“The Last Caravaggio” exhibition at the National Gallery ✎

I recently went to the National Gallery’s Caravaggio exhibition. It is about his final and dark masterpiece.

It was attributed to him in the 1970s by Roberto Longhi and brought to light.

We were all taken to a dark & intimate room to see the painting. I really enjoyed it.

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The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula by Caravaggio (1610)

The star of the show.

Ursula is a beautiful and isolated female figure in the painting surrounded by soldiers.

St Ursula is the medieval Christian legend of the princess martyred with her clutch of 11,000 virgins. On her return from pilgrimage in Rome, she met the Hun king who fell in love with Ursula’s beauty. On rejecting marriage, he killed her, and massacred her followers.

Caravaggio paints this gruesome story of through dramatic hand gestures and emotions. The furrowed & unkept soldier, with a gaping mouth, fired the guilty arrow. Beautiful crimson robes connects them both, like fire. The bystanders seem to notice — but only too late. Hands flailing hopelessly to stop it ... and then finally ... Ursula’s own hands framing the fatal wound while her own beautiful face downward in calm resignation. What is amazing is that the King’s killer seems to have some regret. It seems he didn’t “mean” to hurt her? Or perhaps it is her own reaction which has ignited his shock? Ursula seems glow and shine. Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro is sublime.

Caravaggio even paints himself. He extremely pale, open-mouthed, and looking of Ursula’s shoulder. Very similar to his self-portrait in “The Taking of Christ”. He is part of the drama.

Displayed at the National Gallery alongside the painting is a letter about how Caravaggio — on the run for murder — finished this particular canvas in haste in Naples in May 1610. He delivered the painting still wet to Marcantonio Doria who had commissioned it.

Caravaggio died on July 18 1610, a mere weeks after finishing “Ursula”.

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Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist by Caravaggio (1609-1610)

This is part of the NG’s own Caravaggio collection.

Salome is a famous legend (see Sebastiano del Piombo)

The decapitated head of John the Baptist is shown to Salome. Offered on a gilded plate. The outstretched hands of the soldier (with sword in other hand) as if to distance himself? His face is a bit uncomfortable ... is it regret, or merely distaste? St. John looks like he is still sleeping. The clever lighting (against a dark ground) creates a uniform skin colour to mask death. But it is also quite claustrophobic.

Salome seems to be blushing. But why? Remorse? A hint of irritation in her lips perhaps?

The old lady, hands crossed in prayer, is the complete opposite of Salome. Age, expression, line of sight ...

Sir Joshua Reynolds at the National Portrait Gallery ✎

Sir Joshua Reynolds was a founding President of the Royal Academy in 1768 and one of the foremost portraiture artists of England in the 18th-century.

He was born in Plympton St Maurice, just outside Plymouth, on 16 July 1723. Happy birthday!! 🙌

Reynolds’s career spanned six decades and his acclaim and fame reached a degree rarely seen by any artist, especially in their lifetime. If you were a wealthy aristocrat looking for a portrait, Reynolds was your man.

He travelled widely and studied the Old Masters as the best way to emulate greatness.

In the RA Schools, he set out his influential art theories between 1769 and 1790 which were seen by many as changing the course of British art. In his “Discourses on Art”, Reynolds argued that painters should adopt classical and Renaissance works as their model, imbuing their works with symbolic references to classical myths. He also emphasised the importance of drawing on the works of Old Masters such as Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Dyck. This “Grand Manner” was the unification of painting and scholarship.

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Self-portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1747–1749)

This self-portrait was done before Reynolds travelled to Rome to study and learn.

It shows a young man; eager and excited. Looking out into the distance (and future?), with brush and mahl stick in one hand, and other hand shielding his eyes.

Love his tousled hair too.

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Portrait of Omai by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1776)

I was excited to see this painting.

It was a recent acquisition by the National Portrait Gallery and the Getty Museum.

Apparently, the price was £50m! This is a stunning painting, for sure — but that price probably reflects our cultural zeitgeist of “cancel culture” and framing British history as an unspeakable litany of horrors and evils. Galleries today are marked by some ahistorical puritanism in which history is understood through our present-day’s mortal buzzwords.

At any rate, it is a beautiful portrait. This Tahitian was called Omai and he joined Captain Cook on a return voyage in the 18th century. His face is quite beautiful. Clothes are gorgeous. The gestures are welcoming, and he peers at someone out-of-frame.

Omai met George III and Samuel Johnson, dined with the Royal Society. It’s probable Reynolds knew Mai personally.

A Franciscan Friar by Rembrandt (1657-1661) ✎

Happy birthday Rembrandt. Born on 15th July. See my most recent post on him. 

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A Franciscan Friar by Rembrandt (1657-1661)

Came across an addition to the Rembrandts the other day at the NG.

Painted in about 1655, it is a study of a Franciscan friar, of the Order of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Rembrandt is really gifted at capturing vulnerability and fragility. A frailty in the distant gaze and face, slight melancholy. Some facial disability, even blindness?

Beautiful.

Photo: beautiful bench ✎

President Biden, it’s time to go! ✎

I have just been reading a fascinating deep-dive into the White House’s machinations – orchestrated on the nation – of obscuring and concealing the President’s obvious physical frailty and mental ailing.

It has become embarrassing – even painful to watch. The recent embarrassing Zelensky/Putin gaffe is just too much. Everyone is waiting for the next slip-up. As Michael Moore recently said, his remaining in office is tantamount to elderly abuse.

It is an awful thing to have to witness this. It’s like watching a friend or loved one struggle enormously in a job at the end of their careers and hang on for too long. This is far worse, and with enormous consequences. Biden is supposed to be reading briefs and papers, and analysing world changes. Travelling in his job is “tiring him”; a “simple cold” incapacities him thinking and speaking clearly at a debate; and that he needs “more sleep”. In effect, this is a declaration that this poor guy is simply not up to the rigors of the office. Instead, we have his obvious confusion. Long drawn silences. The distant-vacant stares. And the awkward smile from spectators and eye-rolls.

Biden’s handlers are disgraceful. Lies, and lies. The more we hear, the clearer it is that they have been deliberately gaslighting journalists who have been persistently asking questions about Biden’s health over the past few years. Even labelling it a Republican conspiracy. If they’d just come clean, they wouldn’t be in this mess now.

E.g. after the Trump-Biden debate, it seems the White House were forced to acknowledge a “neurologist” had visited the President …

Following Joe Biden’s disastrous performance against Donald Trump in their debate on June 27, White House reporters started poring through the visitors log at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. One name kept cropping up again and again: Dr Kevin Cannard. The neurologist and specialist in movement disorders works at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which serves the president. Eagled-eyed journalists spotted that he visited the White House no fewer than eight times between last July and this March. The revelation forced a statement from the White House which suggested Dr Cannard had only seen Biden for his three annual physicals and the other visits were related to military personnel.

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And why are people naturally suspicious?

Part of the reason why the White House’s excuses are wearing thin is that a sceptical public is aware of the long history of various White House administrations keeping the ailments suffered by past presidents secret. Woodrow Wilson suffered a paralysing stroke in 1919 and the severity of his illness was downplayed. For the final two years of his term, all communication with Wilson went through his wife Edith. It was also well known that Franklin D Roosevelt was paralysed from the waist down after contracting polio in 1921. But he carefully cloaked his disability in public using leg braces and gripping the lectern in order to stand for speeches. The press agreed not to photograph or film him in his wheelchair or being lifted out of cars. When the president’s health deteriorated following the Tehran Conference in November 1943, his doctor told the press that Roosevelt was in “robust health” and his stamina was “far above average”. In fact he was suffering from severe hypertension and congestive heart failure. He was advised to limit his work to four hours a day (which was a little tricky with the Second World War still raging) and his smoking. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1945, shortly into his fourth term.

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Why should Biden step down?

As the article noted:

One undernoted issue is that the psychodrama is preventing other senior Democrats from taking the fight to Trump. Partly that’s because they don’t want to be seen as undermining Biden, and partly it’s because the White House won’t let them. “I worry that the core cadre of counsellors around the president continues to put roadblocks in the path of some of our most effective spokespeople,” says Brett Bruen, a former diplomat who worked in the Obama White House. “Part of it seems to stem from a worry that the contrast with the president’s energy and effectiveness on the campaign trail would be put in stark relief.”

People can complain about Trump’s arrant lies … but they won’t affect his support base. President Biden, on the other hand, will dissuade people from voting for him. In the end, it will give Trump the Presidency. It’s an outrageously stupid & dangerous gamble. 

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The DT article: