The arrow has only just pierced her heart, but the blood has already drained from Ursula’s fragile body. She is pallid, ashen, aghast at the mortal wound in her chest. All around her mouths are agape in shock, men grasp to hold her up, a hand tries – too late – to stop the arrow. This miserable, chaotic, sombre depiction of feverish violence is the last painting of one of history’s most important artists, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
He painted like he lived. Caravaggio’s short existence was full of the drama of his art. When he wasn’t making a name for himself as the leading artist of his generation he was fighting in the streets, drinking in the bars, and generally being a superstar agent of chaos. In 1606, he killed a man and was sentenced to death. So he fled, and got in more trouble in Malta and Sicily, before heading to Naples where he painted this scene for a Genoese nobleman whose daughter was about to become a nun.
The legend goes that Saint Ursula was a Christian princess whose 11,000 holy virgin followers were murdered by the Huns in Cologne. The Hun prince offered to spare her life in exchange for her hand in marriage. You can see how he took her rejection: it’s him who loosed the arrow in her chest.
A maelstrom of movement and brutality and morbidity. It’s incredible.
Caravaggio’s last painting (the main attraction in this tiny free exhibition) isn’t in the best state of repair; big chunks are smudged and foggy, other parts look messily overpainted. Is the arrow meant to be so ghostly? Is Ursula meant to be so grey?
Who knows. But it’s still a mesmerisingly beautiful work of art. The prince on the left in his gleaming armour is slack-jawed and shocked at having just killed Ursula; is his gormlessness the dawning of regret? Out of the shadows – the endless tenebrous Caravaggio blackness – a hand reaches to protect the princess, an armoured arm curves to support her collapsing weight. The young face behind her is Carvaggio’s own. It’s like his head is emerging from her dying body, like he has become her; he’s painting himself as the innocent victim, hunted, prosecuted, persecuted. None of it’s subtle, but you don’t come to Caravaggio for subtlety, you come for big action, for a maelstrom of movement and brutality and morbidity. It’s incredible.
You’re not meant to conflate biography and art – just see how badly art historians react these days if you try to link Van Gogh’s paintings to his mental state – but the story of Caravaggio’s life is the story of his art, and vice versa. It’s one big chaos of desperation, violence and beauty.
Caravaggio would die not long after finishing this painting, penniless and paranoid, injured and infected. This painting, though, what a way to go out. Not with a whimper, and not with a bang, but with a scream of blood-drenched anguish.