hubbychu: Matthew & Angel II, 1602 Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Cappella Contarelli, Rome Oil on canvas 295 x 195cm “The second Matthew & angel was a strong, simple, austere even fine painting, and terribly controlled. The playfulness of the first version had evaporated and left a stony residue of form and brilliant mineral colour. It was impeccably decorous. Or seemed to be. A longer look revealed some discreetly subversive reminders of his own autonomy. The second painting showed in its absences what had offended in the first. The new Matthew was no longer a vigorous amiable peasant but a giant old grey-bearded man, the model from Matthew killed recalled to duty, bare feet no longer in your face but away from it, covered from neck to ankle in a dun-coloured tunic and an orange cloak, holding the pen unaided and even quite expertly in his hand. The angel was older and tougher looking – even loutish – and no longer standing pressed against him but hovering overhead in a totally non-physical manner that allowed room for no misinterpretations. Any potentially disturbing former sense that the two might have been enjoying their proximity was replaced now by a distinct vertical gap of black space between them, and a startled or anxious look on Matthew’s face. The new angel was held up or weighed down by a sinister pair of dark wings – almost invisible in the dead black space that surrounded and separated the two figures and took up half the canvas – and a turbine of freshly washed bed-linen. The smallness and apartness of the two figures, brightly suspended in a lot of darkness, was unlike M and looked like a willed breaking up of the powerful and unsettling synergy of his earlier locked double composition. In a very Roman and slightly thuggish manner the angel ticked off items on red adolescent hands with black-rimmed fingernails – not Del Monte’s type of dreamy beauty at all, though the lively earlier angel might have passed. M was answering his priestly critics by throwing Matthew’s relation with the angel into reverse. The subversiveness of his new treatment lay now in the unlikeliness that this particular angel would have  much enlightenment for the intellectual old saint, who indeed looked a bit startled, frightened even, at the flying street kid who had disturbed him at work. But the incongruity was now muted, generalised and controlled, put beyond the reach of hostile critics. M made every effort to succeed in this second picture, wrote Bellori – no doubt truly. What gave strict decorum the lie was the old saint’s uneasy stance and M’s newly playful use of forward three-dimensionality in his pictorial space. The angle of Matthew’s vision propelled the angel out in front of the picture plane. That Matthew was standing right on the plane was shown by the bench. He was resting his knee on the same wooden bench the bravo had sat on in Matthew called, whose front corner had now lost its solid footing in the painting, and he was about to topple out arse-over-tip into the space above the real altar. Bringing Matthew crashing down with it, if not the angel who had put the disconcerted Matthew into this precarious stance. In soothing the guardians of orthodoxy, M had supplied them with a visual booby trap. They wanted decorum and he gave them counter-reformation slapstick.” (M, Peter Robb, 1998)

hubbychu:

Matthew & Angel II, 1602

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Cappella Contarelli, Rome

Oil on canvas 295 x 195cm

“The second Matthew & angel was a strong, simple, austere even fine painting, and terribly controlled. The playfulness of the first version had evaporated and left a stony residue of form and brilliant mineral colour. It was impeccably decorous. Or seemed to be. A longer look revealed some discreetly subversive reminders of his own autonomy.

The second painting showed in its absences what had offended in the first. The new Matthew was no longer a vigorous amiable peasant but a giant old grey-bearded man, the model from Matthew killed recalled to duty, bare feet no longer in your face but away from it, covered from neck to ankle in a dun-coloured tunic and an orange cloak, holding the pen unaided and even quite expertly in his hand. The angel was older and tougher looking – even loutish – and no longer standing pressed against him but hovering overhead in a totally non-physical manner that allowed room for no misinterpretations. Any potentially disturbing former sense that the two might have been enjoying their proximity was replaced now by a distinct vertical gap of black space between them, and a startled or anxious look on Matthew’s face. The new angel was held up or weighed down by a sinister pair of dark wings – almost invisible in the dead black space that surrounded and separated the two figures and took up half the canvas – and a turbine of freshly washed bed-linen. The smallness and apartness of the two figures, brightly suspended in a lot of darkness, was unlike M and looked like a willed breaking up of the powerful and unsettling synergy of his earlier locked double composition. In a very Roman and slightly thuggish manner the angel ticked off items on red adolescent hands with black-rimmed fingernails – not Del Monte’s type of dreamy beauty at all, though the lively earlier angel might have passed. M was answering his priestly critics by throwing Matthew’s relation with the angel into reverse. The subversiveness of his new treatment lay now in the unlikeliness that this particular angel would have  much enlightenment for the intellectual old saint, who indeed looked a bit startled, frightened even, at the flying street kid who had disturbed him at work. But the incongruity was now muted, generalised and controlled, put beyond the reach of hostile critics.

M made every effort to succeed in this second picture, wrote Bellori – no doubt truly. What gave strict decorum the lie was the old saint’s uneasy stance and M’s newly playful use of forward three-dimensionality in his pictorial space. The angle of Matthew’s vision propelled the angel out in front of the picture plane. That Matthew was standing right on the plane was shown by the bench. He was resting his knee on the same wooden bench the bravo had sat on in Matthew called, whose front corner had now lost its solid footing in the painting, and he was about to topple out arse-over-tip into the space above the real altar. Bringing Matthew crashing down with it, if not the angel who had put the disconcerted Matthew into this precarious stance. In soothing the guardians of orthodoxy, M had supplied them with a visual booby trap. They wanted decorum and he gave them counter-reformation slapstick.” (M, Peter Robb, 1998)

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Posted on Monday, 6 February
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