Melanie McDonagh previews The Last Caravaggio at the National Gallery.
The National Gallery in London celebrates its 200th birthday in May and among the events to mark the anniversary is this little exhibition of two paintings in a single room, one of which is from its own collection. But as the exhibition title suggests, the other is the last picture Caravaggio ever painted: The Martyrdom of St Ursula.
Quite remarkably, both this picture and Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist are very recent rediscoveries; Salome was only reattributed to Caravaggio in 1959 and St Ursula even later, in 1980. This was the culmination of the efforts of the literary historian Giorgio Fulco, who tipped off two art historians, Vicenzo Pacelli and Fernando Bologna, to the existence of letters by the agent of a Genoese nobleman, Marcantonio Doria, which referred to a picture by Caravaggio.
