy tales recounted in an extremely unusual medieval compendium referred to as The Golden Legend. Caravaggio clearly studied this Thirteenth-century supply rigorously as a result of he sees one thing in it nobody else had.
Earlier artists depicted its pageantry and epic travels, culminating in gory mass martyrdom. Caravaggio as a substitute houses in on an intense remoted second. Ursula’s 11,000 companions have been slain by “the Hunnish tribe” at Cologne (to cite William Granger Ryan’s translation), however Ursula was spared. The chief of the Huns “was dazzled by her wondrous magnificence”. He tried to cheer her up – hey, sorry in regards to the mass martyrdom – and requested her to marry him. “However she scorned his supply, and he, seeing that she despised him, transfixed her with an arrow.”
That is what Caravaggio paints. The Hunnish king is possessed by rage, his face fiery purple, as livid because the lion on his bronze breastplate. He’s simply shot the arrow at level clean rage. Ursula seems down, her face calm, on the shaft buried in her chest. There are not any armies, no mounds of corpses as in earlier depictions. As an alternative, Caravaggio does what his up to date Shakespeare did with Holinshed and Cinthio to create Macbeth and Othello: he extracts the human juice from the clattering narrative.
It is a nice drama performed out within the depths of evening – and the Nationwide Gallery phases it that method. The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula hangs in a stark house with a handful of supporting paperwork and one different portray. It’s hypnotic. London theatre could also be expensive however right here’s a dumbfounding drama of rage, violence, loss of life and possibly guilt, remorse and acceptance – and you may see it at no cost. It additionally has a cameo from Caravaggio himself, within the final self-portrait he ever painted, standing behind Ursula.
His eyebrows and hair are jet black. So are his eyes. It’s tempting to name them lightless, however there are two tiny specks of white in every. They mirror the sunshine supply laying naked these determined figures within the evening. That “cinematic” lighting has made Caravaggio a celebrity within the display age. However he startled early 1600s Rome, too, by observing precise mild. Set in humble rooms or aspect streets, the scenes in work like The Calling of Saint Matthew are illuminated by a single supply from the aspect that exposes daring particulars out of surrounding darkness.
The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula has that very same targeted mild, however the beam is extraordinarily slender, as if filtered via a slit. It picks out bits of the scarred, weathered face of the Hunnish chief leaving his different options within the unlit void. Beside him, a witness has a face that’s only a nostril and eye. Caravaggio’s personal face is equally mutilated. The highest half is lit whereas his mouth, open in a howl of horror, is barely discernible.
Is that this reflecting the trauma of Caravaggio’s current escapades? The Nationwide Gallery believes that is his final portray. Not lengthy earlier than he made it, he was attacked exterior an inn in Naples, his face brutally lower up, leaving him “unrecognisable” in keeping with a Seventeenth-century author. So possibly the partially seen, partially hidden faces mirror his sense of disfigurement. An armoured soldier to the far proper has essentially the most unrecognisable face of all, only a nostril below his helmet.
The one one that’s absolutely lit is Ursula. But the sunshine on her is pale and eerie. Though it comes from a single supply, the sunshine appears to have modified by the point it reaches her. The Hun chief is in a purple glow as if lit by a campfire. However Ursula is in white moonlight, as she enters loss of life – and heaven. For all this, the Hun chief is the portray’s emotional centre. His face, at first simply savage, is filled with contorted feelings. As Ursula stands there, nonetheless alive together with his arrow in her, he sees the dreadful irreversibility of what he has achieved.
It’s a realisation Caravaggio knew all too properly. Paperwork testify to the painter’s violent mood, from beating up a waiter over some artichokes to killing a person. What will need to have struck him within the story of Ursula’s loss of life is the deadly volatility of the chief’s rage: the second Ursula rejects him, he shoots her.
Caravaggio all the time provides folks filthy fingernails, however have a look at this assassin’s nails and also you’ll see what seem like contaminated talons, one complete hand turning right into a demonic claw. Ursula continues to be. She has acquired her martyrdom: a holy blessed destiny within the eyes of the church. However what has her killer acquired? Damnation. Caravaggio is unquestionably taking a look at him and pondering: Is that me?
I’ve seen blockbusters that bored me stiff. This exhibition, devoted to only one masterpiece, held me transfixed, identical to Ursula.