Another incredible case arises around the painter Michelangelo Merisi known universally as Caravaggio. After the discovery and consequent attribution of the Dublin painting “Capture of Christ in the garden”, the story of the painting found in Toulouse “Judith and Holofernes” on which critics disagree, and the debate on the work “Magdalene in ecstasy” , in the last hours the news exploded in the media of a “Caravaggio” who was about to be sold at auction for 1500 euros. The days when a painting by Caravaggio could be bought for such small amounts are very far away, as in the case of Father Ubach who in the early 1900s bought a painting by the Lombard artist for 65 lire.
But what happened? We are in Madrid and a painting, described as a “Crowning with Thorns” (oil on canvas, size: 111 cm by 86) was included in the sales catalog of the Ansorena auction house and associated with Josè de Ribera’s circle of artists. (Circulo De Josè de Ribera) but the scholar Maria Cristina Terzaghi, curator of the Caravaggio exhibition in Naples (2019), mentioned Caravaggio’s name in reference to the work and the painting was withdrawn from sale. “Repubblica” reports it in an article by Dario Pappalardo but the news is relaunched by various websites specialized in art including “AboutArtonline” which does more and publishes the intervention of Professor Massimo Pulini according to which Michelangelo’s hand is recognized Merisi da Caravaggio in the painting depicting the Ecce Homo which, as clarified by Pulini, is the authentic painting presented at the famous ‘Massimi competition’ which Caravaggio took part in at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
According to the scholar Terzaghi, the work should having arrived in Spain in the second half of the seventeenth century together with another painting, “Salome with the head of the Baptist”. Both works could be traced back to the collection of Garcia Avellaneda y Haro, Count of Castrillo and viceroy of Naples from 1653 to 1659 and of this pair of paintings I wrote precisely in “Maybe not everyone knows that Caravaggio. The life of a genius between art, adventure and mystery “(Newton Compton) where I had told the story of Caravaggio’s” lost “paintings, starting from the detailed studies of Maurizio Marini and from the documentary sources and inventories present in the volume by Stefania Macioce ( Michelangelo da Caravaggio: documents, sources and inventories, 2003) that I had consulted. In the text I invited to pay attention to Spain as a privileged place of investigation and I hinted that there could be some work by Caravaggio under another attribution, precisely because Marini himself (2005), who had listed all the works with precision and competence, he had marked a trail in reference above all to the lost paintings of the very last Roman period and the early Neapolitan period (including a “San Gennaro” and a painting depicting Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, which had ended up in Spanish collections). But everyone today speaks of this painting not “Crowning with thorns” of the circle of Ribera but an “Ecce homo” by Caravaggio, a painting identified with this name for the subject it presents, the moment in which Pontius Pilate presented Jesus to the crowd, after having had him scourged and left dressed with a red cloak and a crown of thorns, as reported in the Gospel. For the painting there is also a Sicilian path, in the reconstruction of the scholar Terzaghi, who also explores the story of the work “Ecce homo” exhibited Genoa and attributed to Caravaggio.
Also in Sicily, where Caravaggio lived and worked from 1608 to 1609, according to various scholars, including always Marini, the painter could also have experimented with the theme of Ecce Homo and the “Passion” of Christ. In particular, in the Messina period Caravaggio had accepted the commission from a Messina patrician Niccolò Di Giacomo for “four scenes of the passion of Jesus” before August 1609. Unlike Terzaghi and Pulini, other scholars do not agree on the possible attribution of the painting withdrawn from the auction in Caravaggio and therefore a new casus belli erupts. First, however, the painting is reportedly in need of cleaning. According to Pulini, the work appears “without a recent restoration, oxidized in several parts with small drops of color and minimal repainting areas” (source AboutArtonline). Meanwhile, the experts split up; Corriere reports that the painting is a Caravaggio for Vittorio Sgarbi but it is not for the scholar Nicola Spinosa. Stay tuned, Caravaggio’s mysteries and scoops continue.