Episode 8: Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ [& Extras]

Listen to the episode HERE on Soundcloud or visit the podcast on iTunes, either through the Podcasts App (just search for “Stuff About Things Art History”) or by clicking HERE. Happy listening!

Sources and Links:

Harr, Jonathan. The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 2005.
- One of my absolute favorite “fun” art history books. I first read it when I was a 17-year-old who knew nothing about art history and I couldn’t put it down. I recently re-read it in preparation for the podcast episode and, once again, read it cover-to-cover in a single sitting. It is basically an art history detective story… that actually happened. Better yet, it is likely that your local library has a copy of the book!
- Harr wrote the book as an expansion of his article “A Hunch, an Obsession, a Caravaggio,” which appeared in the New York Times on December 25th, 1994.

Spear, Richard. “Caravaggiomania.” Art in America 98, no. 11 (December 2010): 115–25.
For an accessible yet thorough biography of Caravaggio, try out Andrew Graham-Dixon’s Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012.

Articles by Sergio Benedetto, the conservator at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin who “discovered” and performed extensive conservation efforts on Taking of Christ.
- “Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ: A Masterpiece Rediscovered.” The Burlington Magazine 135, no. 1088 (1993): 731–41.
- “Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ.” The Burlington Magazine 137, no. 1102 (1995): 37–38.
- Cappelletti, Francesca, and Sergio Benedetti. “The Documentary Evidence of the Early History of Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ.” The Burlington Magazine 135, no. 1088 (1993): 742–46.
  - An essay co-authored with Francesca Cappelletti, the young scholar who traced the provenance of Taking of Christ. Dr. Cappelletti features prominently in Harr’s book.

Know a Caravaggio lover? I recommend the coffee table book Caravaggio: The Complete Works XL. This massive book has some of the most beautiful reproductions of Caravaggio’s works that I have ever seen! There is also a smaller, more affordable version of the book.

For fun, watch the episode on Caravaggio from Simon Schama’s Power of Art, a BBC television production featuring a young Andrew Garfield as one of Caravaggio’s muses. Available on Youtube.

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