Rejection of a Masterpiece: Death of the Virgin by Caravaggio

[CTyankee]

Death of the Virgin, 1601-03, Louvre, Paris


One of the first things the viewer notes in this large painting is the Virgin’s bare legs and feet, inelegantly jutting out from her simple red dress and a cloak thrown hastily on her. Her bodice has been loosened. There has not been time to fold her hands properly.

It was widely known that the artist’s model for the Virgin was a prostitute...

and perhaps she was just a little too dead...

not only that, her body is beginning to swell.

Needless to say, the angels and cherubs for escorting her body heavenward have not materialized.

No lute, no violin, no angel with a wreath of flowers. The only concession to the holiness of the Virgin is the thin gold circlet of her halo.

The light that rakes from left to right across the scene is not heavenly...you do not see the puffy clouds at the top of this depiction. What you see (look closely) above the blood-red drape is an ordinary -- and dreary -- back wall and ceiling.

What strikes you is the subdued mood that the artist has infused into the scene. This is what the utter grief of those attending a death is like, the artist is telling us. We are all alone in our personal struggle to deal with the sudden final shock of death. Caravaggio’s apostles are mostly all old and balding and stunned. A younger one appears to look for a door. One covers his eyes with his hand. Two in back are open mouthed at this devastating moment. One appears to have just arrived, seeming to ask she’s gone?

The Magdalen is a figure in isolation. She is hunched over, perhaps wiping her eyes on her sleeve, a cloth clutched in her hand to wash the body of the mother of Christ before burial. She appears to be younger than the dead woman who looks full-figured and middle aged. The light illuminates the bare skin of the Magdalen’s neck.

The painting is, as one art historian has put it, “the visual analogue of a muffled sob...”

This painting was commissioned by a Vatican law official for his family chapel in the Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala in Rome. The contract had been for a painting of the “death or transition of the blessed Virgin Mary.” But though she was mortal, Mary was believed to be conceived without sin. Her body could not be subject to decay and so was physically assumed into heaven by Christ. Caravaggio’s painting, however, was without respect to the uniqueness of Mary among ordinary morals as the mother of God. The Blessed Mother could not be pictorialized as “ordinary.” The painting would have to go and a replacement found.

Three of the disciples portrayed here are barefoot themselves, the artist’s reminder to the monks of the humble nature of their work. Ironically, the monks who rejected this work were themselves named the “discalced (meaning “barefoot&quot Carmelites.”

Most artists of that era preferred the theme of the Assumption, not the actual death, of the Virgin Mary. One of the strangest Assumption depictions is a fresco by Correggio (note the Mannerist style here that eschews linear perspective).


dome of the cathedral, Parma, 1530

[IMG][/IMG]

This ceiling fresco is a busy vortex of cherubs heads, rock shaped clouds, and the central figure of Christ, looking as if he is rappelling, ropeless, down a funnel to greet his mother, amidst a “frog leg stew,” as it was described by a contemporary observer. The Virgin Mary here is found in the left in the fresco, halfway to the top, somewhat buried in cherubini and flanked by a virile Adam and a sensual Eve.

detail of dome
[IMG][/IMG]

Another view, decidedly more radiant and celestial, is the Baroque work of Peter Paul Rubens, who had been an early admirer of Caravaggio and persuaded his own patron to buy Caravaggio’s masterpiece.

Nonetheless, Rubens, being “rubenesque,” saw it this way

Peter Paul Rubens, Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, 1625
[IMG][/IMG]

And this is what replaced Caravaggio’s masterpiece and is in that church today (sigh)

Death of the Virgin by Carlo Saraceni, S. Maria della Scala, Rome, 1610
[IMG][/IMG]

[Nevernose]

1. I saw that painting for the first time just a few weeks ago

My wife was doing business-type stuff in Europe over the summer, including an extended period of time in Paris. I tagged along, got teacher passes to the Louvre and Musee d'Orsay, and spent all day every day staring at amazing works of art.

Caravaggio has always been a particular favorite of mine, but in that particular painting I think it's weird how Kary's lower body is turned away from the viewer. At first it threw me off, but then I realized it was more natural that way, more imperfect.

[CTyankee]

3. "Kary"?

sorry, I don't understand the reference...

[WhiteTara]

4. Me thinks typo...Mary nt

[CTyankee]

5. Oh, of course...

I think the letter K got me confused...

[CTyankee]

6. His point of view here is interesting.

This picture, seen in real life, is so different from all the photos. I was impressed by the overall subdued color and its large size, when I saw it in the Louvre in 2013.

I appreciated the fact that this was one Italian painting that came to the Louvre with a clean provenance, not stolen by Napoleon like so many other...

[Nevernose]

15. Of course, my FAVORITE stuff in the museum

Is the stuff ripped off wholesale from Egypt and Mesopotamia. It makes the Met look like the county fair by comparison, and I think the Met is life altering.

[CTyankee]

18. Well, wasn't the Louvre Napoleon's whole idea of a repository for the art he plundered?

But then, we see the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum...they should give them back to Greece.

Here in my own city, the Peabody Museum in 2010 had to give back some antiquities from Peruvian art that was plundered by Hiram Bingham, a Yale researcher. The guy had a real screw loose and ended up being a mental case. Yale initially refused to give them back, but later relented and gave them back (probably from peer pressure in the Ivy League schools).

[CTyankee]

19. What did the Met plunder?

[Nevernose]

30. I was comparing collections, not plundering capacity

Also, the Louvre was opened as a museum before Napoleon came on the scene in a big way, although he did greatly add to the collection. It was used as a private museum and the home of The Salon long before that, too. It was basically the world's first public art museum.

[CTyankee]

32. The back story on the Met is fascinating.

Trying to remember a book I read a while back on the development of art appreciation in the U.S....evidently the very rich collectors lobbied the congressman from their district and a senator to get a revision in the tax laws not to charge import duties on art coming into the country. That freed up some major works of European art, such as that of J.P. Morgan's who had quite a large collection languishing in England, to this country and of course to the Metropolitan. Nelson Rockefeller's grandfather, Sen. Nelson Aldrich, was the senator responsible.

I also adore the Frick (I love house museums) and the newish Neue Gallery (for which Ron Lauder bought Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer," a stunning work). And, if you get there on a good day, the MoMA (the lines can be daunting, however).

However, I must give a cheer for the MFA in Boston. There's a Goya exhibit opening there on Oct. 12, that I will see will my daughter. I'll give a report to DU! I have had some moments of unrestrained JOY at the MFA. And right across the street, the Isabelle Gardner (Sargent's El Jaleo is there!).

[roguevalley]

47. he is brilliant. mom's favorite was the one in the

National Gallery in London of a monk kneeling in prayer. You have to see his colors to truly appreciate the richness and genius of his talent.

[shenmue]

2. Loves me some Caravaggio

[Auggie]

7. Great design and wonderful use of light & color

Always liked that about this painting

[CTyankee]

8. The sense of the oncoming baroque...

The Renaissance was over and done, Mannerism was pretty awful, so Caravaggio offered the wonderful sense of dramatic and feeling. Some art critic of the 20th century called him "our first cinematic painter."

[Auggie]

14. YES!

It's cool to watch painting's progression over those few hundred years.

[CTyankee]

16. Yep. LONG Gothic, very short Renaissance. Even shorter Mannerist (thank god)...then

wonderful Baroque. Gotta love it...

[nolabear]

9. Wonderful, heartbreaking painting. Also noteworthy for her red clothing.

The Virgin Mary is almost always shown wearing blue and white in some form. The red is opulent and rich, and lends to the raw emotion of the work. This is about death, and mourning, the reality that all those Assumptions are trying mightily to deny. Reminds me of funerals that are so focused on the promise of heaven that they ignore the life and loss of the person almost entirely.

It's gorgeous.

[CTyankee]

11. I have seen some Assumptions in which Mary was dressed in red and I wondered about that...

I have no roots in Catholic theology so I don't know what the deal was, but I, too, thought blue was the dress for Mary. As it turns out, at least in lots of paintings, not so...

[Tree-Hugger]

61. Red

Represents the Passion of Christ in art of that period and during the prior Medieval period.

[CTyankee]

62. Ah, thanks for that! I never saw that but it sure makes sense...

[malaise]

10. You're back to complete our Friday evenings

[CTyankee]

12. Thanks, Malaise. Hope you took notes. There will be a test, you know...

[malaise]

13. Hahahahaha

You know how well I do in these art tests - NOT

[CTyankee]

17. Love ya, anyway!

[longship]

20. It is difficult to see your Friday posts these days, my good friend.

It was easier with the Friday art quiz, entitled the same way every week.

Still love what you do here, a wonderful respite from an arduous week of politics. Who can complain about such beauty and history?

Please! There are many here who wait all week for this. Unfortunately, I have neither the education nor the experience to speak with any authority on the art you present here. My domains are math and physics. Nevertheless, my Fridays -- and hopefully many other DUers -- are enriched by your posts.

I wish I could do more than this to thank you for what you do here. It is a real treasure.

[CTyankee]

21. Oh, how sweet you are!

You are so kind and lovely...I am pretty stunned...

You see, I love to start a conversation about art because I am so fanatical about it. So I do stuff to get that conversation started.

I love doing what is called ekphrasis with art. It is a long honored literary way of translating what the writer sees in art to readers, going back centuries.

This is one way we all learn about what art means. I have learned so much from my research. So I like to pass it on...it is my joy in life...

[longship]

23. Keep up keeping up.

You bring art to DU like nobody here brings politics. It is a love, a passion born of experience as well as...well, a passion. We all learn more by each one of your Friday posts.

I will never rise to your level of appreciation of art. However, I treasure your weekly posts, as do many other DUers. (Pun intended.)

[CTyankee]

38. You could do what I did and go to the library and see what books are available...they open the

door...they did for me. I only really got started a few years ago when my husband was in recovery from back surgery. To have an escape, I went to art research. It was a great escape...but of course I was retired then and had some time on my hands...

[longship]

49. I just may give that a try.

Coming from you, that is a high recommendation.

I have a rather deep knowledge of music, although I do not have any talent whatsoever in performing it. Nevertheless I can pretty much tell a work's composer just by hearing it, or at least get it to the correct musical era. That is my lifelong passion. That is why I chime in when you make these Friday posts. I certainly understand such passions, and you always communicate your love of the visual arts very effectively.

In short, I have become a fanboy.

[CTyankee]

51. wow! I've never had a fanboy before!

Music is very special to me, too. I've been in concert halls where I felt taken away from the world. ..

[alfredo]

22. Kick and Recommend

[awoke_in_2003]

24. I always love your art threads. K&R. nt

[Unknown Beatle]

25. Although I know pratically

nil about art history, I have painted acrylic on canvas. Some of my painting were on display on a couple of exhibits but unfortunately, some unscrupulous dealer stole a few dozen paintings from various local artists, including mine.

I was continuing my paintings and then I was involved in a horrifying auto accident and my will to paint vanished for some reason or other.

Thank you for your posts, I always learn a lot from them.

[druidity33]

31. really love your gifs...

did you get them somewhere specific?



actually, i just noticed your icon is pretty cool too...

[Unknown Beatle]

44. Thanks druidity33.

I found the gifs just by goggling around for them. You're pretty cool for noticing.

[CTyankee]

34. OH, that breaks my heart! I hope you regain your will to paint at some point...

perhaps when you have healed emotionally from what happened. It must have been very traumatic.

Take care...

[Unknown Beatle]

45. It was very traumatic.

I rolled over my SUV five times going 75 mph (legal speed limit where I was driving) because of a blowout on my rear right tire. I came to a complete stop upside down only to have an 18 wheeler smash into the SUV with me still inside. I had a severe concussion, a left shoulder torn left rotator cuff, my right ear almost sheared off (had to be resewn back by a plastic surgeon) multiple cuts and bruises, plus I lost 65 percent of my hearing in my right ear and 80 percent in my left ear, I'm considered functionally deaf. I can still hear but at a louder volume. I'm still trying to get my excitement back for painting and playing guitar.

[CTyankee]

50. what a terrible shock to you. It's wonder you are alive.

My best to you and I hope your tomorrows are better...

[UTUSN]

26. I don't usually indulge, but thanks for this gorgeousness n/t

[CTyankee]

33. Thank you. That is gratifying to me!

I'll try to do another little art blog in October...and if you are around, drop by...

[REP]

27. Caravaggio painted directly on canvas; no underdrawings before painting

There is a Caravaggio at the Nelson where you can see where he used a palette knife to mark the angle of one of the legs, but he didn't sketch figures first on the canvas before starting a piece - something I find even more remarkable than his use of light and shadow or his penchant for duelling.

[CTyankee]

35. It was shocking to artists of his era that he did not follow Leonardo's dictum about

disegno being first, which was a decidedly humanist, Renaissance way of looking at the creation of art. Interestingly, it was more Florentine in its basis; the Venetians had their own idea about colore.

And you are right, Caravaggio "wielded" his palette knife widely. No wonder they were shocked...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

28. The Caravaggio is a wonderful painting, full of the pain and loss of death.

I am oversimplifying here, but the others are mostly pretty pictures.

I'm glad to see you back here with your art posts!

[CTyankee]

36. Oh, I was hoping you'd drop by, Peggy! I thought of you and how you'd probably love this

stuff.

[Uncle Joe]

29. It seems the other painters wanted to disconnect Mary from the people

and Caravaggio wanted to bring her back.

Thanks for the thread, CTyankee.

[CTyankee]

37. He was involved with some religious movement for the poor during his day...

to the extent that he could, given his disordered emotions and self destructive behavior. I like to think that had it not been for his own demons he could have made his mark as a social reformer...

[JackRiddler]

39. Much appreciated, this. Thank you!

[navarth]

40. Great thread, thanks very much. nt

[calimary]

41. Amazing.

I've always been fascinated by the foreshortening and the drapery in these paintings. Just so compelling. Nothing like church art. LOVED IT when I was a kid. STILL love it today. That's the main thing that made church interesting - for me as an art student. LOVED the goo-gaws. Loved the stuff. The paintings, the sculptures, the bas reliefs, the frescoes, the trimmings and trappings and carvings and stuff. Tons of it to look at and meditate upon and trip out about. I used to love the Latin Mass because so much of it involved quiet times, priest up there at the altar doing his thing with his back turned and the rest of us could sit quietly and meditate and gaze at the statues and paintings and objets d'art and breathe in the incense-scented air and just kinda lose ourselves in it. LOVED that. It was really rather trippy.

And then things changed and all of a sudden the priest was more actively involved, turned around to face the congregation with what he was doing, and the congregation was then involved in about an hour's worth of gymnastics. Stand up! Sit down! Kneel! Stand up! Sing! Kneel! Stand up! Sing! Sit down! Sing! Kneel! Turn around and shake hands with everybody! Sing! Grab hands! Kneel! Sit! Kneel! Stand! Kneel! Stand! Sing! UP outta your seats, get in line for Communion! Pass the plate! Stand up! Kneel! Stand up! Sit! Stand! Probably a subtle strategy to keep us all from dozing off, I'd suspect!

I vastly preferred the quiet, contemplative, meditative atmosphere of the old way they did the Mass. You could be pretty much alone with your thoughts for an hour. This is just me, of course. But I liked the other way better. Way too busy! Too much commotion!

[CTyankee]

52. When I saw Caravaggio's three Matthew series in a tiny chapel in a church in Rome

(where you threw some Euro change in a box and the lights went on for 15 minutes, I noticed people sitting quietly in the pews and I thought what it must be like to have that as your neighborhood church. Three Caravaggio in the little niches they call chapels right beside the pews and strangers coming in to gawk

[JackRiddler]

42. I confess! I love great comic book art.

Which is why I've got to go with the Correggio.

[CTyankee]

53. Ah! You need to write a little thesis about the echoes of Correggio in Archie Comic Books...

[JackRiddler]

69. Come on now, it's a lot better than an Archie.

The figures are a bit Neal Adams, but the crazy ecstatic crowd in extreme detail and colors... names escape me but there are a few comic artists who do stuff like that.

[CTyankee]

70. I was making fun of the oh so serious art world...

Altho I love to read the stuff, I must say...sometimes I actually learn stuff and that is good!

[No Vested Interest]

43. Thank you for this, and the explanations and discussion.

Beautiful works of art, though none quite depict Mary as I perceive her at the hour of her death.

She was in her late forties when Christ was killed, and apparently lived many years beyond that, likely decades, as Jesus gave her care to John the Apostle as he(Christ) was dying. John the apostle was a young man, possibly about 20 at that time.

So the Rubens depicting a young woman with long, flowing brown hair doesn't do it for me.
The woman in the Saraceni painting at least could be somewhat older, despite the dark hair.

As an older woman myself, I like to reflect on Mary as she aged, and as a model for older women.

[CTyankee]

55. The art of that era seemed to depict her as younger than she actually was at her death...

Murillo depicts her as a young girl...

[No Vested Interest]

57. You're correct. The art is fabulous, ( emotionally good) but it's that "fantasizing"

part that turns me off intellectually.

I also don't like it when in religious art the Child Jesus is shown very large in proportion to Mary.
But that's just my take on it.

[CTyankee]

58. Caravaggio seems to agree with you! Emphatically so!

[panader0]

46. Thanks CT. You are a gem here at DU

I love being educated.

[CTyankee]

56. I'm glad I'm not too boring...

[Nitram]

48. "Her body is beginning to swell?"

I think that's a bit of a stretch. Not only are the parts of her body we can see normal, the rest of her looks the way a middle-aged woman would look. Plumpness was viewed as synonymous with generosity and nurturing.

[CTyankee]

54. It was her belly.

Caravaggio biographer makes a great deal of the "swelling" in his book "M." It was also noted elsewhere by other art historians. It's pretty well accepted that this was one aspect of the painting that got the Carmelite friars all in a tizzy and rejected it...

[Manifestor_of_Light]

59. Thank you for your tutoring, CTYankee!

I am passionate about music first of all and art second of all!

I think the only Caravaggio I've seen is the Boy Playing a Lute that was on tour at the Houston MFA and originally from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. This was before the Soviet Union fell.

[CTyankee]

60. so glad you liked it! I'll do another a while later...hope to see you!

[MerryBlooms]

63. The Caravaggio really expresses the grief all humans have or will face

The heavy use of red for me, reminds me of all the anger I felt when my first husband died. The pulled shades... the darkness your soul casts...

The other renditions are beautiful, but don't really capture the true darkness the human heart feels when loss rips at your heart and soul.

Much thanks for yet another amazing DU Friday Art gift.

[CTyankee]

66. Caravaggio always gets to the heart of the matter...always.

Art always saves you. Always. I have remembered that in my darkest hours. It is always there for you, in painting, in music, in poetry...if you can keep that close to you, it is a wonderful blessing...

[Tree-Hugger]

64. Thank you

I heartily enjoy these posts.

[CTyankee]

65. glad you like them! I hope to post more...

[blogslut]

67. I have questions about the mechanics of the Caravaggio painting.

The big red drape looks funny, in that it's not so much pulled back from a logical position but included in order to fill out the top of the composition. Could it perhaps be attached to an unseen wall on the right in a vertical fashion and then slung over a beam above where Mary's body lay?

And that high table her body is on. Not a bed. More like she's in some sort of ancient morgue? Is that the location in which this scene takes place? Or did the artist put her up high on a surface with no under-bulk so he could include the bare feet of the mourners?

[CTyankee]

68. evidently, Caravaggio posed his compositions very carefully, with a group of models he

found off the floating street life of Rome and worked with regularly. From what I know about his painting, he used a red drape he had used in earlier paintings, not unusual for the period. I guess it could have been hung, that's a good guess.

The bed is up high, sort of a funeral bier, as I see it. Again, carefully posed.

My interpretation is that the surroundings for this picture are meant to convey the humble status of the Virgin and of Christ's apostles. It exemplifies the shared existence with so many of the ordinary people. The church it was originally planned for is/was in a downscale neighborhood of the Trastevere section of Rome.

The point , to me, is/was that Christ and his followers were not royalty, they were from the common folk. The idea of Mary as the Queen of heaven, a favorite description of the Church, is no such thing in this picture!

If you are interested, you can find much more in Peter Robb's bio of Caravaggio, entitled "M." Robb is a breezy Aussie and his writing is funny and informative! Great book!