How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it.
Let’s study art history together.
The Taking of Christ
Artist
Caravaggio
Year
c. 1602
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
133.5 cm × 169.5 cm (52.6 in × 66.7 in)
Location
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (loan from the Society of Jesus, Leeson Street)
What does betrayal look like? This painting is arguably the most famous visual depiction of that action in the annals of Western art. Christ was betrayed by a kiss and it proved to be a kiss of death both for the deliverer and the recipient (though as to the latter, death was defeated.)
The work features seven different people and it is rich in symbolism and deeper truths. The person on the far right, illuminated by the lantern is St. Peter. Most scholars believe that the face we see representing St. Peter is actually Caravaggio himself, in the form of a self-portrait. The shadow and light creates a compelling visual, and it contains some mystery as well. Peter/Caravaggio is only partially illuminated by the lantern, held aloft on the right. That light is definitely the lesser light illuminating the scene. A greater light, on the left, is present though we do not see its source.
Did the artist intend for that to mean something to his viewer? Almost certainly. Personally I enjoy the way the artist depicted tension on every face except that of Jesus. Christ is calm, though perhaps a bit sad, in the midst of human chaos swirling around Him. The strongest contrast for me with the face of Christ is the furrowed brow of Judas has he delivers the kiss, and the intense claw-like grip he has on Christ’s arm at this moment of betrayal.
In the text of the Gospels, the last time we saw Judas before this moment, we read the following:
John 13:27 As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him. So Jesus told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.”
With that in mind, the furrowed brow and the grip on Christ’s arm signal to the viewer something deeper and more sinister. Caravaggio is showing us Satan in a moment of triumph. “Now I’ve got you!” Yet there also seems to be some uncertainty in the eyes of Judas. He is a villain, though perhaps a pitiable and tragic one.
For more on the painting, its history, and its interpretations… via wiki
There are seven figures in the painting: from left to right they are John, Jesus, Judas, three soldiers (the one furthest to the right barely visible in the rear), and a man holding a lantern to the scene. They are standing, and only the upper three-quarters of their bodies are depicted. Judas has just kissed Jesus to identify him for the soldiers. The figures are arrayed before a very dark background, in which the setting is obscured. The main light source is not evident in the painting, but comes from the upper left. The lesser light source is the lantern held by the man at the right (believed to be a self-portrait of Caravaggio, presumably representing St Peter, who would first betray Jesus by denying him, and then go on to bring the light of Christ to the world). At the far left, a man (St John) is fleeing; his arms are raised, his mouth is open in a gasp, and his cloak is flying and being snatched back by a soldier. The flight of the terrified John contrasts with the entrance of the artist. Scholars claim Caravaggio is making the point that even a sinner 1,000 years after the resurrection has a better understanding of Christ than does his friend.
Two of the more puzzling details of the painting are, one, the fact that the heads of Jesus and St. John seem to visually meld together in the upper left corner, and, two, the fact of the prominent presence, in the very centre of the canvas and in the foremost plane of the picture, of the arresting officer’s highly polished, metal-clad arm. Regarding the detail of the polished metal pauldron of the soldier in the centre of the picture, Franco Mormando suggests that it was meant by the artist to serve as a mirror, a mirror of self-reflection and examination of conscience (such as in Caravaggio’s Martha and Mary Magdalene in Detroit). As do many spiritual writers and preachers of the time, the artist may be ‘inviting his viewers to see themselves reflected in the behaviour of Judas’ through their own daily acts of betrayal of Jesus, that is, through their sin.
Sources
The central group, composed of Jesus, Judas and the soldier with an outstretched hand, resembles a 1509 woodcut by Albrecht Dürer from his Small Passion series.
By the late 18th century, the painting was thought to have disappeared, and its whereabouts remained unknown for about 200 years. In 1990, Caravaggio’s lost masterpiece was recognized in the residence of the Society of Jesus in Dublin, Ireland. The rediscovery was published in November 1993.
The painting was hanging in the Dublin Jesuits’ dining room since the early 1930s, but had long been considered a copy of the lost original by Gerard van Honthorst, also known as Gherardo delle Notti, one of Caravaggio’s Dutch followers. This erroneous attribution had already been made while the painting was in the possession of the Roman Mattei family, whose ancestor had originally commissioned it. In 1786, one Giuseppe Vasi misattributed the painting, recording it as a work by Honthorst, and this error had been repeated in an inventory of the Mattei family’s possessions taken in 1793. In 1802, the Mattei sold it, as a work by Honthorst, to William Hamilton Nisbet. It hung in his home in Scotland until 1921. Later in that decade, still unrecognised, the painting was sold to an Irish paediatrician, Marie Lea-Wilson, who eventually donated it in the 1930s to the Jesuit Fathers in Dublin, in gratitude for their support following the shooting of her husband, Capt. Percival Lea-Wilson, a District Inspector in the Royal Irish Constabulary in Gorey, County Wexford, by the Irish Republican Army on 15 June 1920.
The Taking of Christ remained in the Dublin Jesuits’ possession for about 60 years, until it was spotted and recognised, in the early 1990s, by Sergio Benedetti, Senior Conservator of the National Gallery of Ireland, who had been asked by Father Noel Barber, S.J., to examine a number of paintings in the Leeson Street Jesuit Community (of which Barber was superior) for the purposes of restoration. As layers of dirt and discoloured varnish were removed, the high technical quality of the painting was revealed, and it was tentatively identified as Caravaggio’s lost painting. Much of the credit for verifying the authenticity of this painting belongs to Francesca Cappelletti and Laura Testa, two graduate students at the University of Rome. During a long session of research, they found the first recorded mention of The Taking of Christ, in an ancient and decaying account book documenting the original commission and payments to Caravaggio, in the archives of the Mattei family, kept in the cellar of a palazzo in the small town of Recanati.
The painting is on indefinite loan to the National Gallery of Ireland from the Jesuit Community, Leeson Street, Dublin, who acknowledge the kind generosity of Dr Marie Lea-Wilson. It was displayed in the United States as the centrepiece of a 1999 exhibition entitled “Saints and Sinners”, organized by Franco Mormando at the McMullen Museum of Art, at Boston College, and at the 2006 “Rembrandt / Caravaggio” exhibition in the van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. In 2010 it was displayed from February to June at the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, for the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio’s death. In 2016, it was displayed in the National Gallery, London.
From May to September 2024, the painting was on loan at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, displayed alongside another work of Caravaggio, The Supper at Emmaus, painted around 1601. Both paintings had been rarely, if ever, seen together since the early 17th century.
The Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art (Ukraine) has a copy of The Taking of Christ. Soviet historians claimed in the 1950s that the painting was made by Caravaggio himself. In 1993, Italian art historian Sergio Benedetti proved that the painting was definitely not made by Caravaggio, but rather a copy by Giovanni di Attili for Ciriaco Mattei, upon the request of Ciriaco’s brother Asdrubale to possess a copy. The painting was stolen from the museum in 2008 and found in Germany.
Sannini version: putative original
A version owned by the Sannini family of Florence came to the attention of Roberto Longhi in 1943, who considered it a copy. In 2003, dealer Mario Bigetti, suspecting it was an original, contracted to buy it. He consulted Maria Letizia Paoletti, who argued the large number of pentimenti visible under X-ray images proved the painting was the original. Sir Denis Mahon, who had in 1993 authenticated the Dublin version, in 2004 stated that the Sannini version was Caravaggio’s original, but the Dublin version was a copy by Caravaggio himself. This prompted comments in the Irish and British media in February 2004. The Sannini version was the subject of a legal dispute and was taken into official custody, where pigment analysis by Maurizio Seracini found Naples yellow, which was not known in paintings before 1615. Seracini said this proved it was not the original; Paoletti disagreed. Jonathan Harr‘s book about the Dublin painting accepts Seracini’s argument, while Michael Daley of ArtWatch was not convinced.
Mel Gibson said that the cinematography in The Passion of the Christ aimed to imitate Caravaggio’s style. The arrest scene in the film uses a similar perspective, lighting, and placement of figures as the painting at the moment the soldiers seize Jesus.
The painting was used as a candidate for an RTÉ competition looking for ‘Ireland’s Favourite Painting’.
For a great review of this painting, that goes into its details and interpretation, I recommend to you the following:
