The hottest ticket in London right now is not what you would guess
THE buzziest new show in central London does not involve a Hollywood star treading the West End boards or a glitzy blockbuster premiere in Leicester Square. Instead, somewhat surprisingly, it’s a dark room with two paintings in the National Gallery.
I was there on Thursday and couldn’t believe my eyes as queues snaked out of Room One of the Trafalgar Square site and down the stairs, while high vis-sporting staff members were on hand for crowd control (well-maintaining an orderly queue — this is the National Gallery after all).
The Last Caravaggio is proving the most popular show in that room since two of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers were hung side by side there a decade ago. Of course, it helps that the display is free, but it also shows the power of the Italian old master to capture visitors’ imagination.
The show displays the gallery’s own Caravaggio, Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist, alongside The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula which has travelled over from Italy for the first time in 20 years — that was for a major NG exhibition of the artist’s late works and caused a similar frenzy.
While the artist was an overnight celebrity in his own time, Gabriele Finaldi, the director of the National Gallery, told me that this renewed embracing of Caravaggio is relatively recent, since scholarship took another look in the Fifties.
Now, some four centuries after his death, why are crowds drawn to his work and in such numbers? First, there is the undoubted quality and arresting nature of the paintings; the bloody scenes we’re dropped into — this is violence at close quarters — and the raw emotion they show.
There’s the bold way he puts those scenes together. Stand in front of Saint Ursula (good luck getting a prime spot — sharpen your elbows) and you realise the painter has placed you right into the scene. You’re not a viewer, you’re complicit in the outrage that has just happened.
His style was also revolutionary at the time, the use of dark and light (impress your friends with the technical term chiaroscuro) making these figures loom towards you, only heightening the drama unfolding. It’s hard not to rear back at John the Baptist’s severed head being thrust at you.
The paintings feel very modern. They are gritty, using real people with dirty faces, ripped clothes with broken fingernails, not the idealised portrayals of scenes that were so common at the time. “It was totally revolutionary... people were shocked by this,” National Gallery curator Francesca Whitlum-Cooper told me at the press viewing.
Centuries before the arrival of movies, Caravaggio has a director’s eye for framing. He’s been hailed by directors including Martin Scorsese, who once wrote, “He would have been a great film-maker, there’s no doubt about it”, adding that his work influenced Mean Streets and Taxi Driver.
Beyond that, Caravaggio had a story, and that burnishes an artist’s reputation. He was the archetype of the badboy artist. The National Gallery talks about how he “was arrested repeatedly for, among other things, slashing the cloak of an adversary, throwing a plate of artichokes at a waiter, scarring a guard and abusing the police”.
In fact, his life could easily justify a glossy prestige drama. How he pushed it too far and killed a rival in a swordfight, forcing him to flee Rome, heading to Malta and Naples, with numerous examples of his temper getting the better of him — at one stage he was permanently disfigured in a brawl. He was pardoned by Rome, only to be mistakenly arrested on his way back, released but dying of malaria before he could return.
Whitlum-Cooper says his story “reads like a film script. There’s almost a tragic flaw about Caravaggio — he can’t let anything good happen, he’s so self-destructive.”
Speaking of prestige drama, Caravaggio has heavily influenced Ripley, which arrived on Netflix, starring Andrew Scott, this month. There are almost constant references to the works, parallels with the artist’s life story, influences in how it’s filmed, and he even shows up at one stage.
I asked Whitlum-Cooper why Caravaggio is so popular. “He changed the world and continues to do so today”. The hottest (free) ticket in town was painted in 1610 and still inspires crowds now — though waiters will hope they leave the artichokes well alone.
Caravaggio was the image of the bad-boy artist... he killed a rival in a sword-fight and had to flee Rome