HISTORY
The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula is an oil painting on canvas (143 × 180 cm) executed in 1610 by Caravaggio and conserved at the Galleria d'Italia-Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, museum headquarters of Intesa Sanpaolo in Naples.
The work is in fact Merisi's last painting having been made just over a month before his death on commission from Prince Marcantonio Doria. In 1972 the work was purchased as a work by Mattia Preti by the Banca Commerciale Italiana from the Romano Avezzana family, to which in the meantime, after various vicissitudes, it had passed.
The real authorship of the work and its fundamental historical position will be definitively clarified only in 1980, thanks to the discovery, in the Doria family archive, of a letter written in Naples on 1 May 1610 by Lanfranco Massa, a Genoese citizen and attorney in the Neapolitan capital of the Doria family, and directed to Genoa for Marcantonio Doria, "I was thinking of sending you the painting of Sant' Orzola this week, however, to make sure I sent it well dried, I placed it in the sun, which made the paint come back sooner than dried it to give us the Caravaggio very big: I want to go to said Caravaggio again to get his opinion on what to do so that it doesn't go bad".
Caravaggio's reparative intervention, between 11 and 27 May, certainly put the Santa Orsola in a position to leave and reach Marcantonio Doria on 18 June 1610.
It is an escape from Rome that brings the artist into contact with Doria for the first time. Still fresh from prison for illegal carrying of weapons, in the night between 28 and 29 July 1605, Caravaggio attacks Mariano Pasqualone, substitute notary, with a sword blow in Piazza Navona. After having found refuge in the palace of Cardinal Del Monte, his protector, he was forced to take refuge in Genoa for a few weeks during the month of August. Caravaggio therefore met the young prince during his fleeting stay in Genoa, but that was enough for the desire to obtain some work by him to remain alive in Doria's soul. Moreover, it is proved that Doria's contacts with the Neapolitan milieu, through his correspondent Massa, were always very interesting. Furthermore, a particular emotional motivation seems to link the prince to the commission of the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula: Anna Grimaldi, who took her vows in Naples in the monastery of Saint Andrea delle Dame with the name of Sister Orsola, was loved by Doria, her stepfather, as "beloved daughter". The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula reached Genoa on 18 June 1610. On 18 July the painter died.
The troubles suffered by the canvas over the centuries - breakdowns, extensions, repainting, which had profoundly altered its legibility and iconographic clarity - were finally remedied by the important restoration promoted by the Bank and carried out between 2003 and 2004 at the Istituto Superiore for the Conservation and Restoration of Rome, which has restored the original coherence of the image, now more faithful and close to the author's intentions. Among the main innovations brought about by this complex intervention in the reading of the painting, it should be noted the recovery of the arm and outstretched hand of a character who tries in vain - with strong emphasis in the dramatic charge of the scene - to stop the arrow shot by the executioner; furthermore the presence, in the background, of a curtain, which suggests a setting in the camp of the Hun king; finally the silhouettes of a couple of heads behind the saint's top.
DESCRIPTION OF THE WORK
As usual, Caravaggio deviates from the traditional iconography of Saint Ursula, generally portrayed with only the symbols of martyrdom and in the company of one or more of her virgin companions; instead he chooses to depict the very moment in which the saint, having refused to give herself to the tyrant Attila, is pierced by him with an arrow, filling the scene with an exquisitely dramatic tone. The painting is set in Attila's tent, barely discernible thanks to the drapery in the background, which almost acts as a theatrical backdrop. The entire environment, as usual in Caravaggio's paintings, is permeated by a complex play of light and shadow, which however in this last painting by the artist seems to give more advantage to the latter than the former: it is a mirror of the troubled period that the The author was living in the final part of his life.
The first character on the left is Attila himself, depicted with seventeenth-century clothes; the barbarian has just shot the arrow and seems to have already regretted his gesture: he almost seems to loosen his grip on the bow and his face is contracted in a pained grimace, as if to say "what have I done?". At a short distance from him is Saint Ursula, pierced by the arrow barely visible on her breast: she is bending her head in that direction and with her hands she is pushing her chest back as if to better see the instrument of the martyrdom of her. She doesn't seem to feel pain, rather a disinterested resignation, but her face and very white hands compared to those of the other characters herald her immediate death. In fact, three barbarians, also in modern clothes (one is even wearing iron armor), are rushing to support Saint Ursula, and they themselves seem incredulous in front of their leader's sudden and impulsive gesture. In the features of the one of them who is immediately behind the saint, Caravaggio has depicted himself with his mouth open and her pained expression: he seems to receive her piercing together with her. Together with the Saint, Caravaggio portrays himself as a victim of a tyrant in the guise of a Spanish archer. The presence of a self-portrait of the painter is not unusual in his works, starting with those of his youth. Bearing in mind that the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula is the work of the "presentiment", that ostentatiously substantiating himself with the martyr can mean that the mortal arrow is aimed at Caravaggio and that he is about to die of her: almost a testament.
