Caravaggio, Caravaggesque

A painting depicting Judith Beheading Holofernes, found in an attic in France in 2014, surfaced in auction recently as a long lost Caravaggio, so attributed by experts (ArtNet News, 28 February). 

One should not judge without seeing the original.  But my immediate instinct, on the basis of the reproduction, is that it is No Caravaggio. I don't know why the so-called experts look at the brushwork and details with close attention, and they are not to be disregarded, but not at a large picture, so to speak.  I find the composition and the chiaroscuro in this painting unconvincing.  

The difference becomes immediately clear when we compare this painting with Caravaggio’s own, 1598-99, now in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in Rome. 

In the recently attributed painting, Judith’s hands are hard to see; in Caravaggio’s own, her bare arms are centrally placed with her right hand gripping the sword and the sword inserted deep into Holofernes’s neck.  The viewer's eye is thus immediately drawn to and held in Judith's action.  Her expression is calm and determined.  In the attributed work, the servant breaks the relationship between her mistress and the victim, so powerfully depicted in the work of the master.   Then, Caravaggio’s reputed dramatic chiaroscuro, of which definition Caravaggio changed in practice from a mere light-and-shade, that is, chiaro + oscuro, to theatrical illumination, makes Judith the unmistakable protagonist.  It is noteworthy, too, that Judith, clad in white here, is robed in black in the less competent composition.  The dramatic chiaroscuro becomes prevalent in Caravaggio’s work after 1600 regardless of the subject matter. 

While a good artist can occasionally produce less competent work, these two points, the composition and chiaroscuro, disqualify the recent discovery to be considered Caravaggio’s own.  

We may further observe that Artemisia Gentilleschi who also painted Judith Beheading Holofernes in 1620 (The Uffizi), fully understood Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, though she resorted to a different compositional strategy by having the servant helping her mistress by holding down the victim and thus clustering the three figures into a single powerful dramatic action. 

03.15.19