Caravaggio, the painter of the disappeared paintings

Caravaggio (Milan, 1571-Porto Ercole, 1610), the great artist of the Baroque and the Counter-Reformation, was a very appreciated painter in his time, whose services were disputed by nobles and cardinals, who also helped him to get out of all the troubles in those who got into. Because in addition to a creator who revolutionized art history, Caravaggio, the pseudonym of Michelangelo Merisi, was a quarrelsome murderer - some biographers believe that he even became a pimp - who had to flee several times to avoid jail. After his death, his work fell into oblivion, although it was recovered in the 1950s by the Italian art critic and professor Roberto Longhi. The combination of criminal life and oblivion has caused many paintings to be lost throughout history:Caravaggio's work and life can also be told through his disappeared paintings.

'Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence', by Caravaggio.

After Longhi's rediscovery, Caravaggio became one of the most desired and sought-after painters, a symbol of power that museums and collectors around the world contested.

The problem is that the number of

indisputable

caravaggios

scattered throughout many countries does not reach 70 works, 20 of which are in Rome.

It is impossible to know how many have been lost: Noah Charney calculates in his book

Museum of Lost Art

that between eight and 115, a disconcertingly high hairpin, but one that reflects the enormous gaps that exist in the artist's life.

The vast majority of the documents that are preserved about him are judicial, a consequence of his crimes, and on the other hand there are far fewer papers on his work as an artist, so it is difficult to know how many works he painted despite the fact that innumerable biographies have been dedicated to him. .

More information

• The endless legend of the Mafia's 'caravaggio'

• Caravaggio, painting and authorship between shadows

• Caravaggio in the shade

Two

caravaggios

were lost in the battle of Berlin during World War II, another was stolen by the mafia in Palermo and another disappeared in an earthquake in Naples in 1798. It is also not known if works were lost when he was evicted in Rome or when he had to bolt out of town after committing murder. It is certain that when he died, during his return trip to the capital, he was traveling with three paintings with which he tried to buy his forgiveness from the powerful Cardinal Scipione Borghese, of which only one

Saint John

is preserved,

exhibited precisely in the Borghese gallery in Rome. .

In fact, when Caravaggio died in Porto Ercole, the Vatican Secretary of State sent a mission to find out not so much what had happened to the artist "but what had happened to his luggage," writes Peter Robb in

M. The Caravaggio Enigma

( Sunrise). “He had undoubtedly been waiting for him to arrive in Rome with a new collection of paintings, the

quid pro quo

for forgiveness that he had painstakingly worked out,” explains the Australian expert, who points out that two of the most powerful men in Italy at the time, the viceroy of Naples and the secretary of state disputed those pictures.

But just as the

caravaggios

disappear, they mysteriously re-emerge. One of the cultural news of the year was the appearance at an auction in Madrid of an

eccehomo originally

attributed to an unknown author and with a starting price of 1,500 euros. However, in just a few days the specialists in the baroque painter identified him as a

caravaggio

without any doubt and documents began to appear that related him to the painter: in the international market he could have reached 100 million.

It has not been known when he painted it - surely in the first Neapolitan stage - but how it arrived in Spain (through the Count of Castrillo) and how it ended up in the possession of the Pérez Castro family (for an exchange with the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando).

'The arrest of Christ', by Caravaggio.

It was a painting whose existence was known to experts, widely documented, with at least two vintage copies, but it seemed that history had swallowed it up. The same happened with one of his most significant works, the

Capture of Christ

–which contains a self-portrait of the painter–, a brutal metaphor about the power of the State painted in the dark times of the Counter-Reformation, in 1602. It was owned by the Mattei family until the 19th century and then it disappeared. He had ended up in the Jesuit refectory in Dublin. When they decided to restore it in 1990, they consulted the Italian art historian Sergio Benedetti, who was then working at the National Gallery in the Irish capital. Although he suspected from the beginning that he was before a

caravaggio

lost, it took Benedetti three years to authenticate it and trace the history of the different owners. Today it is one of the jewels of the National Gallery of Dublin.

Before the

eccehomo

in Madrid, another possible

caravaggio appeared

in the attic of a nearby house in Toulouse

in 2014

, a

Judith and Holorfenes

that was sold in New York for between 100 and 150 million euros. Although some experts doubt its authenticity, most consider that it is an original, painted in 1607 and disappeared since 1617. No one has the slightest idea of ​​how it ended up in that attic, although suspicions point to an ancestor, Napoleon's soldier, who he could bring it from one of his campaigns. Are there more lofts in the world, more convents or Madrid halls with

forgotten

caravaggios

? Specialists in the painter never lose hope.

'The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew' (1607) by Caravaggio has been in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, United States, since 1976.'The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew'THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART

Researcher John Gash, professor of Art History at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland) and a notable Caravaggist, says: “The lost painting that I would most like to recover is the altarpiece of

The Resurrection of Christ

in the Fenaroli chapel in Sant'Anna dei Lombardi, in Naples, which, along with the two side paintings, disappeared (perhaps destroyed, perhaps looted) after the 1798 earthquake. This work is known only through written descriptions. Instead, the paintings of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin,

Saint Matthew

and

The Angel and Christ on the Mount of Olives,

which were probably destroyed in 1945 (although they could have been looted by the Soviet Army), are known through photographs in black and white".

The Spanish gallery owner José Antonio de Urbina, an expert in ancient art, opts instead for a lost painting that may be in Spain. "Juan Alfonso Pimentel, count of Benavente and viceroy of Naples, commissioned two works from Caravaggio in 1607 for his family chapel in Valladolid, the

Crucifixion

of San Andrés,

which ended up in the United States, and a

San Genaro,

who is still missing," he explains. . The first painting was located in 1973 by the Madrid dealer José Manuel Arnaiz in a Valladolid convent and obtained the export permit because it was thought to be a copy. However, it was authenticated in the United States and is today unanimously considered an original, exhibited at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The other has been missing for four centuries.

Mina Gregori, the greatest expert on the painter, assured in 2016 that she had seen 'Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy' (around 1612), a European private collection.

The

ghost

caravaggios

that have caused the most talk are the two paintings that in 1610 were left in the barge that led him on the way from Rome to Porto Ercole, where it is not known whether from fever or septicemia caused by a poorly healed wound. of a fight. Mina Gregori, the greatest expert on the painter and president of the Roberto Longhi Foundation, said in 2016 that she had seen the

Maria Magdalena

in a private European collection, although her owners did not want her name revealed for security reasons. It is a painting well known for its copies, on which an exhibition was even held in Paris in 2018, but Gregori maintained that it was the original. "I recognize a

caravaggio

when I see him. The body, the color variations, the intensity of the face ... But also the strong wrists and the hands intertwined and flaccid with extraordinary variations of color and light and with a shadow obscuring the middle of the fingers are the most interesting aspects of the painting. It's Caravaggio ”, he explained to

La Repubblica

.

Of all the

lost

caravaggios

, the one with the least hope of recovering is paradoxically the one that most recently disappeared. In October 1969, unknown men stole the

Nativity with San Francisco and San Lorenzo

at the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo on behalf of the mafia

. They cut the canvas with a razor blade and left the frame. Legend has it that Cosa Nostra used it for a time to preside over their meetings: owning a

caravaggio

it was a symbol of the absolute and ruthless power that Cosa Nostra wielded over the island. There have been all kinds of theories about the final destination of this painting and none good for the history of art: the repentant Gaetano Grado narrated to the Anti-Mafia Commission that it ended up being sold in six or eight pieces abroad in an operation designed by the famous kingpin. Gaetano Badalamenti. Another theory shuffled by the police suggests that it ended up being thrown in any way and eaten by pigs.

Not even after his death, Caravaggio has been freed from the curse that marked his life and his art: his paintings quickly became a symbol of power and social prestige, coveted by art lovers and, at the same time, influential figures unscrupulous from the violent Italy of the 16th and 17th centuries. He always moved within the limits of art and society, between greed and genius. The sad fate of the

Palermo

Nativity

, the paintings that were left in a felucca or that the final battle against Nazism swallowed are a metaphor for the complex existence of a painter who 400 years after his death is still full of mysteries. No one doubts that somewhere, at some point, a

caravaggio

will reappear

waiting to be discovered.