Elsien's Traveblogue

Chasing more Caravaggios
Rome, 25th February 2011
Even though I am now embarked on my Art History MA dissertatioin on the French painter Hubert Robert, I couldn't resist temptation to spend a few days in Rome chasing my old friend Caravaggio. He's used to being chased: he spent half his professional life on the run for crimes committed, mainly violent.
I'm only after his paintings – mind you, so were some of his contemporaries chasing him. At least I only have to go to some of the museums and churches here in Rome and there they are, in their full luminous and chiaroscuro glory. You have to put money in a box in some places to shine a light on the paintings, but a few coins will do the trick.
There are about 20 of Caravaggio's paintings here in Rome – one has gone off to an exhibition in Germany, but of the remaining 19 I have now seen 13. The last six are in the Galleria Borghese where Scipione Borghese, the nephew of the Pope at the time, Paul V, and a Caravaggio collector, managed to get his hands on a few of them. I've booked myself a ticket to go there tomorrow. The paintings I have seen have been stunning. They are in chapels of churches, in the Palazzo Barberini, now a museum, in the Palazzo Doria Pamphili, ditto, the Capitoline Museum – the one with Big Foot outside - and the Pinacoteca at the Vatican. Had another look at the Sistine Chapel while we were there but since I was there last time, a long time ago, they have moved the route so now you have to walk round the outside of St Peter's, then through all the endless corridors of the former Papal chambers – now all museum – and finally you get there, whereas it is really right next to the basilica ... It was of course packed with tourists, even though it's not really the holiday season and guards had to keep shushing people, stop them from taking pictures or sitting down .... A fairly unholy spectacle ...
Rome is of course splendid – full of life and noise and everywhere you fall over ruins, pillars, arches ... more churches than you can shake a stick at. I did get some idea of what Hubert Robert, who was sketching here 150 years after Caravaggio, would have seen. The city had by then fallen into ruins again – the glorious Medici Palazzo Madama was a total mess – now back in the running as a government building, not sure what.
Anyway, here's some pictures, more coming soon ....