This is the second of several talks on the great Renaissance artist Caravaggio Helena has prepared for The Daily London Walks Podcast. The first one – if you missed it – is titled “I feel as though the artist’s hands are coming out of the canvas toward me.” It was posted on March 20th. Like all of Helena’s pieces, this second podcast on Caravaggio – titled Caravaggio, the artist in making – is an enriching, nourishing listen. Helena’s love of the subject, her blazing intelligence, her wide and deep knowledge, her assurance, her vivid way of telling the story, her pleasing voice – all of that is what goes in. What comes out is a consummate piece of art history and art criticism. Constable once said, “we see nothing till we truly understand.” Helena makes us understand. And see.
“It’s really very shocking and it was intended to be”
“the innovative work which astonishes us to this day”
“the artist’s religious works have a strong element of the theatre in them”
“penitence expressed through performance art”
“takes events from the bible and transposes them to contemporary times”
“very few of Caravaggio’s religious works have a landscape background’
“so real that the viewer believes they are there, watching the event in real-time”
“he was a revolutionary because he turned to the art of the past”
“that was his great masterstroke – therein lay his genius”
“Caravaggio, the artist in making”
You are very pleasant to listen to.