After Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
MARY MAGDALEN IN ECSTASY
Oil on canvas
95 x 75 cm.; 37 3/8 x 29 1/2 in.
Private collection
In his representation of the saint, Caravaggio has stripped away her traditional symbols such as the skull and the hourglass, and tells her story as a triad of intensely emotive contrasts: red, white and black. More on this painting
According to a legend popular in Caravaggio's time, after Christ's death his faithful female disciple Mary of Magdala moved to southern France, where she lived as a hermit in a cave at Sainte-Baume near Aix-en-Provence. There she was transported seven times a day by angels into the presence of God, "where she heard, with her bodily ears, the delightful harmonies of the celestial choirs." More on this painting
According to a legend popular in Caravaggio's time, after Christ's death his faithful female disciple Mary of Magdala moved to southern France, where she lived as a hermit in a cave at Sainte-Baume near Aix-en-Provence. There she was transported seven times a day by angels into the presence of God, "where she heard, with her bodily ears, the delightful harmonies of the celestial choirs." More on this painting
Mary Magdalene was a Jewish woman who,
according to texts included in the New Testament, traveled with Jesus as one of
his followers. She is said to have witnessed Jesus' crucifixion and
resurrection. Based on texts of the early Christian era in the third century,
it seems that her status as an “apostle" rivals even Peter's.
She is
most prominent in the narrative of the crucifixion of Jesus, at which she was
present. She was also present two days later, either alone or as a member of a
group of women, the first to testify to the resurrection of Jesus.
Ideas that
go beyond the gospel presentation of Mary Magdalene as a prominent
representative of the women who followed Jesus have been put forward over the
centuries.
During the Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene was regarded in
Western Christianity as a repentant prostitute or promiscuous woman, claims not
found in any of the four canonical gospels. More Mary Magdalene
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
(29 September 1571 in Caravaggio – 18 July 1610) was an Italian
painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 and 1610. His
paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both
physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative
influence on Baroque painting.
Caravaggio trained as a painter in Milan under Simone Peterzano
who had himself trained under Titian. In his twenties Caravaggio moved to Rome
where there was a demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches and
palazzos being built at the time. It was also a period when the Church was
searching for a stylistic alternative to Mannerism in religious. Caravaggio's
innovation was a radical naturalism that combined close physical observation
with a dramatic use of chiaroscuro which came to be known as tenebrism (the
shift from light to dark with little intermediate value).
He gained attention in the art scene of Rome in 1600 with the
success of his first public commissions, the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and
Calling of Saint Matthew. Thereafter he never lacked commissions or patrons,
yet he handled his success poorly. He was jailed on several occasions,
vandalized his own apartment, and ultimately had a death sentence pronounced
against him by the Pope after killing a young man, possibly unintentionally, on
May 29, 1606. He fled from Rome with a price on his head. He was involved in a
brawl in Malta in 1608, and another in Naples in 1609. This encounter left him
severely injured. A year later, at the age of 38, he died under mysterious
circumstances in Porto Ercole in Tuscany, reportedly from a fever while on his
way to Rome to receive a pardon.
Famous while he lived, Caravaggio was forgotten almost
immediately after his death, and it was only in the 20th century that his
importance to the development of Western art was rediscovered. More on Caravaggio
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