Queen Elizabeth II’s Long-Lost Caravaggio Unveiled in Rome
Monday, November 20, 2006ROME (AFP) - A long-lost painting by Italian master Caravaggio, resplendent after a six-year cleanup has been unveiled in Rome, where it is on loan from the private collection of Queen Elizabeth II.
“The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew,” which gathered dust and layers of varnish while in the possession of the British crown for some 400 years, was discovered in a storeroom at Hampton Court, the palace on the River Thames just west of London, where it was erroneously catalogued as a copy.
The work, valued at more than 50 million pounds (74 million euros, 96 million dollars), is being shown in Rome first in honor of Maurizio Marini, the Italian expert who first suspected that it might be an original.
The painting, probably dating from the first decade of the 17th century when Caravaggio was in Rome, depicts the scene in Saint Mark’s Gospel in which Christ calls on Peter and Andrew to follow him and “become fishers of men.”
Unusually, Christ is shown without a beard in the painting, which measures 1.3 by 1.6 meters (about four feet by five).
It is part of a small exhibition of Caravaggio paintings that will open to the public on Wednesday at the Termini Art Gallery in Rome’s central railway station, and run until January 31.
Marini came across the grime-encrusted painting, almost devoid of color, after British collector and Italian art historian Sir Denis Mahon discovered a bill of sale for a Caravaggio purchased by King Charles I in the 17th century.
“I knew it was a very important discovery, something that should be investigated a bit,” Sir Denis, 96, told a news conference Monday.
He and Marini explained that a copy usually contains an outline of the image drawn by the copyist before starting to paint, which would be visible after cleaning using X-ray and infra-red analysis.
No such outline was found, but instead there were characteristic incisions in the first layer of paint, which Caravaggio was known to use to guide his work.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who died in 1610 at age 38, was considered a pioneer of modern realism and the chiaroscuro (light and shadow) technique in oil painting.
He was also known for brawling, even killing a tennis partner over a disputed score, an act that prompted him to flee Rome to Naples and later Malta, never to return.
The restored painting, one of only about 50 extant works of the artist, will move to an exhibition of Italian Baroque and Renaissance art to open at Buckingham Palace in March.
