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The Lost Painting: The Search for a Caravaggio Masterpiece
Jonathan Harr
By
Published: Jan 01, 2005
Category:
Non Fiction
The Lost Painting: The Search for a Caravaggio Masterpiece
Jonathan Harr
‘The da Vinci Code’ of art — that’s the shorthand for Jonathan Harr’s book.
It’s certainly a convenient way to summarize ‘The Lost Painting’ and amp up the excitement. Consider the painter. Caravaggio has become the favorite bad boy of the Italian Baroque — passionate, combative, probably gay, a murderer, and, along the way, an artist who painted masterpiece after masterpiece and then did his legend a favor by dying young.
And consider the paintings: images ripped from the movies, all gloss and shadow, usually with only a single light source to highlight the dirty faces of extreme personalities seen in extremis .
And then consider the painting: The Taking of Christ . One of only 80 — or maybe 60 — on the planet. Worth $50 million. If, that is, it were on the market. If, that is, anyone knew where it was.
That’s the engine of this book, the first by Harr since his best-selling legal chronicle, ‘A Civil Action.’ (Yes, that book grew up to be a movie. This one may as well.) ‘The Taking of Christ’ is the Grail of Caravaggio scholars. There are copies, but the original disappeared 200 years ago. Can anyone find it?
The trail begins in Rome, with a scholar and his graduate students. He is working on a catalogue; he also has an interest in Caravaggio painting of St. John. He sets two graduate students — Francesca Cappelletti and Laura Testa — on the hunt.
The hunt means libraries. Dusty, overheated rooms filled with books and records rarely opened. A day of research that produces a single fact is momentous. Yes, this is the ‘da Vinci Code’ — but in slow-motion.
And yet. Francesca and Laura are dedicated. They find something. And it leads them to an archive in a crumbling palazzo several hours drive from Rome. There, in an account book unexamined for centuries, they learn that this family once owned the ‘St. John’ — and the ‘Taking of Christ.’ And with that, they’re off….to another library, and a fresh fact: in 1802, this family sold six paintings to a rich Scotsman. Another hundred pages and a few new characters later, someone finds the ‘Taking of Christ.’
And thus begins another thrilling chapter in the story: the restoration of the painting. Again, there’s a touch of the exotic and the bizarre — you do not expect to find ‘purified ox bile’ in a book about art. Then again, you do not expect to encounter an English Protestant who tortures Irish soldiers in 1916 — and is shot and killed for that four years later. And you don’t expect his widow, a prim female doctor, to have ended up with the Caravaggio. Then again, how do biscuit beetles come to be thriving on the lining of the painting?
You don’t need to love Caravaggio’s art to be interested in this intellectual detective story. But if you don’t like Caravaggio or are unfamiliar with his work, this is a splendid time to fill in a big gap. Yes, he’s popular now. But to see a Caravaggio — not in books or on the Internet, but close-up, in a museum — is to grasp at once that the Caravaggio vogue is the furthest thing from a transitory cultural frenzy.
Every time I amble down to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I make a point of stopping at one Caravaggio painting: The Denial of Saint Peter . There are nine other works by Caravaggio at the museum — check out the visual feast: Caravaggio at the Met — but this is the one that grabs and holds me. Some days I’ll just look at Peter’s forehead. On others, that flash of white in the center seizes my attention. And then there’s the bright light on the face of the woman who has accused Peter of being a follower of Jesus…. What can I say? If you’re visiting New York and don’t take a few minutes to see this painting, you’re missing a treat.
‘The Lost Painting’ is a story of detection, not a biography. For a short telling of Caravaggio’s brief life, I suggest M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio , by Peter Robb. Or just visit the Met….
To buy ‘The Lost Painting’ from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy ‘M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio’ from Amazon.com, click here .
