It’s said that Caravaggio painted in 1606 while holed up on the Neapolitan estates of the Colonna family. He was on the run with Pope Paul V having issued his death warrant in Rome for the murder of Ranuccio Tommason.
At the same time, over in India, emperor Jahangir was entering the second year of his reign, carrying forward the administrative systems and flourishing of Persian culture launched by his father, Akbar the Great. If these worlds, Caravaggio’s 16th-century Italy and the Mughal court in northern India, seem far apart, it’s because they were, each occupying differing spheres and bound to different traditions.
And still, it is somewhat surprising to write that earlier this month, some 400 years on, marked the first time a Caravaggio painting had been shown publicly in India. The host is the Saket outpost of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in Delhi, an institution better known for platforming contemporary South Asian art than centuries-old masterpieces.
Visitors gathered to view “Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy”. Photo: courtesy Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA).
The exhibition arrives through a partnership with the cultural center of the Italian Embassy and was timed to coincide with the visit of Antonio Tajani, Italy’s deputy prime minister. Through May 18, audiences in Delhi will be able to see Caravaggio’s in a showcase that includes a VR experience and a documentary series focused on the life and world of one of the most alluring and mercurial characters in European art history.
The painting itself is wicked and sublime. We meet Mary in a moment of private vulnerability; her posture is relaxed and supplicant, her hair is loose and tumbles into the surrounding darkness. A breathless expression hangs across her face, one caught between death and dreaming. The quietly glowing skull beneath her elbow winks at the first. Pure white light (along with the painting’s title) reminds us we’re witnessing one of her daily raptures with the divine spirit. It’s a bold example of skilfully deployed color, mastery of stark lighting, and an eye for a dramatic pose. It would influence of Rubens, Bernini, and Artemisia Gentileschi.
“The arrival of marks a significant moment in India’s engagement with Classical European Art,” the museum’s founder Kiran Nadar said in a statement. “It offers a rare opportunity for our local audiences in particular, to view a Caravaggio painting, and encounter an artistic lineage that has fascinated generations of Indian artists.”
Making the Delhi display all the more remarkable is the fact the painting was only discovered in 2014 in a European private collection. It was duly authenticated by Mina Gregori, an Italian art historian and leading Caravaggio scholar, who pointed to “the quality of the workmanship and the intensity of the expression.” Further proof, Gregori noted, was the Vatican customs stamp on the back of the painting.
Left: Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy “Klein Magdalena” (ca. 1606). Right: Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy (1606).
Though the painting went onto be included in a Tokyo exhibition focused on Caravaggio and his contemporaries, not all scholars were convinced. Some believe it is a 17th-century copy made after a lost original. In 2018, this debate was reignited when a museum in Paris hanged beside , a painting of the same subject that was painted around the same time that had been discovered after the Second World War and had also once been considered a Caravaggio.
To some, at least, the first Caravaggio is yet to arrive in India.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
