The sinner who painted saints

Although named after an angel, Caravaggio needed no stronger reason to brawl than having his artichokes dressed with butter instead of olive oil. Maev Kennedy delves into his short and brutal life

- Maev Kennedy

I N the claustrophobic gloom of Caravaggio’s 1610 The Martyrdom of Saint  Ursula, a dark, burly man is shoving his way into the centre of the frame. His expression, mouth open, is enigmatic: is he coming to cheer on the executioner, whose bow has just fired the fatal shot or to rescue the saint looking down with calm acceptance at the quivering arrow piercing her breast? Is he merely excited at the drama? He certainly looks, as described by a contemporary, ‘a stocky young man… with thick eyebrows and black eyes’. It is unquestionably a self-portrait of the artist and, whatever his intention, he is acting exactly as he did throughout his short, turbulent life—barging his way towards, rather than away from, trouble.

The painting is coming on loan to the National Gallery in London from the Banca Intesa Sanpaolo, undoubtedly the greatest work in the institution’s collection of 35,000 works of art. In the narrow, windowless gallery specially designed to showcase it in Naples, the city where it was painted, it has an eerie effect. A slot cut through a thick wall gives visitors a chilling glimpse before they enter the gallery. In reproductions, the effect is less evident, but in the flesh the contrast is brutal between the ruddy skin tone of the executioner—a king of the Huns whom the virgin saint has refused to marry— and the almost phosphorescent pallor of Ursula and Caravaggio, as if both are already dead.