Death of the Virgin (Caravaggio)
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 |
| Death of the Virgin |
| Caravaggio, 1604-1606 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 369 × 245 cm |
| Louvre, Paris |
The Death of the Virgin (1606) is a painting completed by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio. It is a near contemporary with the Madonna with Saint Anne now at the Galleria Borghese. It was commissioned by Laerzio Cherubini, a papal lawyer, for his chapel in the Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala in Trastevere, Rome.
The depiction of the Death of the Virgin caused a contemporary stir, and was rejected as unfit by the parish. Subsequently, upon the recommendation by Peter Paul Rubens, who praised it as one of Caravaggio's best, the painting was bought by Charles I, Duke of Mantua. It then travelled to the Court of Charles I of England, and finally to France. Today it hangs in the Louvre. Prior to leaving Rome, it was exposed at the Academy of Painters for under two weeks, however, by then, Caravaggio had fled Rome, never to publicly return. During one of his frequent brawls in Rome, the mercurial and impulsive Caravaggio killed a man, Ranuccio Tomassoni, during a sword fight after a tennis game.
The painting recalls the Entombment in the Vatican in scope, sobriety, and the photographic naturalism. The figures are nearly life-sized. Surrounding the Virgin are overcome Mary Magdalen and apostles. Others shuffle in behind them. He expresses the greater grief of the former not by a more emotive face, but by hiding their faces. Caravaggio, master of stark and dark canvases, is not interested in a mannerist exercise that captures a range of emotions. In some ways this is a silent grief, this is no wake for wailers. The sobbing occurs in faceless emotional silence. The holiness of the Virgin is discerned by her thread-like halo. A large red cloth looms superior portion of the canvas; a common motif in deposition painting.
Some details of the Virgin's death were in the 1600s, and remain so today, unresolved in Catholic doctrine, although much debate has occurred. This painting was completed at a time when the dogma of the Assumption of Mary was not yet formally enunciated ex cathedra by the pope. While her body and soul assumption is dogma, there is no documentary evidence regarding the Virgin's death. How she passed from this world is not dogmatic. Some envisioned a post-death Dormition as a moment when God resurrected her non-putrid body to heaven. Others argued that she felt no pain or disease, and did not fear at the moment of her death, since she died sinless, and that she was assummed in healthy body and soul prior to "death". On the other hand, Caravaggio's Mary is dead; her feet, swollen. No cloud of cherubs ferries her assumption heavenward as depicted less than a decade before by Annibale Carracci (see Assumption of the Virgin (Carracci)) for Cerasi Chapel. He does not depict an assumption but her death, arm drooping to the earth. Whether or not the depicted Virgin felt pain is unknown, but she is the victim of disease. Contemporaries accused Caravaggio of modelling a mistress/prostitute as the Virgin.
[edit] See also
Other Madonnas by Caravaggio:
[edit] References
- Hubbard, Howard (1983). Caravaggio. Harper and Rowe.
