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Technology sheds new light on master of shade

He is known as the master of shade, and now 21st Century technology is shedding new light on the creative process behind Caravaggio's groundbreaking painting.

Published: 29 September 2017 09:32 CEST
Technology sheds new light on master of shade
"Inside Caravaggio" opens on Friday at Milan's Palazzo Reale. Photo: Miguel Medina/AFP

“Inside Caravaggio”, an exhibition that opens on Friday at Milan's Palazzo Reale, unites 20 of the Renaissance giant's most important works with X-ray and infrared images of them that offer visitors revealing insights into how he went about creating them.

The multimedia displays offer contemporary fans of the father of modern painting a glimpse into his idiosyncratic technique, the points at which he changed his mind and the modifications and adjustments he made to some of his most famous works.

Works have been loaned from a string of top Italian and international museums, including the Metropolitan in New York, which has released “Sacred Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (1604-1605)” and “Salome with the head of John the Baptist (1607 or 1610)”.

Other highlights include “St. Francis of Assisi in ecstasy” (c.1597), borrowed from the National Gallery in London.

“It is a special exhibition,” said curator Rossella Vodret. “He was a fascinating figure who never ceases to surprise us.

“Apart from offering 20 Caravaggios, which is an exceptional figure for this artist, the displays allow you to get inside his head, to relive his creative process.”

In a portrait of St John the Baptist that is on loan from the Palazzo Corsini in Rome, the biblical figure is sitting and turning towards his right.

“It was not understood why he was in this position but with radiographic imaging we discovered that he was in fact turning towards a lamb, which is his iconic symbol but which the artist decided to paint over in the end,” Vodret said.

In “St Jerome in Meditation,” which usually resides in a museum at the Montserrat Monastery in Barcelona, the right leg of the elderly man was initially more exposed but finally covered up with a blanket.

The exhibition also offers a new perspective on Caravaggio's years in Rome, based on new research that dates the Milan-born artist's arrival in the city to 1596, four years later than previously thought.

“That means that the production of works thought to have taken eight years, were actually completed in four, and also that there is a a gap of four years, which he probably spent in prison after killing a man in Milan,” said Vodret.

Caravaggio was forced to flee Rome in 1610 after killing another man in a brawl and is thought to have died in Tuscany four years later, aged just 38.

By Céline Cornu

ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

Published: 8 July 2023 10:13 CEST
African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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