The Caravaggio Disease

The Da Vinci Code read like a treatise tricked out as a novel. But The Lost Painting, by Jonathan Harr, reads like a novel, even though it is an account of a scholarly search for a lost painting by Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ. The Lost Painting is an easy read, completely without the obfuscation one expects from scholarly writing. I picked up the book to sample it and read rapidly through the first fifty pages, completely hooked.

Harr interweaves the story of the mystery of the whereabouts of the lost Caravaggio, an account of Caravaggio's life, and the description of the restoration of a painting which just might be the one scholars have been trying to locate. All those bits are fascinating. The real people in the story, Francesco Cappelleti and Laura Testa, two Italian students searching through dusty files to find a trail to the painting, Denis Mahon, the dapper English Caravaggio expert, and Sergio Benedetti, the gruff Italian restorer living in Ireland, are described as if they were characters--they are three-dimensional, each with his or her own foibles. But the central characters are Caravaggio and the precious painting.

Francesca aludes early on to the "Caravaggio disease." Scholars become gripped by it and it takes over. They become obssessed with all things Caravaggio. One is described as nearly falling from a scaffolding, while trying to lean over and kiss a Caravaggio being restored. And she herself is under the spell of the artist who has been called a genius, but it is not the myth or legend which binds her--it is what she sees, when she looks at one of his works. She enters into the painting and for a few minutes in time, before being brought back by the activity around her, she lives within the painting itself.

Caravaggio is a fascinating character. Harr's description of his strange habits only served to whet my curiosity. According to Harr, C. cared very little for his personal appearance and would go without washing and wear his clothes into rags. He consorted with prostitutes, and when flush, after selling a painting, would become wildly and belligerently drunk, picking sword fights, one of which ended in his murdering the man he attacked, and eventually being hacked in turn, his face suffering the worst of the blows.

But I am most curious not about the colorful bits of his life, (there must have been scores bad actors who behaved exactly like him during that period) but about what set him apart: his ability to compose works which still astound with their drama and originality.

The Taking of Christ is reproduced on the dust jacket of The Lost Painting. But it is a small reproduction, very dark. It is not possible to see clearly the details Harr aludes to. (Have to go to Ireland, for a good look.) I hefted out my old Jansen, to get another view of C.'s work and found only one, The Calling of St. Matthew, but it is a full page color reproduction. (About 1/100 the size of the actual painting, that is.) Seeing the two reproductions together brings out the qualities I associate with Caravaggio: The dramatic lighting and the use of common people with very individualistic faces in a composition deliberately designed to illuminate the religious message of the painting.

I am well on the way to having the Caravaggio disease, myself. Seicento, puntinature, pentimenti, lacunae, lead-tin yellow, malachite, red lake, bone black, green earth, walnut oil--those words strung together are like poetry. I need to catch some glimmer of what drove C. to paint. Did he paint merely to be able to buy wine and debauch? The paintings tell a very different story. At the end of the Jonathan Harr provides a list of his sources (he met and interviewed all the people he describes), including three biographies of Caravaggio that he recommends. I can hardly wait.