Art Knowledge News
DNA Tests Could Solve Mystery of Baroque Master Caravaggio's Death |
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| Written by Glenn Hamish |
| Sunday, 13 December 2009 00:58 |
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"If we are lucky enough to find Caravaggio's skull, we will also be able to do a reconstruction of his face, just as we did in 2007 for Dante Alighieri," Silvano Vinceti, head of the National Committee for Cultural Heritage, told Reuters. The only images of the artist available until now have been self-portraits. Scholars have put forward many theories about Caravaggio's death. The most popular are that the painter was assassinated for religious reasons or collapsed with malaria on a deserted Tuscan beach. However, in 2001 an Italian researcher claimed to have found the painter's death certificate, which allegedly proved that he died in hospital. "This historical document shows Caravaggio did not die alone on the beach but after three days in hospital, which means the body must have been buried in the San Sebastiano cemetery," said Vinceti, referring to a Tuscan town near the city of Grosseto. But in 1956, bodies buried at the tiny San Sebastiano graveyard were moved to a nearby town, Porto Ercole, and scholars hope that the remains of Caravaggio will be among them. The team -- from the departments of Anthropology and Cultural Heritage Conservation at the universities of Ravenna and Bologna -- will have to examine the bones of between 30 and 40 people, selecting those that belong to young men who died at the beginning of the 17th century. "We will check the DNA extracted from the bones and teeth of possible matches against that of the painter's male descendents," Professor Giorgio Gruppioni, who will head the team, told Reuters. "Sadly Caravaggio died childless," said Gruppioni, "but his siblings had children whose relatives are still living in the northern Italian town that carries his name." Caravaggio, who pioneered the Baroque painting technique of contrasting light and dark known as chiaroscuro, is famed for his wild life. Legend has it that he was on his way to Rome to seek pardon for killing a man in a brawl when he died. After a lacklustre apprenticeship, Caravaggio went to Rome. By 1592, he was causing scandal, not only because of his volatile character and temper but because of his controversial painting methods. He rejected the lengthy preparations traditional in central Italy, preferring instead to work in oils directly from the subject - half-length figures and still life - as practised by the Venetians. He aimed to make paintings that depicted the truth and he was critically condemned for being a naturalist. In spite of adverse reactions, Caravaggio was commissioned to produce a number of large-scale paintings. However, certain of these after 1600 were made only to be rejected by patrons on the grounds of indecorum or theological incorrectness. His innovatory work nevertheless gained strong support and was a welcome antidote to Mannerism, or the limp compromises wrought by lesser artists working on religious themes.
What in effect Caravaggio was doing systematically and deliberately, for the first time in the history of art, is destroying the space between the event in the painting and the people looking at it. He is giving us direct windows into life, whether religious life or ordinary life. Indeed, they are more than windows; we are in the same room or manger or tomb or prison where the events are taking place. Even we, whose vision and sense of reality has been blunted and distorted by television and the cinema, still get tremendous impressions of participating when we see his great canvases close up. What then must it have been like in the early seventeenth century, for people who had never come across anything approaching this blast of actuality, to be brought face-to-face with a reenactment of sacred events in two dimensions? Artists were particularly struck, or perhaps shocked is a better word; but horribly stimulated too, and stirred to find out exactly how the man did it. This was no easy matter, either, for Caravaggio's work was already becoming scattered in his lifetime. There is no doubt about the impact Caravaggio's work had on other artists. In the years immediately after his death, he was imitated by more artists than any other master of whom we have records. Caravaggism was a kind of fever which spread over the art world. Caravaggio had a direct or indirect influence on all the greatest spirits of the century: Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Verme (Editing by Paul Casciato and Art Knowledge News) Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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