Experts pour cold water on "new Caravaggio" find

Jul 27, 2010, 13:24 GMT

Rome - A group of art experts on Tuesday dismissed as an 'inadequate and clumsy' imitation a painting which was initially touted in the Vatican's newspaper as a possible work of Italian master Caravaggio.

Headed by the superintendent of Rome's museums, Rosella Vodret, the group inspected the painting The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, at the Jesuit Church of the Gesu, where it is kept in a chapel.

'The work is certainly not a Caravaggio, but it could be attributed to one of his followers from the Neapoltian school,' Vodret said.

The painting's 'discovery' was first announced by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano on July 18, a day marking the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio's death.

It depicts the martyrdom of the 3rd century Saint Lawrence of Rome, who was reputedly burned or 'grilled' to death in 258 during a persecution of Christians ordered by the Emperor Valerian.

Writing in the Vatican newspaper, art historian Lydia Salviucci Insolera said experts still had to determine whether the work was a genuine Caravaggio, but added that it was 'stylistically impeccable' and that it displayed a use of light and dark contrasts, similar to those evident in several Caravaggio masterpieces.

But on Tuesday's edition of L'Osservatore Romano, the director of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci, suggested there was no need to for further research on the 'modest' work, that, at best, is a poor imitation of Caravaggio's style.

'More than a diagnosis on the materials and pigments used ... even more than (seeking) bibliographical and documentary evidence, it is the identification of the quality of a work of art that provides consensus on its authenticity,' Paolucci wrote.

'If you look closely the hands are wrong in terms of prospective, the anatomies clumsy ... the paintwork inadequate,' Paolucci added.

Scientific research on the painting - which measures 183 x 130.5 centimeters and shows St. Lawrence being burned to death, his three executioners in the backdrop - would begin in September, Vodret said.

Caravaggio, whose real name was Michelangelo Merisi, was born in 1571 in Milan, but much of his short and tortured career - the artist was a notorious street brawler - was tied to Rome where he initially won fame and the patronage of aristocrats and cardinals.

But after killing a man in one such fight, Caravaggio was forced to flee the city in 1606 and spent his last, restless years moving between Malta, Sicily and Naples.

He died in 1610, either at the hands of unknown assassins, or, as some other research suggests, of malaria on the Tuscan beach of Porto Ercole.