Most of the Caravaggio's I have seen are in the Met in NYC, though
with a few others, here and there, but what strikes me about them
is the light they have, a light that originates in the body, in
a sense the chiaroscuro of his paintings, the interplay of light
and dark as it is traditionally called is interesting to me
because the source of that light is located within the body
itself. So it posits a very different perspective, since perspective
is dependent upon where the initial point is placed, though it
becomes a kind of perspective of illumination. In Caravaggio,
the source of light is no longer external to the work of art
but within it, and it is located within the human form.

Best,

Rebecca

Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
-------Original Message-------
From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 05/04/03 06:13 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Caravaggio

>
> At 11:27 AM -0600 5/4/03, Douglas Barbour wrote:>I also really liked the review article by a critic whose name escapes me
at
>the moment, of a show of Caravaggio & his time in NY back in the early
90s,
>talking about how the others' paintings looked fine & usual in the outer
>room, & then he caught a glimpse of one of C's in the inner room, & it
just
>leapt out at him, canceling the sight of all the others...

That's my experience of the few Caravaggios I've been lucky enough to
see (there are three in the National Gallery).  They're
extraordinary, you glimpse them from the other side of the room and
they leap out, with their strange perspectives of light and shadow,
with a life which immediately dims everything around them.

There was a wonderful, if notably badly edited, book on Caravaggio by
Peter Robb, called M.  If I recall rightly, it was widely attacked
for its studiedly casual style (and unscholarly inaccuracies?  I
can't remember).  The style did get irritating sometimes, (that was
the editing) but I liked its robustness, which seemed an appropriate
response to the vitality of its paintings.

Best

A
--


Alison Croggon
Editor
Masthead Online
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