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With fewer than 10 Caravaggio paintings in the US, the Dallas Museum of Art embraces his masterpiece, Martha and Mary Magdalene. BY NANCY COHEN ISRAEL
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mercurial temperament that led to the murder of a rival may have also fueled Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s staggering talent. Without ever taking on a student, Caravaggio’s radical style single-handedly influenced the direction of 17th-century European painting Seeing Caravaggio’s Martha and Mary Magdalene, on view through September 22 at the Dallas Museum of Art, is a rare treat. On loan from the Detroit Institute of Arts, it marks Julien Domercq’s first exhibition as the newly appointed Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of European Art at the DMA. With fewer than ten of Caravaggio’s paintings in the United States, spread across six museums, this loan is particularly significant. “It doesn’t get much better than starting with Caravaggio,” Domercq confides Caravaggio arrived in Rome in the early 1590s. The raw realism of his work, coupled with the rogues with whom he consorted, made an immediate impression on the Roman cognoscenti. This early period of Caravaggio’s work includes depictions of the lowest echelons of society, such as those in The Cardsharps, completed around 1595 and in the permanent collection at the Kimbell Art Museum. Since the ecclesiastical aristocracy provided the majority of Rome’s contemporary art patronage, Caravaggio’s work soon turned towards religious subject matter. Completed around 1598, Martha and Mary Magdalene is one of his earliest works in this new direction. Using dramatic lighting and strong shadows, Martha and Mary Magdalene depicts the moment when Martha convinced her sister, Mary, according to 17th-century teachings, to convert
to Christianity. While Martha is literally counting the reasons to follow this path, Mary looks down upon her uncertainly. Mary’s left hand rests on a mirror, which Caravaggio brilliantly uses to define the virtue and vice of both women. Depending on its context, the use of mirrors would traditionally either illuminate the truth or signify worldly vanity. The patch of light reflected here portends divine illumination, ultimately swaying Mary towards conversion. And, as Caravaggio often flaunted convention, his model for Mary Magdalene is the famed Roman courtesan, Fillide Melandroni. Domercq is the museum’s first curator dedicated exclusively to European Old Masters. This loan is part of his strategy towards the reimagining of the European galleries. “Thanks to the recent extremely generous gift of the Marguerite and Robert Hoffman Fund to expand and enhance the DMA’s collection of European Old Masters, the museum has been placing a new emphasis on collecting and displaying European art of the period before 1700,” Domercq says. With this mandate—and alongside Dr. Nicole R. Myers the Barbara Thomas Lemmon Senior Curator of European Art—he has overseen the refurbishment and reinstallation of these galleries, which will reopen to the public mid-August. Domercq is encouraged by the reception that Martha and Mary Magdalene is receiving. “Our audiences are responding to the exhibition with enthusiasm, and people seem to be engaged by the work, spending longer periods of time looking at it than they would in a permanent collection display or a more conventional exhibition. This exhibition feels like a very positive moment for the future of Old Masters here in Dallas—it is the first of many!” P
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Italian (1571–1610), Martha and Mary Magdalene, ca. 1598, oil and tempera on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, gift of the Kresge Foundation and Mrs. Edsel B. Ford.
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