Caravaggio: His art and his market

It is perhaps not always, but certainly often, the case that artists whose life stories - whether true or embellished - are the most shocking or dramatic capture the public attention in such a way as to drive up prices on the market. Think of the painful loneliness and mental illness that plagued Van Gogh as he painted his sunflowers, the crippling accident that spurred Frida Kahlo on to paint some of her most symbolic self-portraits, or the drug overdose that cut Jean-Michel Basquiat's life short. But there is one name that calls to mind the drama and violence of Baroque Italy like no other, a man whose paintings - rare on the market, yet at times the subject of spectacular rediscoveries - are sought-after, shocking, and as jarringly modern to the 21st Century collector as they were in his own era: Caravaggio.

Michelangelo Merisi was known as Caravaggio after his birthplace near Bergamo, in Lombardy, in the north of Italy. Initially trained by the Milanese artist Simone Peterzano, Caravaggio would have been familiar with the legacies of Leonardo and Titian, as well as with the regional naturalism that had a great deal in common with Northern and German trends. He fled to Rome following some sort of altercation in 1592 (a murder, according to Bellori), where he was employed first in the efficient workshop of Giuseppe Cesare, called Cavaliere d'Arpino, a favourite of Pope Clement VII, painting still life details of fruit and flowers; it is to this period that Caravaggio's earliest known composition, the Boy Peeling Fruit (which exists in several variants), can be dated.

Caravaggio brought with him a new realism that quickly gained favour in Rome, employing a dramatic and exaggerated chiaroscuro, or contrast between light and shadow, that was termed tenebrism, an working directly on the canvas without preliminary sketches. After executing commissions such as his Cardsharps, Bacchus, and Boy bitten by a lizard for prestigious patrons including Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, he earned wider fame for his Church commissions, beginning with the two works decorating the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi: The Calling of St. Matthew and The Martyrdom of St. Matthew. Observers were simultaneously mesmerised and scandalised by his uncompromising realism: saints with dirty feet, scenes of violent deaths, and seemingly 'vulgar' details infiltrating even the most scared episodes. But even those works rejected by their original patrons, such as his Death of the Virgin - originally commissioned in 1601 for a private chapel in Santa Maria della Scala - were eagerly acquired by other collectors, in this case the Duke of Mantua, following the advice of Rubens.

Although violence and murder were reasonably commonplace in the seicento, Caravaggio was known, even in his own era, for being worse than most - a reputation that doubtless contributes to the infamy he enjoys even today. His police records stretch to multiple pages, and he spent time in jail at Tor di Nina; he attacked one guest of his patron, Cardinal del Monte, beating him with a club; he defamed the artist Giovanni Baglione with rude poems; he threw a plate of artichokes at a waiter; and he injured a romantic rival in a 1605 altercation, forcing a brief escape to Genoa. Many of his misdeeds were excused, covered up or paid off by the patrons who remained in thrall to his talent, but when in May 1606 he killed Ranuccio Tomassoni in a duel or brawl, he was sentenced to death and fled to Naples and the protection of his patrons, the wealthy Colonna family, while seeking a papal pardon from Paul V. Before it could be granted, however, he died under mysterious circumstances, with scholars suggesting variously that he died of an illness such as syphilis, or possibly lead poisoning caused by the paints he used, or even that he was murdered by the wealthy Tomassoni family as retribution for the killing of Ranuccio in Rome.

Even after his death, Caravaggio continued to exert a profound influence on his contemporaries and on successive generations across Europe. He was called the most influential artist in mid-17th Century Rome and Naples, but he also inspired Ribera and Velázquez in Spain, and lent his name to a host of northern artists who became collectively known as the Utrecht Caravaggisti. His paintings exist in imitations and variations, with the Spaniards like Ribera pushing his intense shadows and violent themes to the extreme while his Flemish followers focused on the crispness of his forms and the clarity of his lighting.

But if the reasons for Caravaggio's popularity in his own era are clear, the more interesting question surrounds the reason for his enduring popularity and fascination for today's collectors. Having fallen out of favour in the mid-17th Century, with the rise of the elegant Baroque Classicism of the Carracci, he was reclaimed by modern criticism in the 20th Century, with Robert Hughes noting 'there was art before him and after him, and they were not the same' and André Berne-Joffroy declaring 'what begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting.' Caravaggio's modernism is certainly one reason for his appeal to a contemporary audience, as is his scandalous life. But Caravaggio's name has also been attached to a host of high-profile discoveries and sales in recent times. The existence of so many versions, both autograph and copy, of some of his most popular compositions - as many as 50 for works such as the Cardsharps - along with the varying and sometimes conflicting opinions of a host of experts means that there is the exciting potential for a spectacular (and valuable) discovery every time one appears on the market. At the same time, no universally accepted work by Caravaggio has appeared at auction as such in decades, with prices in the mid-to-high six figures achieved by works ascribed to his followers of circle.

When works suggested to be lost painting do resurface, they're put under the spotlight, earning - if not universal acceptance into the artist's canon - certainly notoriety, both for their attributions and for their spectacular asking prices. In 2014, a homeowner clearing his attic at a home in Toulouse uncovered a painting of Judith beheading Holofernes, of a type known to have been painted by Caravaggio but then known only through a copy by his follower Louis Finson. Eric Turquin was called in to inspect the newly discovered canvas, and experts began weighing in with opinions. The work was reportedly offered to the Louvre for the sum of 100 million euros - an offer that was declined - and it was later sold to an American private collection. Experts remain divided on the attribution.

More recently, in April 2021, an Ecce Homo catalogued as circle of Ribera (and given an estimate of just 1500 euros) was pulled from Ansorena auction in Madrid when experts from the Prado suggested it might be a lost Caravaggio. The work was immediately saddled with an export ban to allow time for scholarly investigation, and a consensus was reached, in surprisingly efficient time: the work was accepted as a Caravaggio and has since been sold to a private collector in Spain.

So, the next time you spot a Caravaggesque painting in an auction catalogue, you might find yourself wondering: am I looking at a work by one of his many contemporary followers, an 18th Century copyist, or something far more profound... a lost Caravaggio?