Michelangelo Merisi da
Caravaggio, Martha and Mary Magdalene (Marta e Maddalena),
c. 1598, Oil on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts.
...
In this Sunday's Gospel we see the characters of Martha and Maria,
Lazaro's sisters. This painting by Caravaggio tells us something about
them. Caravaggio's Martha and Mary is dated to 1598–99, when he was in the
entourage of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte. Little is known of its history
between those years and 25 June 1971, when its owners attempted to sell it at
Christie's in London. The painting shows
the sisters Martha and Mary from the New Testament. Martha is in the act of
converting Mary from her life of pleasure to the life of virtue in Christ.
Martha, her face shadowed, leans forward, passionately arguing with Mary, who
twirls an orange blossom between her fingers as she holds a mirror, symbolising
the vanity she is about to give up. The power of the image lies in Mary's face,
caught at the moment when conversion begins. Martha and Mary was painted while
Caravaggio was living in the palazzo of his patron, Cardinal Del Monte. A
finely grained cream-brown table running in front of the sisters displays three
objects, of which a Venetian mirror is the most obvious. It reflects the
Magdalen's hand and a rectangular window, to which reflection her middle finger
points. The other two objects are an ivory comb and a dish with a sponge. The
type of dish was called a sponzarol by the Venetians and, in this case, is made
of alabaster. The writings of the Church Fathers (starting with Origen)
established Martha and Mary as representative of the active versus the
contemplative aspects of Christian faith. This distinction was exemplified in
art like Bernardino Luini's Martha and Mary, once in the Barberini Collection
in Rome, and attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Caravaggio would certainly have
known the painting. •AE
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