There’s a good girl and a bad girl in the National Gallery’s one room show billed as the Last Caravaggio.
On the one wall, there’s Salome, who is just taking possession of the head of John the Baptist from the headsman after her dance of the Seven Veils; her face is turned aside from her prize, and no wonder.
And on the wall facing the viewer, there’s poor St Ursula looking wonderingly down at the wound in her breast from the arrow of the pagan Hun, who has just shot her in pique and at alarmingly close range after she rejected him.
This being Caravaggio, what we’ve got is theatre in light and dark: the luminous figure of St Ursula – whose deathly pallor contrasts with her blood red cloak – is the first thing that strikes the viewer as they enter.
The figures are cropped and close up, both are scenes of the intense and concentrated action which is a feature of his work in Naples; both are depictions of night violence, one against a woman and the other at the behest of a woman.
And for good measure, we get with St Ursula a self-portrait of the artist, stretching his head over a soldier’s shoulder to see what is going on.
The men emerge badly from these pictures; the headsman who has decapitated the Baptist is a butcher who has done his bloody bit of work and is now dispassionately handing over head, and responsibility for the act, to the girl, firmly grasping her platter. The pagan Hun is a king – see his fine armour – but he’s old and ugly.
The Last Caravaggio – St Ursula is his final work – is a modest but notable beginning for the National Gallery’s bicentenary celebration. There are just two pictures, and a letter which documents the commissioning of the later painting – which was only proven to be by Caravaggio in 1980.
By juxtaposing this last work with another late paintings from Naples from the National’s own rich collection, we can usefully compare and contrast.
The National’s Salome comes out best from the comparison, being better preserved and less lurid, but the concentrated emotional intensity and dramatic chiaroscuro of both works packs a punch in this space.
These pictures are the final self-revelation of a troubled, violent genius. And fittingly for a gallery which offers its treasures to us all without charge, this little show is free.
