The National Gallery’s powerful exhibition about the artist and his followers shows a man who could share his geniusThe shadowed eyes of Caravaggio’s Saint John the Baptist (painted 1603–4) won’t leave me alone. They stare at me in the night. Ever since I saw this lifesize,nearly nude painting of a brooding youth in the National Gallery’s powerful and compulsive exhibition about Caravaggio and his followers the “Caravaggisti” – it has been seeping into my unconscious like a bloodstain.
The black shadow of the cross – or is it a broadsword? – cuts across the lustrous white flesh of John. Another deep shadowy void slices through his neck, separating his head from his body, and foreshadowing the way he will die when Salome demands his head on a plate.
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Source: theguardian.com