At the peak of his fame in Rome, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is understood to have owned at the very 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 might 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 spiritual fairy tales recounted in an extremely unusual medieval compendium known as The Golden Legend. Caravaggio clearly studied this Thirteenth-century supply fastidiously 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 properties 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 concerning 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 crimson, as livid because the lion on his bronze breastplate. He’s simply shot the arrow at level clean rage. Ursula appears to be like 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 night time – and the Nationwide Gallery levels it that means. The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula hangs in a stark area 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, demise and perhaps guilt, remorse and acceptance – and you may see it without spending a dime. 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 replicate the sunshine supply laying naked these determined figures within the night time. That “cinematic” lighting has made Caravaggio a celebrity within the display age. However he startled early 1600s Rome, too, by observing precise gentle. 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.
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The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula has that very same targeted gentle, 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 latest 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 minimize up, leaving him “unrecognisable” in response to a Seventeenth-century author. So perhaps the partially seen, partially hidden faces replicate his sense of disfigurement. An armoured soldier to the far proper has probably the most unrecognisable face of all, only a nostril beneath his helmet.
The one one that’s totally 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 crimson glow as if lit by a campfire. However Ursula is in white moonlight, as she enters demise – and heaven. For all this, the Hun chief is the portray’s emotional centre. His face, at first simply savage, is stuffed with contorted feelings. As Ursula stands there, nonetheless alive along with his arrow in her, he sees the dreadful irreversibility of what he has performed.
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 demise is the deadly volatility of the chief’s rage: the second Ursula rejects him, he shoots her.
Caravaggio all the time offers individuals filthy fingernails, however have a look at this assassin’s nails and also you’ll see what appear to be contaminated talons, one entire hand turning right into a demonic claw. Ursula remains 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 definitely him and pondering: Is that me?
I’ve seen blockbusters that bored me stiff. This exhibition, devoted to only one masterpiece, held me transfixed, similar to Ursula.
