WEBVTT 00:00:04.006 --> 00:00:05.679 We are in the Louvre and we are looking at 00:00:05.695 --> 00:00:07.175 Caravaggio's painting "The Death of the Virgin" 00:00:07.175 --> 00:00:10.640 from 1605-1606, and this is a very large painting . 00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:13.200 And it is quite dark. 00:00:13.247 --> 00:00:15.405 Caravaggio is known for painting in the dark manner 00:00:15.405 --> 00:00:18.947 but this is an especially dark painting and it actually might need to be cleaned. 00:00:18.947 --> 00:00:22.300 Maybe, we see that dark tenebrous background 00:00:22.300 --> 00:00:24.610 and the figure is very, very close to us 00:00:24.610 --> 00:00:26.909 but we don't see anything that we might expect to see 00:00:26.909 --> 00:00:29.111 in a painting of "The Virgin Mary's Death". 00:00:29.111 --> 00:00:32.745 Normally we may expect to see her being sent to heaven 00:00:32.745 --> 00:00:36.100 or angels receiving her in heaven and typicall of Caravaggio 00:00:36.100 --> 00:00:39.675 is created a spiritual scene but totally down-to-earth 00:00:39.675 --> 00:00:43.132 and use a very everyday language depicted. 00:00:43.132 --> 00:00:46.360 The Virgin Mary herself looks like she could be a contemporary Roman. 00:00:46.360 --> 00:00:48.949 She doesn't look particularly spiritual 00:00:48.949 --> 00:00:51.370 aside from the faint halo 00:00:51.370 --> 00:00:53.656 which we can barely make out around her head. 00:00:53.656 --> 00:00:58.053 Her hair is undone, the front of her dress is coming up, 00:00:58.053 --> 00:01:01.340 her feet are bare which was really indecent. 00:01:01.340 --> 00:01:03.963 The priest of her times said that she looked like 00:01:03.963 --> 00:01:07.437 Caravaggio had modeled her on a prostitute that had been dragged down from the river. 00:01:07.437 --> 00:01:11.468 Hardly inappropriate model for the Virgin Mary. 00:01:11.468 --> 00:01:14.733 In fact the Monks had rejected the painting because of that rumour. 00:01:14.733 --> 00:01:16.585 So the painting is down-to-earth 00:01:16.585 --> 00:01:19.205 and it is in a sense the Catholic's story brought 00:01:19.205 --> 00:01:22.324 into our world in a most direct way, 00:01:22.324 --> 00:01:24.540 and when you look at the scale of the painting 00:01:24.540 --> 00:01:27.211 and the way that this young woman is mourning in the foreground, 00:01:27.211 --> 00:01:30.184 bends down, she seems to virtually be in our space. 00:01:30.184 --> 00:01:34.094 We can reach over to that copper basin that is just at her feet 00:01:34.094 --> 00:01:36.792 and seems to be just at ours as well. 00:01:36.792 --> 00:01:39.717 I think Caravaggio really intentionally 00:01:39.717 --> 00:01:41.310 left the space open for us 00:01:41.310 --> 00:01:44.568 in the circle of mourners who surround her. 00:01:44.568 --> 00:01:47.089 If you look at them they are obviously the apostles. 00:01:47.089 --> 00:01:50.097 But Caravaggio has let the light fallen 00:01:50.097 --> 00:01:51.791 perhaps in the most unflattering aspects of their features 00:01:51.791 --> 00:01:55.455 and the way that I think is typical of Caravaggio 00:01:55.455 --> 00:01:59.515 and his interest in the everyday and the common and the lowly 00:01:59.515 --> 00:02:02.462 But it is not to say that he is not a master of the composition. 00:02:02.462 --> 00:02:06.509 If you look on that wonderful swash of red cloth above, 00:02:06.509 --> 00:02:09.218 the way it frames beautifully and elegantly the scene, 00:02:09.218 --> 00:02:13.238 but it also creates a kind of arcing curve that is repeated in those bold heads 00:02:13.238 --> 00:02:16.949 which actually also sort of reverse and lead us down to the Virgin Mary. 00:02:16.949 --> 00:02:20.987 Her body lies across a diagonal or mind that they were no longer in the Renaissance. 00:02:20.987 --> 00:02:26.688 We are looking at the more activated composition that is very much typical of the baroque. 00:02:26.688 --> 00:02:29.961 Her arm creates a different kind of diagonal as it moves towards us 00:02:29.961 --> 00:02:33.048 and it has this incredible broken wrist 00:02:33.048 --> 00:02:35.163 which then leads us down to the woman below her. 00:02:35.163 --> 00:02:38.116 I think it is almost as if Caravaggio is suggesting 00:02:38.116 --> 00:02:40.460 that we should be like this young woman before us 00:02:40.460 --> 00:02:43.222 bend over in sorrow for the death of the Virgin. 00:02:43.222 --> 00:02:47.649 I was noticing the hands, the hands of the apostle in gold 00:02:47.649 --> 00:02:50.414 that hand blesses for sure. It's wonderful isn't it? 00:02:50.414 --> 00:02:53.320 The figure below him has got head in his hands. 00:02:53.320 --> 00:02:57.776 The figure next to the man in gold is weeping, is rubbing his eyes 00:02:57.776 --> 00:03:01.853 The other figure next to him with his head up in his hands 00:03:01.853 --> 00:03:04.695 and then down to the Virgin Mary 00:03:04.695 --> 00:03:06.945 whose arm is for sure hand hang down but the other hand, 00:03:06.945 --> 00:03:10.859 the right hand looks as if it was sort of flocked down on her chest. 00:03:10.859 --> 00:03:15.915 If you sit we can really sense that this is indeed a dead body. 00:03:15.915 --> 00:03:20.301 There is no sense of spiritual rebirth or salvation. 00:03:20.301 --> 00:03:23.391 We almost feel rigour setting in here. 00:03:23.391 --> 00:03:26.243 Look at the way that her right hand, the ring finger 00:03:26.243 --> 00:03:29.104 is tucked under the middle finger in a kind of 00:03:29.104 --> 00:03:31.802 passive way that no living person would allow to happen. 00:03:31.802 --> 00:03:34.168 It is that Caravaggio was completetly rejecting 00:03:34.168 --> 00:03:36.368 the elegance of the high Renaissance 00:03:36.368 --> 00:03:40.500 to intentionally give us something difficult and almost ugly. 00:03:40.500 --> 00:03:43.626 It's something that is off our world, 00:03:43.626 --> 00:03:46.919 this embrace of the spiritual through our world.