Monday, July 19, 2010

Caravaggio's St. Lawrence

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Martyrdom of St. Lawrence. Rome. c.1600.

News has now reached Cleveland that a secreted Saint Lawrence, the painting, has been announced to the world, while a part of Cleveland mourns the loss of Saint Lawrence, the parish. Dear reader, if you have your reference books near you, look up Caravaggio—the painter of roman baroque, the paint brush orator of the catholic reformation. The man who made black an artist's color. If not click here for essays with his illustrations, or here for Wikipedia, which has the paintings everyone needs to know. After Merisi there came many caravaggisti, or tenebrists, and went north to the flemish and the dutch; Honthorst and ter Brugghen certainly, but Rubens and Rembrandt learned much from Caravaggio. The great spaniards—Zurbaran, Murillo and de Ribera, including El Greco were students.

This weekend past, it was printed in the papal newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, that the Jesuits in Rome had a painting of Saint Lawrence. These three churches in Rome—Santa Maria del Popolo, Sant'Agostino and San Luigi dei Francesi, and the Borghese Gallery were open though the darkness to commemorate the four centuries that the world has been missing Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio,†18 July 1610.

Chiaroscuro was this technique where he highlighted the play of light from the darkness. From the black, a realism that was photographic struck people. The words in the sentence prior is embodied in the bottom half of the Conversion of Saint Paul in Santa Maria del Popolo.
Also, compare the position of Paul with Lawrence. Art experts will hem and haw, and make a living over this. They are Caravaggios.

Caravaggio had painted Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence in 1609. It was stolen in 1969 from an oratory in Palermo. Its continued existence is uncertain. Some great expert was quoted that St. Lawrence was not a known Caravaggio subject. artwork not in the possession of Richard Lennon to be sold

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