La tecnica di Caravaggio

Many studies have been conducted to try to understand the painting technique The materials used by Caravaggio in the execution of his paintings The artist left nothing written The contemporary accounts are scarce and inaccurate regarding the measures he took to complete the work We know however that Caravaggio loved to paint from life models He used a studio with light coming from above and it was very fast He also painted three heads in a single day Incomplete paintings remaining in other words in an intermediate stage of wor There are none from which it would have been possible to trace at least some of the various stages of work But there are figures in some of his late period paintings left by the painter in an incomplete state of work Based on the few but precious contemporary testimonies and on the numerous and accurate scientific investigations and especially the careful study of the overlapping layers of color We will try to retrace the procedures used by Caravaggio in the execution of his paintings The supports are always made of linen often with a loose weave approximately 12x12 threads per square centimeter The preparation is dark greasy a mixture of oil and pigment mostly earths with added chalk and gypsum Sand is sometimes present in the mixture The artist places great importance on the color of the mortar ot only because it influenced the finished work but also because often Caravaggio kept large areas of it visible without painting over it or perhaps just applying a light layer The key points of the composition were roughly marked with hand-drawn incisions directly on the preparation From the noticeable signs in his works it is clear however that these could not have been a sufficient guide to painting More likely they seem to be as Roberto Longhi intuited in the 1950s The references to return the model to its position For tracking that is to be able to find the correct pose of the model at each session It is a procedure practically exclusive to this artist It probably developed from the technique of drawing using cartridges The sources claim that Caravaggio did not draw but painted directly by copying from life without passing as a consolidated artistic tradition desired through the design process and a subsequent idealization of the natural data In practice the artist drew by painting and the work was indeed executed in one go It is modified during execution It began by creating a graphic outline with burnt sienna Recent studies conducted on the Emmaus supper preserved in the Brera Art Gallery They apparently contradict historical sources stating that the painter did not use a preliminary graphic phase The multispectral infrared scanner has revealed in addition to the presence of the typical engravings The graphic outlines of the hands face of Christ and the apostles Infrared reflectograms reveal brushstroke patterns in many of the artist's works and in some cases are even visible to the naked eye such as along the edges of the left arm of the Judith in the National Gallery of Ancient Art in Rome where the subtle dark outlines are easily distinguishable On the damp ground drawing Caravaggio begins to paint with swift and loose brushstrokes At the same time strong and full The preliminary design was thus integrated with the sketch According to Pietro Bellori's testimony Caravaggio left the canvas preparation in half-tones That is he used the brown color of the preparation as a midtone for the shadows The white of lead in the light areas of the flesh tone is extended to lighter shades up to the final touches executed with pure white A spiral pattern of the white lines is often seen in the X-rays If contemporary painters of Caravaggio did a full sketch on which they then applied glazes to refine Caravaggio revolutionized techniques by completing his paintings part by part in a single session The glazes are applied without allowing the underlying color to dry completely so that the two painting surfaces end up mixed together Even at the sketch stage the painting appears so defined and meticulously detailed in every aspect The painting is thus built up with the paint paste and not with layers This is how the "body dough" technique was born later becoming characteristic of many areas of the Mediterranean The thick impasto of the sketches whose brushstrokes rich in painterly texture are quick dynamic and not simplified They depended on the habit and will to copy from the model The dyes used by Caravaggio are relatively few Its palette is based on lead white ochres yellows and reds cinnabar verdigris and carbon black on earths The use of bright and decisive colors found in the early works seems to fade in the paintings of later maturity In which dark and muted tones prevail and earth-based colors appear Still Bellori informs us that the painter used a more tinted color Everything is very dark and strong using a lot of black to highlight the bodies It is typical for the artist to leave the skin tones visible around the figures A bare strip of preparation revealing its brownish color This can be explained by the very rapid execution that is proceeding swiftly without waiting for the adjacent area to dry This procedure is certainly related to the practice of painting from life with the model in front of you The final draft barely went beyond the rough sketch or even coincided with it so much so that egg tempera glazes have been identified overlaid on still fresh oil layers Egg tempera found in some of the artist's works allows intervention on the still-fresh color without blending the layers This seems to confirm that Caravaggio often did not retouch the painted part and all this still aligns with the model's usage The energy and determination of the painter's brushstroke He reconciled with an extraordinary attention to the smallest details painted with an extremely fine brush Caravaggio did not carve his figures into well-defined outlines He followed it entirely starting from the back and then overlaying those in the foreground Figures clothing and objects are built sequentially and often overlap ow the fronts of the faces are covered by the hair The arms are fully outlined and then covered by the sleeves or mantles of the garments Scientific reproduction utilizes all available information obtained from the study of sources treaties testimonies and ancient recipes formation extracted from restoration reports often accompanied by diagnostic tests aimed at understanding the execution technique and finally from the information obtained through careful observation of the preserved works in particular those left unfinished by the painter But even those that had previously undergone careless restoration efforts have revealed layers of material that had been hidden from view I am unable to show the comparison results between the scientific reproductions shown here and the radiographic or stratigraphic investigations of the original works as at this point the rights to these do not allow it But one of the reproductions a very aggressive cleaning treatment was performed to check if the progressive exposure of the layers would have resulted in bringing our reproductio o a look similar to the original as in the case of the painting depicting Saint Ursula This was previously subjected to a similar treatment by Caravaggio's sure hand If not a verification of the correctness of the methods used during the scientific reproduction of the work This procedure could shed light on some still -debated aspects of the artist's approach