The National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana Presents Carravaggio in Cuba

Written by Rafaella Bolfiolli Thursday, 06 October 2011 01:48

Havana, Cuba.- The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana (National Museum of Fine Arts) is proud to present "Carravaggio in Cuba", on view until November 27th. The exhibit seeks to illustrate and deepen understanding of a fundamental period in Italian art that saw the city of Rome as the protagonist of a deep transformation that occurred in the course of the three first decades of the 17th century. With the Lutherian reformation sweeping Europe and the Trento Council (1545-1563), which marked the new path for the Vatican, it is possible to appreciate the dawn of the 17th century as being a real artistic revolution that made Rome the artistic capital of Europe. The exhibition is an event of great significance for Cuba, marking the first time that a Carravaggio painting has been put on public view. Accompanying Carravaggio's "The Narcissus" are 12 works by his followers, both from Italy and the rest of Europe.

Carravaggio's soujourn in Rome lasted from his arrival "naked and penniless" in 1592 until 1606, when his already notorious behaviour culminated in his killing a youth during a brawl and he fled the city with a price on his head. However, during those years he had a profound influence. Chiaroscuro was practiced long before he came on the scene, but it was Caravaggio who made the technique definitive, darkening the shadows and transfixing the subject in a blinding shaft of light. With this came the acute observation of physical and psychological reality which formed the ground both for his immense popularity and for his frequent problems with his religious commissions. He worked at great speed, from live models, scoring basic guides directly onto the canvas with the end of the brush handle; very few of Caravaggio's drawings appear to have survived, and it is likely that he preferred to work directly on the canvas. The approach was anathema to the skilled artists of his day, who decried his refusal to work from drawings and to idealise his figures. The installation of his St. Matthew paintings in the Contarelli Chapel had an immediate impact among the younger artists in Rome, and Caravaggism became the cutting edge for every ambitious young painter.


The first Caravaggisti included Orazio Gentileschi and Giovanni Baglione. Baglione went on to write the first biography of Caravaggio. In the next generation of Caravaggisti there were Carlo Saraceni, Bartolomeo Manfredi and Orazio Borgianni. Gentileschi, despite being considerably older, was the only one of these artists to live much beyond 1620, and ended up as court painter to Charles I of England. Caravaggio's brief stay in Naples produced a notable school of Neapolitan Caravaggisti, including Battistello Caracciolo and Carlo Sellitto. The Caravaggisti movement there ended with a terrible outbreak of plague in 1656, but the Spanish connection – Naples was a possession of Spain – was instrumental in forming the important Spanish branch of his influence. A group of Catholic artists from Utrecht, the "Utrecht Caravaggisti", travelled to Rome as students in the first years of the 17th century and were profoundly influenced by the work of Caravaggio.

On their return to the north this trend had a short-lived but influential flowering in the 1620s among painters like Hendrick ter Brugghen, Gerrit van Honthorst, Andries Both and Dirck van Baburen. In the following generation the effects of Caravaggio, although attenuated, are to be seen in the work of Rubens (who purchased one of his paintings for the Gonzaga of Mantua and painted a copy of the Entombment of Christ), Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Velázquez, the last of whom presumably saw his work during his various sojourns in Italy. Many of these artists are represented in the works which have travelled from italy to Cuba for this exhibition.


The National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana) in Havana, Cuba is a museum of Fine Arts that exhibits Cuban art collections from the colonial times up to contemporary generations. It was founded on February 23, 1913 due to the efforts of its first director, Emilio Heredia, a well-known architect. After frequent moves it was finally placed on the block once occupied by the old Colon Market. In 1954, a new Palacio of Bellas Artes was opened, designed by the architect Rodriguez Pichardo. The original 1954 Palacio was recently reconstructed by the architect Jose Linares and a second building was taken over for the museum. There are now two impressive buildings belonging to the Museum, one dedicated to Cuban Arts in the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) and one dedicated to the Universal Arts, in the Palacio del Centro Asturiano (Palace of the Asturian Center). The Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) is dedicated exclusively to housing Cuba Art collections. Spanning the 17th and 19th centuries has rooms devoted to landscape, religious subjects and the Costumbrismo narrative scenes of Cuban life. Gallery devoted to the 1970s is marked by a preponderance of Hyperrealism and the latest generation of Cuban artists whose works all reflect the strong symbolic imagery that has been prevalent in recent decades. The most notable works are those of René Portocarrero and Wifredo Lam. A modernist sculpture by noted Cuban artist Rita Lonja stands outside the main entrance. In the Palacio del Centro Asturiano (Palace of the Asturian Center) built in 1927 by the architect Manuel Bustos European paintings and sculptures, along with a collection of ancient art are on displayed there. Originally, it was a club for natives of the Spanish Province of Asturias and after the 1959 Revolution it housed the Supreme Court of Justice.

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