“This is the first time an original Caravaggio has travelled to India,” says Alfonso Tagliaferri, Consul General of Italy in Bengaluru, at a press convention previous the disclosing of Magdalene in Ecstasy by Renaissance artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in Bengaluru on the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA). “It defines a very good moment of the bilateral relations that we are living in now,” he provides.
The portray depicts Mary of Magdala in a state of almost-erotic religious rapture, semi-reclining, draped in scarlet robes with bared shoulders and flowing auburn hair, towards a darkish background: an particularly pronounced use of the basic chiaroscuro strategy of Renaissance artwork known as tenebrism, which he’s typically credited as having launched. “Art historians, when they talk of Caravaggio, quite often use the term realist, but the correct definition would be theatricality — the way he composed paintings was very theatrical,” explains Andrea Anastasio, Director of the Italian Cultural Centre, who was additionally current on the press convention. “Of course, there is a lot of reality because he painted with real models, which sometimes generated trouble,” says Anastasio. For occasion, in his well-known portray of a dying Madonna, The Death of the Virgin, he’s believed to have used a prostitute, “and that caused a lot of noise in the public… the church refused to take the painting.”
Caravaggio, he continues, radically modified artwork, notably due to the best way he used mild. “We have to keep in mind that there is a pre-Caravaggio and post-Caravaggio, when it comes to painting in Europe,” he says, mentioning that many artists, together with Rembrandt and Velázquez, drew inspiration from his use of sunshine. “Caravaggism is a fashion where artists used his way of painting pictures and his way of using light.”
An necessary artist
The portray is accompanied by a VR expertise providing guests a deeper engagement with the artist’s work.
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Special Arrangement
Magdalene in Ecstasy is believed to have been painted in 1606, whereas Caravaggio was in hiding, after he had killed a person, Ranuccio Tommason, in a brawl. “Caravaggio has a troubled, really tragic life,” says Anastasio, including that the artist was a temperamental man with a tough childhood. “You have to keep in mind that, at the age of six, in one day, he lost his father, his aunt, uncle and another very close relative due to plague,” he says.
The remaining household left Milan to escape the epidemic, transferring to the city of Caravaggio in Bergamo, Lombardy, the place he was raised by his mom and, throughout this era, they appeared to have confronted monetary strife. His expertise, nevertheless, by most accounts, was simple. According to the Caravaggio basis’s web site, in 1584, he began as an apprentice to the Lombard painter Simone Peterzano, a pupil of Titian. By 1592, he had moved to Rome, the place he started “performing hack-work for the highly successful Giuseppe Cesari, Pope Clement VIII’s favourite painter,” it states.
Within two years, he stop Cesari and determined to make his personal means in the world and, over time, grew to become a longtime title in Italy. But his tempestuous nature meant that he was “notorious for brawling, even in a time and place when such behaviour was commonplace, and the transcripts of his police records and trial proceedings fill several pages.”
By 39, he was useless, passing away beneath mysterious circumstances in 1610; nevertheless, his legacy lives on, and the way. “There are a bunch of artists who are the most important for us (Italians),” says Consul General Tagliaferri, naming a few of them. “Leonardo (da Vinci), Michelangelo, Raphael…after this, I would say, is Caravaggio…very important for us and the history of the world.”
Lost and located
For centuries, Magdalene in Ecstasy was believed to have been misplaced to the world, though “we knew the painting existed because copies were made,” says Anastasio. Then, in 2014, it was found in a non-public assortment of an aristocratic Italian household who had owned it for hundreds of years. “When the last owner of the painting died, she left nine important paintings from her collection to her nephew and niece. The one who got the painting sent it to be restored, and when it went to the restoration workshop, the restorer suspected it was important.”
Further investigations by specialists, together with the artwork historian Guglielma Gregori, revealed that it was certainly the lacking portray and “after that the painting has been travelling and has been exhibited in several countries. The reason it is here is the joy of sharing a painting of such an exquisite nature,” he says.
The portray, which was first unveiled in India on the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi, is accompanied by a VR expertise providing guests a deeper engagement with the artist’s work. “The viewer comes most of the time, knowing very little about the artist or the historical context, so doing it in a way that they would engage is important,” says Anastasio. “And VR does it in a beautiful way.”
For Dr Sanjeev Kishor Goutam, Director General, NGMA, “this exceptional exhibition of Magdalene in Ecstasy honouring Caravaggio’s creative heritage will, in my opinion, have a lasting influence on world art history,” he says. “For the first time in India, this one-of-a-kind show would draw a sizeable audience of art enthusiasts and spectators from all walks of life, especially academics and students studying the arts.”
Magdalene in Ecstasy might be displayed at the National Gallery of Modern Art until July 6
Published – June 14, 2025 12:14 pm IST
