Groot kuns, skryf Kimmelmann, in die artikel hier onder (in die NYT van vandag) en een van sy baie oor sy besoeke aan kunswerke, het altyd iets verborge. Jy kan dit nooit heeltemal peil nie. Steeds moet jy weer daaroor bly nadink.
Hy dink na oor Caravaggio se beroemde Die Madonna van die Pelgrims in 'n kerk in Rome.
En, sou 'n mens uit sy rubriek kon byvoeg, groot kuns weet om die leser en die kyker te betrek by dit wat die kunstenaar skep. Deur die eeue het baie van die gewone mense na die skildery van Caravaggio gaan kyk omdat hulle hul daarmee kon vereenselwig. Hulle voel die konneksie tussen hulle self, verbeeld in die twee figure van die twee pelgrims, die een met die groot, kaal voete, en die heilige, verteenwoordig deur Maria en haar seun (kyk die tenger stralekrans...).
Hier is sy skrywe:
In Rome, Caravaggio Still Beckons Hoi Polloi
By
Published: June 14, 2012
ROME — On the steps of the Basilica di Sant’Agostino, a stone’s throw from Piazza Navona and the famous Caravaggios in the Church of San Francese, four men waited for handouts on a summery afternoon last week. Only a priest and a few tourists passed by.
Inside, soft scrims of white cloth scaffolding fluttered high over the marbled nave. The place was nearly empty. To the left of the entrance Caravaggio’s “Madonna di Loreto ,” the Madonna of the Pilgrims as it’s called, hung in a narrow chapel. The pilgrims, a barefoot old man and an old woman, kneel before a sleepy Mary and the infant Jesus.
They’re peasants, arriving in the middle of the night like overanxious relatives at the shrine to the Madonna in Loreto, although the scene can look like the doorstep of Sant’Agostino. Mary has shuffled out to greet them: a slim, inward, silent beauty, her ivory skin reflecting in the moonlight, a whispering gold veil falling from one shoulder onto her deep-red velvet blouse. She carries Jesus. He’s a handful, sitting on her thrust hip, her right hand around his back, her left absently catching a falling bedsheet. All poise and forethought, as alert as she seems somber, he blesses the beseeching couple. You can’t really make out his face, just the bridge of his nose, an ear and a puffy cheek.
For centuries visitors have trudged up the steps of this church. I can imagine their eyes slowly adjusting to the light and falling on that picture with the surprise you can spot on the peasants’ faces. The work is one of those miracles of illusionism, and back in the 17th century the sight of it must have been akin to what people in the 20th century felt on first seeing movies or television.
It was the shock of recognition.
Caravaggio’s models came from the Roman streets, after all. They looked it, weather-beaten and artfully staged. “Two pilgrims, one with muddy feet and the other with a dirty, threadbare cap,” is how Caravaggio’s nemesis, Giovanni Baglione, described the painted pilgrims. The “hoi-polloi made a great fuss,” he added about the work’s popularity. He meant the masses who streamed in from the four corners of Europe and from around the corner. These were the people who today pass through the piazza and climb the basilica’s steps. They were us.
I stumbled into the church one hot July day as a teenage art pilgrim. Having run out of pocket change, I waited guiltily for strangers to drop more lira into the artificial-light box, to illuminate the painting, so I could continue to gawk at Mary’s beautiful neck and heavy lidded eyes, so erotic and hard bitten, and at the extravagantly foreshortened peasant’s huge, filthy feet, lovingly painted. The image, like a secret I’d alone discovered in the cool, forgotten church, seemed to encapsulate Rome, its weary youth, theatrical streets and inexhaustible age. The electric spotlight picked the peasants out of the gloom but couldn’t penetrate the darkest recesses of the picture. The new lights they’ve installed can’t quite either.
That’s the beauty of the thing. Caravaggio’s hyper-realism, a magician’s conjuring trick, I have come to regard as a perfect metaphor for great art, which declines to make obvious its deepest truths, leaving us to decipher them if we can. I go back to the picture from time to time to remind myself of that fact, and of my long-ago flush of discovery.
Outside, squinting in the sun, I fished for coins to give the guys who were still on the church steps, although they were no longer asking for money. One of them, hunched but gazing intently at the sky, watching a pigeon fly by, had taken off his sneakers.
He was barefoot.
Inside, soft scrims of white cloth scaffolding fluttered high over the marbled nave. The place was nearly empty. To the left of the entrance Caravaggio’s “Madonna di Loreto ,” the Madonna of the Pilgrims as it’s called, hung in a narrow chapel. The pilgrims, a barefoot old man and an old woman, kneel before a sleepy Mary and the infant Jesus.
They’re peasants, arriving in the middle of the night like overanxious relatives at the shrine to the Madonna in Loreto, although the scene can look like the doorstep of Sant’Agostino. Mary has shuffled out to greet them: a slim, inward, silent beauty, her ivory skin reflecting in the moonlight, a whispering gold veil falling from one shoulder onto her deep-red velvet blouse. She carries Jesus. He’s a handful, sitting on her thrust hip, her right hand around his back, her left absently catching a falling bedsheet. All poise and forethought, as alert as she seems somber, he blesses the beseeching couple. You can’t really make out his face, just the bridge of his nose, an ear and a puffy cheek.
For centuries visitors have trudged up the steps of this church. I can imagine their eyes slowly adjusting to the light and falling on that picture with the surprise you can spot on the peasants’ faces. The work is one of those miracles of illusionism, and back in the 17th century the sight of it must have been akin to what people in the 20th century felt on first seeing movies or television.
It was the shock of recognition.
Caravaggio’s models came from the Roman streets, after all. They looked it, weather-beaten and artfully staged. “Two pilgrims, one with muddy feet and the other with a dirty, threadbare cap,” is how Caravaggio’s nemesis, Giovanni Baglione, described the painted pilgrims. The “hoi-polloi made a great fuss,” he added about the work’s popularity. He meant the masses who streamed in from the four corners of Europe and from around the corner. These were the people who today pass through the piazza and climb the basilica’s steps. They were us.
I stumbled into the church one hot July day as a teenage art pilgrim. Having run out of pocket change, I waited guiltily for strangers to drop more lira into the artificial-light box, to illuminate the painting, so I could continue to gawk at Mary’s beautiful neck and heavy lidded eyes, so erotic and hard bitten, and at the extravagantly foreshortened peasant’s huge, filthy feet, lovingly painted. The image, like a secret I’d alone discovered in the cool, forgotten church, seemed to encapsulate Rome, its weary youth, theatrical streets and inexhaustible age. The electric spotlight picked the peasants out of the gloom but couldn’t penetrate the darkest recesses of the picture. The new lights they’ve installed can’t quite either.
That’s the beauty of the thing. Caravaggio’s hyper-realism, a magician’s conjuring trick, I have come to regard as a perfect metaphor for great art, which declines to make obvious its deepest truths, leaving us to decipher them if we can. I go back to the picture from time to time to remind myself of that fact, and of my long-ago flush of discovery.
Outside, squinting in the sun, I fished for coins to give the guys who were still on the church steps, although they were no longer asking for money. One of them, hunched but gazing intently at the sky, watching a pigeon fly by, had taken off his sneakers.
He was barefoot.
