For most of its existence, “The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula”, the painting visiting from Italy to star as The Last Caravaggio in the very welcome free exhibition at London’s National Gallery, was tucked away in a private collection and entirely unknown beyond it.
When it was rediscovered in the mid-20th century, only one scholar suspected it was by Caravaggio and none thought of Ursula as the subject. Thus in 1972 Banca Commerciale Italiana (later merged into Banca Intesa Sanpaolo) was able to buy the picture for just 8mn lire — £3,500.
Subsequently a letter resurfaced — displayed at the National Gallery along with the painting — recounting how Caravaggio, on the run following his convictions for murder and assault, finished the canvas in haste in Naples on May 11 1610. He delivered it still wet to Lanfranco Massa, agent of the Genoese nobleman Marcantonio Doria who had commissioned it. Massa put it out in the sun to dry — too quickly, to his alarm, softening the thick varnish. Therefore, he wrote, “I must go round to the said Caravaggio to find out how I can be sure of not ruining it.” Nevertheless, he added, everyone who saw the painting “was amazed”.
We still are. In London, “Ursula” joins the National’s own late Caravaggio, “Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist”, similarly acquired, in 1970, with uncertain attribution.
Today both are understood as priceless examples of the novel compositions of Caravaggio’s final months in 1609-10: exaggerated contrasts between light and dark; intense presence of figures pushed to the foreground, yet their contours dissolving in an engulfing gloom; psychological ambiguity; freer, almost impressionistic brushwork. A mere handful of paintings survive from this period; it is a rare opportunity to encounter Ursula and Salome, his final heroine and anti-heroine, together.
Caravaggio’s last painting is his most mysterious; you understand why it baffled even experts. His rendering bears no resemblance to any depiction before or since of the medieval legend of St Ursula, the early Christian princess martyred with her troupe of 11,000 virgins. Returning home from a pilgrimage to Rome, they met the Hun army conquering Cologne; the Hun king fell in love with Ursula’s beauty and offered marriage; she rejected him, he killed her, her followers were massacred.
Painters had long relished the legend’s scope for spectacle, crowds and architectural splendour. With Caravaggio, all this disappears
From Vittore Carpaccio in Venice in 1497 to Ludovico Carracci in Bologna in 1600, artists relished the story’s scope for spectacle, crowds, the architectural splendour of the city backcloth. With Caravaggio, all this disappears.
Instead, just six figures, depicted with unflinching naturalism, are held in a violent, intimate drama of death. The central pair, an elderly man with ruddy furrowed face, and the deathly pale young woman standing next to him, are connected by a flow of crimson drapery of cloaks and gowns, illuminated by golden highlights — his gleaming, reflective armour, her gilt-threaded blouse. He has just fired an arrow point blank at her heart; the bow string seems still to vibrate.
Ursula stares down, grave and perplexed rather than frightened at the trickle of blood, and cups her breasts in her hands. That movement is part of a rhythmic interplay of hands, hers inward turning, the king’s surging outwards and, between them — not evident until the painting was restored in 2004 — the hand of an onlooker which juts towards us, helplessly trying to prevent the shot.
The king-murderer looks more astonished than anyone: fierce, rapt, he shows perhaps regret, perhaps determination against his own doubts, or sympathy for Ursula’s pain, the shock of watching death happen.
The range of human feeling condensed in a single expression in late Caravaggio is extraordinary. The uncertain gazes and gestures of the onlookers add nuance and complexity to the narrative. A soldier, a streak of light coursing down his helmet, leans as if to support Ursula; his arm, a metallic glint of tubular plate, imitates the curve of her delicate one. Behind her, a man stretches, cranes his head, eagerly peering out, attempting to decipher the scene, while also looking beyond it: a blend of voyeurism, interiority and resignation.
In ‘Salome’, as in ‘Ursula’, the moment between life and death is fearful, its verisimilitude unnerving
This is a self-portrait, Caravaggio imagining himself, like Macbeth foreseeing his end, as “a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more.” He is also Everyman, a fleeting bystander like ourselves, pulling us into the story.
How appropriate that at home “Ursula” lives in Banca Intesa’s collection at Gallerie d’Italia on Via Toledo, Naples’ teeming main street — already a thoroughfare in Caravaggio’s time, the sort of place where, casting ordinary people for the sacred roles in his paintings, he found his models. Today shoppers and tourists drop in on Caravaggio’s fateful drama between pizza and gelato.
In “Salome”, as in “Ursula”, the moment between life and death is fearful, its verisimilitude unnerving — the decapitated Baptist’s head so vivid that it seems still warm, breathing — yet orchestrated with tremendous subtlety. The figures, close-packed against a dark ground, are linked by compositional echoes, contributing to the claustrophobic atmosphere of culpability and doom.
In the angles of their tilting heads and the strong light falling across the faces, Salome — who demanded the saint’s murder as reward for dancing for her stepfather Herod — and the executioner form a line of guilt. He, reluctant, tries to distance himself, holding the head at arm’s length. Blushing Salome has, like the king in “Ursula”, an enigmatic expression, turning aside from her gory prize: in remorse, surprise at her power, or satisfaction?
Her shawl, wrapping around the platter with the head, links her to the victim, insisting on her responsibility — but the flowing grey-beige fabric, drained of colour, seems to extend also from the headscarf of the woman just behind: a grieving, wrinkled servant clasping hands to her chin in prayer and compassion. Her head inclines downward sorrowfully, echoing the dead Baptist’s. She is Salome’s opposite, but age and youth are indissolubly bound in Caravaggio’s musing on time and transient beauty.
The National Gallery invites us to “explore the troubled end of Caravaggio’s life, the stories of Ursula and Salome, and reflect on violence today”. Caravaggio died on July 18 1610, weeks after finishing “Ursula” — and inevitably we interpret the paintings through the darkness of his hunted, haunted final year.
But they also herald art’s future: paths to baroque theatricality and to a fresh realism. Roberto Longhi, the scholar who revived the artist’s reputation in the 20th century, wrote that “out of the abstract and abrupt colour structure of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, the event emerges suddenly and like a fateful incidence — truer, more tangible, more natural than had ever been imagined and expressed before.” This triumph is, paradoxically, clearest of all in these shadowy late works.
April 18-July 21, nationalgallery.org.uk
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