Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

Caravaggio's 400th

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Italy is celebrating Caravaggio’s 400th birthday. It started with the discovery of the master’s bones and continues with the hoped for authentication of a rediscovered work as described in the Washington Post:

The “Martyrdom of St. Lawrence” belonging to the Jesuit order has not yet been authenticated as a work of Caravaggio, but appears to have all the hallmarks of his paintings including dramatic lighting effects, the Osservatore Romano said.

“Certainly it’s a stylistically impeccable, beautiful painting,” the newspaper said in an article that will appear in its Sunday edition. “One can’t but be reminded of works like the Conversion of St. Paul, the Martyrdom of St. Matthew and Judith and Holofernes.”

Italy is marking the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio’s death by throwing churches and an art gallery open all night this weekend. Major exhibitions have also been held in Italy this year to honor the artist.

Unfortunately, much has been made of the idea that the painter was an outsider and a rogue. The Financial Times tries to put some of those stories in context:Continue Reading

Carvaggio Recovered

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The good news is that police in Berlin arrested four men involved in trying to sell a Caravaggio stolen from a Ukraine museum two years ago. The Telegraph‘s report suggests that there were up to 20 more persons connected to the painting and its attempted sale.

The bad news is that the media loves to inflate art prices in any context to make a story seem more important. Here we’re told the value of the Caravaggio:

Experts in Germany have authenticated the masterpiece The Taking of Christ, painted around 1602, as the work stolen from a museum in the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa in July 2008. “The Ukrainian authorities have valued the painting in the tens of millions,” the German police statement said. Some experts cited have said the painting could fetch up to $100 million (£66 million) on the black market.Continue Reading

Caravaggiomania

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The New York Times‘s Michael Kimmelman tries to explain the popularity of Caravaggio as he takes note of an academic’s finding that the painter has surpassed Michelangelo as a subject of study:

Caravaggio, on the other hand, exemplifies the modern antihero, a hyperrealist whose art is instantly accessible. His doe-eyed, tousle-haired boys with puffy lips and bubble buttocks look as if they’ve just tumbled out of bed, not descended from heaven. Coarse not godly, locked into dark, ambiguous spaces by a strict geometry then picked out of deep shadow by an oracular light, his models come straight off the street. Cupid is clearly a hired urchin on whom Caravaggio strapped a pair of fake wings. The angel in his “Annunciation” dangles like Chaplin’s tramp on the high wire in “The Circus,” from what must have been a rope contraption Caravaggio devised.Continue Reading

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