Baroque | Oil Painting Express

10 Lost Paintings: #8 - Caravaggio's "Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence"

12

July

2010

From a Caravaggio portrait painting that was rejected and accidentally destroyed as collateral damage of war, Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, painting by Caravaggio our next stop is a Caravaggio painting that was likely the victim of another kind of war: mob war.

When Caravaggio fled to Sicily in 1608, just one year before he died, he left behind four large original oil paintings. One of them, the Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, was the pride of the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo until October of 1969, when it was discovered that thieves had entered the church in the middle of the night and cut the hand painted oil on canvas from its frame. The thieves also took a number of decorative art pieces from the church, but the Holy Family portrait painting was the obvious focus of the heist.

Literally nothing more was heard of the painting for 27 years, when a Mafia informant, Francesco Marino Mannoia (seen below), said that he had participated in the theft as a young man. In the home of “Cosa Nostra”, Sicilians had long suspected mob involvement in the crime, and Mannoia’s bold claims rang true with most who heard them. Residents of Palermo and art historians alike were horrified to hear Mannoia’s story that the portrait oil canvas was so damaged in transit that the illegal collector who arranged the theft cried when he saw it.

10 Lost Paintings: #9 - Caravaggio's "Saint Matthew and the Angel"

27

June

2010

When discussing important stolen and lost oil painted pictures, World War II is going to have to be addressed. Saint Matthew and the Angel, painting by Caravaggio The theft and purposeful destruction of numerous works of art by the Third Reich has been well-documented (the film The Rape of Europa presents a particularly good history), and just as significant were the accidental destruction of works caught in the middle of battle – collateral damage of bombings and the razing of cities. This is how one of Caravaggio’s most pivotal large original oil paintings, Saint Matthew and the Angel, met its end. When the Allies bombed Berlin in 1945, the oil portrait painting, then housed at the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, the painting was completely destroyed.

When it was painted in 1602, the painted portrait of the Gospel writer St. Matthew caused a scandal. Caravaggio, who often portrayed Bible elites as the poor Romans he knew and lived alongside, had gone too far in the eyes of his patron, Cardinal Matthieu Cointrel. Cointrel had hired the oil portrait painter to create three scenes from the life of his namesake, to display in a chapel in the Roman church of San Luigi dei Francesi. When Caravaggio delivered his interpretation of St. Matthew writing his Gospel, Cointrel was appalled.

Artist Spotlight: Johannes Vermeer

02

June

2010

Johannes Vermeer was a painter in the classic sense. I don't mean because he painted “light” in the 17^th century or because his paintings are super realist with an attention to the mundane. I mean this because when he died he left his family penniless and was a forgotten artist, erased by time, for decades to come.

He was rediscovered in the 19^th century and is now considered one of the masters of the Dutch Golden Age. Vermeer led a pretty middle class existence and in his day was regarded as a moderately successful genre painter.

His wife's family had more money than he and she went on to have 14 children. The couple moved in with Vermeer's mother in law, who owned a spacious house. Vermeer went on to paint day in and out on the front room of the second floor.

Oil Painting through the Ages: Baroque

23

September

2009

The abduction of Europa, painting by Rembrandt van Rijn

The last age of art that we waded through was The Renaissance, the Golden Era of painting that valued all things sacred and serene. Where Renaissance paintings were very ordered and pristine often evoking a feeling of calm and assurance no matter the image, Baroque paintings are the storm. Baroque paintings are rich and intense in color, they are full of movement and excitement and are often dark and moody. This style of art was meant to evoke emotion, rebelling from the coldness and calm of the Renaissance.

This was also truly the dawn of secular paintings. Rather than only portraiture and religious scenes, artists were now commonly painting landscapes, still lifes and paintings of everyday scenes, which were very popular at the time. In its day baroque painting was somewhat controversial, it was not recognized as a true art movement until it's end. The term baroque originally had a derogatory slant, meaning too much, extravagant or froufrou.