Page 16 - PROTAGONIST 114

PROTAGONIST / BEYOND THE CANVAS

had removed part of the ceiling for work purposes. He wanted
the light source to come from above. But once he had obtained
the source to illuminate his subjects in pose with a strong nar-
row beam of light, he was faced with another not-insignificant
problem: how could he cast light on the canvas he was painting?

uring the exhibition in Milan, Claudio Falcucci advanced
a theory that also explains the difficult conditions Cara-
Dvaggio found himself working under: he had to bring his
canvas close to the subject in order to ‘steal’ a little of the light,
which however prevented him from having a good point of view,
as he was too ‘crushed’, and so he availed of a mirror, which in-
creased the contrasts. He was forced to work in the same cone
of light that he had arranged his models in, practically at their
side. This explains why Caravaggio’s canvases often have inci-
sions in the canvas, made after the preparatory layer had been
laid down on the canvas: in this way the artist memorized the po-
sitions of the key details of the pose. Preparation is another of the
secrets of Caravaggio’s technique on which the recent research
has shone some light. It is a procedure he followed with meticu-
lous care, because the background tone of the imprimatur was
then often used by the artist as a base colour of the painting that
he intended to produce. It is a technique that was subsequently
renamed ‘saving’. Caravaggio resorts to extremely thorough use
of his preparation, which paradoxically required even greater at-
tention than the actual painting itself. Sometimes he laid down
more than one layer, so that he could achieve the exact tone he
was seeking, which would then set the overall tone for the entire
opus. A technique that confirms the great lucidity and clarity of
thought with which he approached his works, entirely in keeping
with the internal dynamics of his paintings: they are always sub-
jects that are emerging from the shadows; people who, like Cara-
vaggio himself, are struggling to come out of the darkness. Like-
wise, the images on his canvases always seen to flow out of that
almost perpetually dark preparation (always different darkness)
laid out on the canvas. That is how Caravaggio produced his mir-
acles. A gamut of techniques that also included sophisticated op-
tical solutions, such as the use of convex mirrors, which Caravag-
gio reveals for instance in that
masterpiece Martha and Mary
Magdalene, which came to Mi-
lan from the Detroit Museum.
An opus conceived with clar-
ity right from its inception:
the greenish preparation on
the left ignites into a dark red
on the right, where Caravag-
gio knew he wanted to place
the figure of Mary Magda-
lene, ‘his’ saint, a repentant
sinner whose heart had been
inflamed by meeting Christ...

16 PROTAGONIST / N. 114

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