The king of chiaroscuro

These days, it is easy to take it for granted that Caravaggio (1571-1610) is the most popular of the old masters, yet it was not ever thus. In my Baedeker’s Central Italy (published exactly 100 years ago), he is acknowledged as having been ‘the chief of the Naturalist School’, but it is pointed out that from the outset ‘it was objected that his drawing was bad, that he failed in the essential of grouping the figures in his larger compositions.’ The first major exhibition of his works — in what has only very recently been established as the city of his birth, Milan — did not take place until 1951. Its catalogue contained an introduction by Roberto Longhi, the greatest Italian art historian of the 20th century, who had done so much to champion his work. In the intervening years, a whole array of very different knights in shining armour, ranging from the late Derek Jarman to Sir Denis Mahon (still going strong at the age of 99), have pleaded his cause, to such an extent that his triumph is now entirely and rightly assured.