Masters of light and shade

Smee, Sebastian . The Australian ; Canberra, A.C.T. [Canberra, A.C.T]22 May 2006: 13.

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RESUMEN (ABSTRACT)
 
REMBRANDT van Rijn never knew [Caravaggio]. He was six years old when the Italian died, and anyway, they lived
at opposite ends of Europe. Indeed, there is no evidence that Rembrandt ever saw a single one of Caravaggio's
works. What, then, could possibly justify Rembrandt Caravaggio, an exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in
Amsterdam that puts the two artists side by side?

Yet in this case, surely, an exception can profitably be granted. For despite the fact that Rembrandt had very little
to do with Caravaggio, the temptation to think of the two of them together is irresistible. Think chiaroscuro, and of
whom do you think? Caravaggio and Rembrandt. Think realism in the baroque era, and of whom do you think?
Rembrandt and Caravaggio. It's a no-brainer, and it makes sense, if only just this once, to go through with the
experiment to see what is revealed.

Rembrandt may not have seen Caravaggio's work, but he was certainly familiar with work by the Caravaggisti --
Dutch artists such as Gerard von Honthorst and Hendrick ter Brugghen, who had travelled to Italy and come back
as converts to Caravaggio's dramatic pictorial creed. The exhibition opens with samples of their work, and if none
of them quite measures up, it is hard, given the company they are keeping, to hold it against them. What's clear is
that while these Dutch converts tended to seize on and exaggerate Caravaggio's most obvious characteristics,
Rembrandt took the lesson and carved out a style of his own.

TEXTO COMPLETO
 
Caravaggio vs Rembrandt intrigues Sebastian Smee

REMBRANDT van Rijn never knew Caravaggio. He was six years old when the Italian died, and anyway, they lived at
opposite ends of Europe. Indeed, there is no evidence that Rembrandt ever saw a single one of Caravaggio's works.
What, then, could possibly justify Rembrandt Caravaggio, an exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
that puts the two artists side by side?

The show is the most important of literally dozens of exhibitions devoted to Rembrandt this year, the 400th
anniversary of his birth, and yes, it is shamelessly tendentious. Nonetheless, it is one of the greatest exhibitions I
have seen.

Combo deals such as this are all the rage in the art world, with big institutions doubling or tripling their crowd-
pulling potential by mounting extravaganzas with titles such as Matisse, Picasso, Turner, Whistler and Monet, and
Pioneering Modernism: Cezanne and Pissarro. The danger of the strategy is as obvious as its appeal: individual
artists are forced into unhelpful competition, inappropriate equivalences are pushed at the expense of what makes
artists distinctive and the multifacetedness of artistic influence is made to fit the reductive, puerile model of a
boxing match.

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Yet in this case, surely, an exception can profitably be granted. For despite the fact that Rembrandt had very little
to do with Caravaggio, the temptation to think of the two of them together is irresistible. Think chiaroscuro, and of
whom do you think? Caravaggio and Rembrandt. Think realism in the baroque era, and of whom do you think?
Rembrandt and Caravaggio. It's a no-brainer, and it makes sense, if only just this once, to go through with the
experiment to see what is revealed.

The propensity to compare the artists dates to the 18th century. In 1762, one writer referred to Caravaggio as il
Rembrante dell'Italia and 20 years later, the Dutchman was described as il Caravaggio degli Oltramontani.

Rembrandt may not have seen Caravaggio's work, but he was certainly familiar with work by the Caravaggisti --
Dutch artists such as Gerard von Honthorst and Hendrick ter Brugghen, who had travelled to Italy and come back
as converts to Caravaggio's dramatic pictorial creed. The exhibition opens with samples of their work, and if none
of them quite measures up, it is hard, given the company they are keeping, to hold it against them. What's clear is
that while these Dutch converts tended to seize on and exaggerate Caravaggio's most obvious characteristics,
Rembrandt took the lesson and carved out a style of his own.

One of the star paintings in an exhibition overflowing with masterpieces is Rembrandt's Two Old Men Disputing
from the National Gallery of Victoria. The painting has not left Australia since it was bought by the NGV in 1934,
shortly after being rediscovered, and the Dutch are crowing about its presence in Amsterdam. "This is perhaps the
one painting by Rembrandt that is closest to Caravaggio's work in its handling of light," the catalogue says.

Certainly, it is a great demonstration of the sophisticated use of chiaroscuro (the interplay and contrast of light
and shade in a picture to suggest three-dimensional form). But it's also a great storytelling machine: Rembrandt
manipulates our attention in such a way as to convey a full human situation replete with back story and implied
consequences, rather than a mere, decontextualised slice of life.

This was an ability Caravaggio, too, evidently had in spades. Look at his Taking of Christ. It's a composition that
virtually forces the air out of your lungs.

The black-armoured soldiers who, directed by Judas's kiss, seize Christ, represent sheer menace in a way that has
never been equalled in paint, not even by Goya or Francis Bacon. The crowded, left- leaning movement of the scene
suggests the anarchic, snowballing momentum of a pub brawl, while Christ's downcast eyes and clasped hands
suggest a man sinking into the human quagmire even as his celestial role beckons. Off to the right a young man
with dark eyebrows holds a lantern and cranes to see: the face is Caravaggio's own, and its inclusion has long
been read as the artist showing off his credentials: illuminator, creator, dramatist.

After a short introduction, the exhibition proceeds by thematic pairings. One or two works by Rembrandt are hung
alongside one or two by Caravaggio. So, for instance, the Taking of Christ is paired with Rembrandt's The Denial of
St Peter in order to compare the responses of the artists to highly charged moments in the life of Christ, while
Rembrandt's Blinding of Samson is placed next to Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes -- a chance,
presumably, to compare both men's (wholehearted) taste for gore.

Rembrandt, with his richer, more coherent palette and his fuller range of human emotion, wins most of these set-
tos, but none is a foregone conclusion and Caravaggio is full of surprises. Many of the pairings emphasise both
men's love of realism. Against academic conventions of the day, both painted from life, and were not afraid to free
their subjects from idealising conventions. One contemporary critic wrote about Rembrandt that it was "a mystery

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why a man of such ingenuity and spirit should have been so perverse in his choices". But Rembrandt is believed to
have known and sympathised with Caravaggio's stated belief "that all works are naught but child's play or trifles if
they be not done and painted from life".

An adherence to reality may be an antidote to academicism and sentimentality, but it is not necessarily a virtue in
itself. What is stirring about many of the pairings here is the tension in them between realism and role play, for
both artists loved to dress up favourite models in biblical or mythological outfits. Look, for instance, at
Rembrandt's goddess Flora, which is a depiction of his first wife Saskia, or Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit.
Both are images of favourite models, and in both, the tension between artistic confection and truth-telling is
exquisite and unexpectedly profound.

Caravaggio was the first artist to develop chiaroscuro to the extent that his whole style depended on it. Both he
and Rembrandt were fond of including sources of illumination -- candles, lanterns, and so on -- within the picture.
But where Caravaggio tended to concentrate on direct illumination, Rembrandt often developed more complex
compositions incorporating reflection and colour.

The popular tendency, especially in relation to Rembrandt, has been to read the artists' isolating shafts of light as
auguries of the divine, the supernatural. But this, according to the catalogue, is a relatively recent fad: "Not one
contemporary of Caravaggio or Rembrandt who wrote about their paintings and artistic intentions ascribes any
mystical or other profound significance to the light in their paintings." Rather, those spellbinding shafts and halos
and pools of light were "simply a pictorial resource".

If this is true, and it is a refreshing curative, at the least, it's worth remembering that, divine aspersions aside, both
artists were masters at using light to conjure a moral atmosphere, a sense of things -- profound things -- hanging in
the balance.

But the moral atmosphere conveyed by Caravaggio's Omnia Vincit Amor (Love Conquers All) is not necessarily one
to embrace. Painted today, this image would almost certainly be banned. Cupid here is a pre-pubescent boy, rather
than a chubby cherub. His legs are splayed, and his left hand disappears into the darkness behind him at an angle
that suggests he is playing with his bum. The look he has on his face is simply indecent. "A smiling Cupid in the act
of disparaging the world" is how one critic described it. Certainly, this is not a conception of the theme that seeks
to argue, Beatles- style, that "all you need is love".

Quite the opposite. The littered attributes at Cupid's feet (violin, lute, armour, coronet, square and compasses, pen
and manuscript, bay leaves, an astral globe) suggest the real threat he poses. Love -- at least erotic love --
overturns everything.

DETALLES

Personas: Rembrandt Van Rijn

Título: Masters of light and shade:   [1 All-round Country Edition ]

Autor: Smee, Sebastian

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 Título de publicación: The Australian; Canberra, A.C.T.

Páginas: 13

Número de páginas: 0

Año de publicación: 2006

Fecha de publicación: May 22, 2006

columna: Arts

Sección: Features

Editorial: News Limited

Lugar de publicación: Canberra, A.C.T.

País de publicación: Australia, Canberra, A.C.T.

Materia de publicación: General Interest Periodicals--Australia

ISSN: 10388761

Tipo de fuente: Newspapers

Idioma de la publicación: English

Tipo de documento: Feature

ID del documento de 357399741

ProQuest:

URL del documento: https://search.proquest.com/docview/357399741?accountid=150292

Copyright: Copyright News Limited May 22, 2006

Última actualización: 2017-11-01

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